pirlicue

English

Etymology

See purlicue.

Noun

pirlicue (plural pirlicues)

1. (Scotland) A summary, given at the end of an address or sermon, repeating its main points.
   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 245:

     [I]f you distaste the sermon, I doubt the pirliecue [footnote: A second sermon.] will please you as little.

   • 1895, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Men of the Moss-hags: Being a History of Adventure, page 261:

     A pirlicue which pleased them but little, so that some rode off that they might not be known, and some dourly remained, but were impotent for evil.

   • 1938, Patrick Reginald Chalmers, The Barrie inspiration, page 90:

     Much in the same way would a minister in Thrums, hard up for a pirlicue, never fail to find it in having 'one more whap, my freens, at the Painted Whure of Babylon.'

Related terms

• purlicue