Chapter Page to Pale Faces of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Palermo Razors Razors of supreme excellence, made in Palermo.

“It is a rayser, and that's a very good one,
It came lately from Palermo.”
Damon and Pithias, i. 227.

Pales The god of shepherds and their flocks. (Roman mythology.)

Palestine Soup Soup made of Jerusalem artichokes. This is a good example of blunder begetting blunder. Jerusalem artichoke is a corruption of the Italian Girasole articiocco- i.e. the “sunflower artichoke.” From girasole we make Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem artichokes we make Palestine soup.

Palestra (3 syl.). Either the act of wrestling, etc., or the place in which the Grecian youths practised athletic exercises. (Greek, pale, wrestling.)

Palestrina or Pelestrina. An island nearly south of Venice, noted for its glass-houses.
   Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, called “The Prince of Music.” (1529-1594.)

Paletot [pal'-e-to ]. A corruption of palla-toque, a cloak with a hood. Called by Piers Plowman a paltock. The hood or toque has disappeared, but the word remains the same.

Palimpsest A parchment on which the original writing has been effaced, and something else has been written. (Greek, palin, again; psao, I rub or efface.) When parchment was not supplied in sufficient quantities, the monks and others used to wash or rub out the writing in a parchment and use it again. As they did not wash or rub it out entirely, many works have been recovered by modern ingenuity. Thus Cicero's De Republica has been restored; it was partially erased to make room for a commentary of St. Augustine on the Psalms. Of course St. Augustine's commentary was first copied, then erased from the parchment, and the original MS. of Cicero made its appearance.

“Central Asia is a palimpsest; everywhere actual barbarism overlays a bygone civilisation”- The Times.

Palindrome (3 syl.). A word or line which reads backwards and forwards alike, as Madam, also Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor. (Greek, palin dromo, to run back again.) (See Sotadic. )
    The following Greek palindrome is very celebrated:-
   NIYONANOMHMATAMHMONANOYIN
(Wash my transgressions, not only my face). The legend round the font at St. Mary's, Nottingham. Also on the font in the basilica of St. Sophia, Constantinople; also on the font of St. Stephen d'Egres, Paris; at St. Menin's Abbey, Orléans; at Dulwich College; and at the following churches: Worlingsworth (Suffolk), Harlow (Essex), Knapton (Norfolk), Melton Mowbray (it has been removed to a neighbouring hamlet), St. Martin's, Ludgate (London), and Hadleigh (Suffolk). (See Ingram: Churches of London, vol. ii.; Malcolm: Londinum Redivivum, vol. iv. p. 356; Allen: London, vol. iii. p. 530.)
    It is said that when Napoleon was asked whether he could have invaded England, he answered “Able was I ere I saw Elba.”

Palinode (3 syl.). A song or discourse recanting a previous one. A good specimen of the palinode is Horace, book i. ode 16, translated by Swift. Watts has a palinode in which he retracts the praise bestowed upon Queen Anne. In the first part of her reign he wrote a laudatory poem to the queen, but he says that the latter part deluded his hopes and proved him a false prophet. Samuel Butler has also a palinode to recant what he said in a previous poem to the Hon. Edward Howard, who wrote a poem called The British Princes. (Greek, palin ode, a song again.)

Palinurus (in English, Palinure). Any pilot; so called from Palinurus, the steersman of AEneas.

“Oh! think how to his [Pitt's ] latest day,
When death, just hovering, claimed his prey,
With Palinure's unaltered mood,
Firm at his dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repelled,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till in his fall with fateful sway
The steerage of the realm gave way.”