Pilge?
Sir: In the Spectator of 13 December 1986, Auberon Waugh's column Another voice, headed 'The implications of not giving Lisa three bears for Christmas', contained a word that I have not seen before. I searched for it in Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, and even in Webster's, to no avail. I considered the possibility of a misprint, but the word appears twice in the article (in different forms).
The word is `pilgering' — and in the other form, `pilgerish'. I looked in a biographical dictionary to check whether this was not a coined word to describe the ways of a person (such as 'Dickensian verbosity'), but found no reference to anyone called Pilge, Pilger, or any other variation of that theme.
As a student of the English language I am intensely curious as to the origin of the word, and its exact meaning. The sent- ences in which it appeared in Mr Waugh's article do not give any clues. I should also like to know whether it is pronounced with a hard `g' or a soft `g'.
J. G. Dudley PO Box 361,
Olivedale, Randburg, South Africa
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