225 symbols beginning with P. Each one is read four ways, and every source is named so you can check it.
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- PerjuryLying under oath, which is punished not for the lie but for the breaking of the promise wrapped round it.
- ProbateThe proving of a will, in which a court decides whether a dead person's instructions are the ones they actually gave.
- PawnA loan against an object, where the thing itself is the security, so nobody has to be trusted at all.
- PulpitA raised box for preaching from, sometimes with a canopy above it that is there for the sound rather than the look.
- PilgrimSomebody travelling to a place because of what is there, whose badge proved they had arrived and was worn home.
- PsalterA book of psalms, which for centuries was the book most people learned to read from, sacred or not.
- Prayer wheelA cylinder of written prayers turned by hand or by water, where the turning is the saying and the words need not be read.
- PleaAn answer to a charge, in which the whole case can be settled by a single word before any evidence is heard.
- ParoleRelease before the end of a sentence, from the French for word, because it was originally a prisoner's word of honour.
- PensionA payment continuing after the work has stopped, from a word meaning to weigh, because money was weighed before it was counted.
- PallThe cloth laid over a coffin, which is what a pallbearer originally carried rather than the coffin itself.
- PestleA club for crushing rather than cutting, which breaks cells open and releases what a knife would leave inside them.
- PoulticeA hot wet dressing put on to draw something out, in a tradition where illness was treated as a thing to be extracted.
- PikeA very long spear used in blocks, where the weapon is useless alone and almost unbreakable when hundreds are held together.
- PaddockA small enclosure near the buildings, used for animals that need watching, so it is the field for whatever is not yet trusted.
- PatternThe shape you cut round, kept in paper or card, so the garment exists as a flat outline before it exists at all.
- PannierA basket slung on one side of an animal, which must be balanced by another, so it cannot be used singly at all.
- Pins and needlesTwo small sharp objects borrowed to name a feeling, because there was no word for it and the sewing box was to hand.
- PrickleSensation arriving at points rather than across a surface, which is why it feels like something touching you when nothing is.
- PuppetA figure worked from outside itself, which makes it the plainest image the language has for somebody doing what they are told.
- PinwheelPaper vanes on a pin, which turn only when something passes them, so the toy does nothing and reports everything.
- PostmarkAn official stamp across a stamp, cancelling it so it cannot be used twice and dating the letter whether the sender wanted it dated or not.
- PostboxA slot you cannot reach back into, which makes posting a letter the exact moment the decision stops being yours.
- PeatGround cut into bricks and dried, which burns low and slow and smells of the bog it came out of for as long as it lasts.
- PealBells rung through thousands of changing orders with no tune at all, which takes hours and is a mathematical exercise performed on a building.