Strickled

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Smoothed a heaped measure of grain level with a flat bar ; honed the edge of a scythe by rubbing it on a fine stone
2. Struck off the excess from a full container so it sat even with the rim ; whetted a long-bladed mowing tool to a keen edge
3. Levelled a grain measure by drawing a straight bar across its top ; sharpened a scythe blade by working it against a whetstone

Etymology: "Strickled" is the past tense and past participle of "strickle," a verb meaning to level grain in a measure by drawing a straight-edged stick across the top of it. The noun it comes from was the stick itself, a tool used to scrape off the excess so that a measure held exactly its rated volume rather than a heaped one. The noun traces back to Old English "stricel," which was built from "strick," a word for a stroke or a stroking motion, plus the diminutive suffix "-le," so the tool was in effect a little stroker. Middle English shaped it into "strikile" and "strikelle" in the centuries after the Norman Conquest, and English kept the form that Middle Dutch shared, "strijkel" and "streekel," a sign that the trade vocabulary of the North Sea region travelled in both directions.