deckle n. a thick band of fat on (a cut of) meat; a very fatty cut of meat. Etymological Note: Mostly likely connected to German dicht ‘thick,’ dick ‘thick’ or ‘fat,’ or Dicke ‘fat person, a fatty.’ The prefix dick- is used to to indicate “fatty,” “big,” “fattening,”or “thick” (as in “thick-bodied” and “thick in the head”) in various German compounds. The -el ending is a dimunitive, making deckle mean, more or less, “a little fatty thing.” Less likely, deckle is perhaps from another German deckel, “a little covering,” which came into English as deckle, a device that controls the size of pages in paper-making, producing deckle-edged paper that is rough and un-cut. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What kind of book do people ask for most often in prison? Romance novels? No. The Bible? No. The most requested books by far are … dictionaries! A number of volunteer organizations gather and distribute used dictionaries to help inmates with...
Twice a day the River Thames recedes, revealing a muddy shoreline. Hobbyists known as mudlarks stroll the surface searching for objects that have found their way into the river over the centuries, everything from ancient Roman jewelry to modern...
A printing catalogue I am currently translating into Castilian (Spain’s Spanish) includes “deckle” as one out of several edge finishings of paper (among which: “pinking; colonial; scallop; shortwave; wave; squiggle; Victorian”).
I am about to render “irregular” (as in former times printed photographs’ edges would be finished, sometimes by genly hitting the egdes with a scissor’s blade).
Thanks for your dictionary.
Esteve Comes i Bergua
Translator and proofreader
(English, Italian and French into Catalan and Castilian)
ecb@terrassa.net
esteve_comes@yahoo.es