A violin maker wonders about the origin of a practice in his trade known as purfling, where a black and white line is inlaid into a tiny channel along the edge of the instrument. Martha traces the word back to the Latin filum, meaning “line” or “thread.” Purfling is also a practice in guitar-making, furniture-making, and embroidery, and it shares an etymological root with profile. A fun fact: purfling is also just “profiling” said with a mouth full of marshmallows. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Purfling”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, Martha and Grant.
Hi, my name is Michael Dorn.
Hi, Michael.
And I’m calling from Seattle, Washington.
Welcome. How are things in Seattle?
Well, I’m calling because I have a question about a word that is used in my trade.
I’m a violin maker, and the word is purfling, P-U-R-F-L-I-N-G.
Purfling? You’re a violin maker.
Well, now, we can’t let you get away without telling us about your profession.
This is fantastic.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a violin maker on the show, have we?
No, no. I think we had a guitar maker, piano maker, tuba maker, but no violin maker.
Kidding.
So how’d you get into that?
Well, I discovered early on that I loved working with wood and I loved making music.
And violin making seemed like the best way to combine both of my passions.
And so part of the time you’re doing what? You’re purfling?
That’s right. My wife especially loves the verb, to purful.
So purfling is a specific kind of inlay on the fronts and backs of violins.
It’s a little black and white line that runs around the edge.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Typically it’s three pieces of wood, black, white, black, glued together,
And then inlaid into a very tiny channel that runs parallel to the edge.
Okay, okay.
And does your wife purfle with you?
No, no.
She does her work and I do my work in my shop.
Okay, okay.
It sounds naughty when you say it like that.
I know, I know.
I purple, you purple, you she, it purple.
Like that famous postcard, right?
Which one?
The book nerd says to the lovely woman, do you like Kipling?
And she says, I don’t know you, naughty boy.
I’ve never kipled.
That’s nice.
That’s nice.
Well, I am thrilled to know that this is what this thing is called.
And I’m nosing around here.
It looks like it comes from, it goes all the way back to the Latin word for line or thread.
Really?
Yeah, which you see in the word filament
And in profile, you know, the line around something.
And so it came to us through Middle French, I believe,
Profilé, something like that.
So it is that line around the edge of a violin
Or a guitar, right?
Like around a guitar, the guitar hole,
Is that perfling as well?
Yeah, it would be, it’s specifically a black-white-black line.
So binding around the edges of guitars
Often doesn’t count really as perfling,
But the purfling around the sound hole would be called purfling.
I think I’ve also heard it used in furniture making, cabinet making.
Sometimes they’ll inlay just a line around the edge of a tabletop or on a table leg or something.
So that makes a lot of sense that it has to do with coming from the word for the line.
Right, right.
Yeah, relative of profile.
And you see it in sewing, too, embroidery and that kind of thing.
I love the relationship it has with profile.
They could have been the same word.
They’re twins.
They have exactly the same etymological root.
But perfil is so much more fun to say.
That’s true.
We always love it when people bring us jargon from their work.
Absolutely.
So perfling.
Well, thank you very much, Grant and Martha.
I appreciate your help today.
All right.
Okay.
Happy perfling.
Take care, Michael.
Bye-bye.
Call us and talk to us about the jargon of your trade, the words that you use,
And maybe don’t know what they mean or where they come from, 877-929-9673,
Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
