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1word1daydornick (DAWR-nik) - n., a stone small enough to throw.
Specifically, small enough to throw out of a field that's being cleared. This is entirely an Americanism, borrowed around 1840 from Scots-Irish who settled in Pennsylvania around the time of the Famine, where it spread westward with settlers, from Irish Gaelic dornóg, a small round stone -- literally, fistful, with a sense closer to a stone that's just the right size for throwing. (There's a second sense of a stout linen cloth or coarse damask named after the Belgian city known as Doornik in Flemish and Tournai in French, but I'm ignoring that as less interesting.)
Tim was set to walking ahead of the plow, chucking dornicks into the woods.
---L.
Specifically, small enough to throw out of a field that's being cleared. This is entirely an Americanism, borrowed around 1840 from Scots-Irish who settled in Pennsylvania around the time of the Famine, where it spread westward with settlers, from Irish Gaelic dornóg, a small round stone -- literally, fistful, with a sense closer to a stone that's just the right size for throwing. (There's a second sense of a stout linen cloth or coarse damask named after the Belgian city known as Doornik in Flemish and Tournai in French, but I'm ignoring that as less interesting.)
Tim was set to walking ahead of the plow, chucking dornicks into the woods.
---L.
