Word Confusion: Pearl vs Perle vs Purl

Plural for the noun: pearls
Plural for the proper noun: Pearls
Gerund: pearling

Third person present verb: pearls
Past tense or past participle: pearled
Present participle: pearling

Plural: perles

Plural for the noun: purls
Gerund: purling

Third person present verb: purls
Past tense or past participle: purled
Present participle: purling

• Made of or adorned with pearls

Having medium-sized grains

Noun:
A dense variously colored and usually lustrous concretion formed of concentric layers of nacre as an abnormal growth within the shell of some mollusks and used as a gem ²

• Mother-of-pearl

One that is very choice or precious

Something resembling a pearl intrinsically or physically

A nearly neutral slightly bluish medium gray

[British] Picot ³

[Medical] One of the rounded concentric masses of squamous epithelial cells characteristic of certain tumors

[Medical] A miliary leproma of the iris

[Medical] A rounded abnormal mass of enamel on a tooth

Proper Noun:
A river about 410 miles south of the Mississippi River and flowing south into the Gulf of Mexico

A feminine first name

Verb, intransitive:
To form drops or beads like pearls ⁴

Verb, transitive:
To set or adorn with pearls ⁴

To sprinkle or bead with pearly drops

To form into small round grains

To give a pearly color or luster to

[British] Picot ³

A fragile glass vial that contains a liquid (as amyl nitrite) and that is intended to be crushed and the vapor inhaled

Noun:
A purl stitch ¹

[Singular noun] A purling motion or sound ²

A circle or curl made by the motion of water

• Ripple
• Eddy

[Textile] One of a series of small loops along the edge of lace braid ³

Thread made of twisted gold or silver wire

Verb:
To finish with loops or a looped edging ³

Verb, intransitive:
[Of a stream or river] Flow with a swirling motion and babbling sound ²

• To flow with curling or rippling motion, as a shallow stream does over stones
• To flow with a murmuring sound
• To pass in a manner or with a sound likened to this

Verb, transitive:
Knit with a purl stitch ³

We saw her pearled like the queen.

The chest was pearled like a mosaic.

Noun:
I love the gleam of mother-of-pearl insets in mahogany boxes.

She wore a string of pearls.

Pearls of dew glistened on the roses.

She is a pearl beyond price.

“Pearling computes the position and radius of an adjacent pearl based on the image data . . .” (Pearl).

It’s like scattering pearls before swine!

Proper Noun:
The Pearl River is navigable to a certain extent.

Pearl and her sister are coming over for dinner.

Pearl S. Buck wrote a number of books about China.

Verb, intransitive:
“Pearling was popular in Qatar, Bahrain, and some areas in Persian Gulf countries” (Pearl).

Raindrops pearled on water-soaked windowpanes.

The guys and I are going pearling.

Verb, transitive:
Pearling young and old males with pearls, beads, and bars has been practiced for years.

We pearled the barley.

Raindrops pearled like beads on the window.

The sky pearled a beautiful bluish gray.

Pearling allows the user to extract a higher level parametric representation of each tube or of a network of tubes (Rossignac).

Fish oil comes in perles.

Vitamin E perles can be pierced by a pin to access the oil and then the pin can be used as a stopper for the hole.

“By combining knit and purl stitches, you can easily create a wealth of different patterns” (Times).

“Of water adornments there were to be purling streams, basins, canals, fountains, cascades, cold baths” (Earle).

Noun:
Pearl has mastered the purl stitch.

“Change to main colour and stocking-stitch (one row knit, one row purl) for 5½in (14cm)” (Sun).

“You may find your tension alters on purl stitches, in which case you will need to hold your yarn slightly tighter or looser to compensate” (Times).

Purls were flowering from the fountain of life.

It will finish the edge of the scarf with a nice series of purls.

“The wire used for the metal purls pose a much more complex problem because they are usually an amalgam of different metals” (Gold).

Verb, intransitive:
The stream burbled and purled.

I learned to cast off and bind. Tomorrow I’ll learn purling.

“My palms started to sweat, my head felt feather-light on my neck, a sick wave of shame purled through me” (Campus).

Verb, transitive:
The pattern calls for knitting one, then purling one.

I purled three and knit one.

Cast 35 stitches upon each of three needles and knit around 30 times in single rib — that is, knit 1, purl 1, alternately.

“To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand,
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,
Drawing into his narrow earthen urn . . .” (Tennyson, chapt 85).

1. Its first known use was in 1610.
2. Its first known use was in the 14th century, from Middle English perle from the Anglo-French, probably from the Vulgar Latin *pernula, which is a diminutive of the Latin perna meaning upper leg or a kind of sea mussel. It’s also akin to the Old English fiersn meaning heel, the Greek pternē.
3. Its first known use was in 1824. It’s also an alternate spelling for purl.
4. Its first known use was in the 14th century.

1. Mid-17th century and of uncertain origin.
2. Early 16th century denoting a small swirling stream. Compare with the Norwegian purla meaning bubble up or ripple.
3. 1520–30 as a variant of the obsolete or dialectal pirl meaning to twist (threads, etc.) into a cord.