Word of the Day!

purlieu [pur-loo, purl-yoo]

noun:
1 a place where one may range at large; confines or bounds.
2 a person's haunt or resort.
3 an outlying district or region, as of a town or city.
4 a piece of land on the edge of a forest, originally land that, after having been included in a royal forest, was restored to private ownership, though still subject, in some respects, to the operation of the forest laws.

Examples:

I walk my new purlieu, the boundaries of our new patch, which overlaps the old in a Venn diagram of localism. With my centre shifted, local farms are revealed from fresh angles. (Nicola Chester, Country diary: The strange familiarity of moving a mile away, The Guardian, November 2025)

Once the purlieu of Montpellier’s well-heeled bourgeoisie, these days the Promenade du Peyrou, a park and tree-lined esplanade on the eastern edge of the city, is the stomping ground of tourists and Instagrammers. (The Heritage of Montpellier: Top 5 Things To See and Do, Framce Today, February 2019)

Added to that, they are often in the purlieu of financially stricken Councils who whenever the word 'arts' comes up, are inundated with letters to the Editor saying money being considered to be spent on that would be better expended on hospitals and schools. (Valerie Lillington, The Vicar of Dibley | Noarlunga Theatre Co, Australian Stage, June 2018)

This favourite purlieu of London has larger books than mine devoted to its history. Through the mists of the past is dimly seen a homestead clearing in the great Middlesex forest, that became a manor of Westminster Abbey and a hunting-ground of our kings; then, by-and-by, a resort of Londoners when they could stroll out safely across the open fields of St Pancras and Marylebone. (G B Stuart, A road-book to old Chelsea)

But such betrayals never escaped him when, in one of his inimitable disguises, he penetrated to the purlieu of Whitechapel, to the dens of Limehouse. (Sax Rohmer, The Golden Scorpion)

Origin:
Middle English purlewe land severed from an English royal forest by perambulation, from Anglo-French puralé perambulation, from puraler to travel through, measure, from pur- thoroughly + aler to go (Merriam-Webster)

howff [houf, ouf, hohf, ohf]

noun:
(Scottish, archaic) 1 an abode; a familiar shelter or refuge
2 A place of resort, a favourite haunt, a meeting place;

Examples:

It is a howff abundant in character but without renown and exists as a place for people to gather, wet their whistle, and have a blether. It is the perfect local. (Socialising in pubs 'boosts mens' mental health, The Scotsman, January 2014)

It has a romantic past, having been built in secret in 1952 by four climbers fed up with carrying the heavy tents of the day on the long walk into the Cairngorms. There's is a great tale of the building of this howff. (Who remembers this ? Howffs, Old mans thoughts and tales, July 2020)

Together they sought the shelter of a howff off the High Street. ( Janet Beith, The Corbies)

The brewster-wife at the howff near Loch Lomond mouth keeps a good glass of aqua. (Neil Munro, Doom Castle)

Yonder, overlooking Tibbie Shiel's 'cosy beild' - a howff of the Noctes coterie - stands the solitary white figure of the beloved Shepherd as Christopher North's prophetic soul felt that it must be some day. (W S Crockett, In the Border Country)

The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond - an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense - meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond Bridge. (Robert Louis Stevenson, St Ives)

The Globe Tavern here, which for these many years has been my Howff. (J de L Ferguson (ed), The Letters of Robert Burns)


Origin:
The earliest known use of the noun howff is in the early 1700s. OED's earliest evidence for howff is from 1711, in the writing of Allan Ramsay, poet. (Oxford English Dictionary)

First recorded in 1555–65; origin uncertain (Dictionary.com)