• gherkin • Part of Speech: Noun Meaning: 1. A prickly West
Indian gourd whose immature fruit is pickled. 2. A small pickled
cucumber. Notes: Today's Good Word is a curiosity: one of a very
few English words beginning with GH. The H, of course, is
irrelevant, a 'silent' H. Its oddness is probably responsible
for the fact that it is a lexical orphan, without related
derivations. In Play: Moms, here is how you can spice up your
discussions with your children using today's word: "Aha! Caught
you jerking a gherkin out of the jar! Put it back or you'll ruin
your dinner." There isn't much room in this word's meaning for
metaphor, so we are stuck with its literal meaning: "I wouldn't
insult my guest with gherkins on their hamburgers; I serve only
large dills." Word History: This English word is the result of
mistaking Dutch gurken, the plural of gurk "cucumber", as a
singular form. The Dutch word is a shortened form of agurk,
borrowed from a Slavic language, either Polish ogorek or Russian
ogurec. The Slavs probably