Word Confusion: Pearl vs Perle vs Purl

Posted May 14, 2015 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
10 July 2023

I realize that you can wear pearls and purls. You can even wear pearls or purls — or both! — around your neck. But that sentence context is so important. One set of pearls around your neck is slim, a mere string of beads while a “strand” of purls could be mighty thick wrapped around one’s neck.

I know, I know, pearls may grow to be fairly large — the Pearl of Lao Tze is 9.45 inches in diameter! — but I don’t personally know anyone who could afford a string of pearls that size. And if I did, I’d hope they wouldn’t be silly enough to wear a necklace when each pearl weighed over 14 pounds!! I certainly can’t imagine any purled scarf weighing that much.

As for wearing perles. Well, yeah, there have been times when my pills have stuck to my hand when I tip them out of the bottle. I do, however, flick them off fairly quickly. I cannot imagine running errands while wearing one or more perles. For one thing, that gelatin containing the medication would dissolve and release all that powder. For another thing, they just don’t make colored capsules that coordinate with the colors in my wardrobe. Ewwyewww . . .

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Pearl Perle Purl

white pearl necklace

White Pearl Necklace by Flickr.com user “tanakawho” under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.


two gelatin capsules

Kapsel Beredningsform is Ola Rönnerup’s own work with copyrighted free use, via Wikimedia Commons.

Thank god for perles, so we don’t have to taste the actual medicine!


red and yellow yarn laid out in huge loops to demonstrate a purl stitch

Knitting Knit and Purl Stitches is WillowW’s own work under the GFDL or CC BY 3.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.

Part of Grammar:
Adjective 1; Noun 2, 3;
Proper noun; Verb 4, intransitive & transitive

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

Noun

Plural: perles

Adjective 1;
Noun 1, 2, 3;
Verb 3, intransitive 2 & transitive

Plural for the noun: purls
Gerund: purling

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

Adjective:
Of, relating to, or resembling pearl 1

  • 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

[Medical] A soft gelatin capsule for enclosing volatile or unpleasant-tasting liquids intended to be swallowed

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

Adjective:
Denoting or relating to a knitting stitch made by putting the needle through the front of the stitch from right to left 1

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

Examples:
Adjective:
I like using pearl barley in my soups.

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).

I can’t imagine a practical usage for the fragile perles, but the idea of a gelatin capsule to contain the taste of bitter medications sounds like a great idea.

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.

Adjective:
The sweater has a nice contrast of knit and purl stitches.

“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).

Derivatives:
Noun: pearler
Adjective: pearlish, pearllike
History of the Word:
  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.
1885-90 from the French literally meaning pearl.
  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.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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Resources for Pearl vs Perle vs Purl

Some of these links may be affiliate links, and I will earn a small percentage, if you should buy it. It does not affect the price you pay.

Apple Dictionary.com

“The Campus Debate Over Trigger Warnings is at an Impasse. Science Can Help.” Slate Magazine. n.d. Web. 16 Dec 2022. <https://www.slate.com/>.

Collins Dictionary: purl

Earle, Alice Morse. Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth. Project Gutenberg, 2012. <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39049/39049-h/39049-h.htm>. Ebook.

“Gold vs Silver plus Copper?” Tudor Embroidery.com. 28 Feb 2022. Web. 16 Dec 2022. <https://tudorembroidery.com/2022/02/28/gold-vs-silver-plus-copper/>.

Merriam-Webster: pearl

“Pearl Hunting.” Wikipedia. n.d. Web. n.d. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_hunting>.

Rossignac, Jarek , Brian Whited, Greg Slabaugh, Tong Fang, and Gozde Unal. “Pearling: Medical Image Segmentation with Pearl Strings.” College of Computing. Georgia Tech. n.d. Web. n.d. <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~jarek/papers/pearling2D.pdf>.

The Sun. 2015. Web. 16 Dec 2022.

Sunday Times. 2013. Web. 16 Dec 2022.

Tennyson, Alfred. Tennyson and His Friends. London: MacMillan and Co, 1911. Project Gutenberg, 2011. <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38420/38420-h/38420-h.htm>.

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Pinterest Photo Credits

Kapsel Beredningsform is Ola Rönnerup’s own work with copyrighted free use granted. Example of the Back of Stockinette Stitch is Pschemp‘s own work is under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Both are via Wikimedia Commons.

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