“All spring and summer my parents ricochet from garden to garden, mulching, watering, pulling up the polyphiloprogenitive weeds, ‘until’, my mother says, ‘I’m bent over like a coat hanger,'” writes Margaret Atwood in a book called Bluebeard’s Egg.

Photo courtesy of Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons

I feel pretty certain that you and I are both still stuck at poly …

Polyphiloprogenitive, was it?

Thank goodness for a computer’s “copy” and “paste” functions (I dare not re-type that one on my own).

This term—polyphiloprogenitive (see, I pasted again!)—is one of those words whose meaning a farmgirl can glean from context,

particularly when the context involves garden weeds (think extremely prolific),

but that doesn’t make saying it any easier.

A syllabic breakdown is in order.

Join me:

po-ly

phi-lo

pro

gen-i-tive

Now … say it three times fast!

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth via Wikimedia Commons

Wink.

Ah, the sounds of morning …

Birds singing,

Photo by Brian Robert Marshall via Wikimedia Commons

tea kettle pouring,

Photo by Patrick George via Wikimedia Commons

and the pelting of peas upon windowpanes.

Photo by Parvathisri via Wikimedia Commons

Curious?

I thought you might be.

Pea pelting was the work of “knocker ups” in England and Ireland before alarm clocks put an end to the profession.

Note, gentle reader, that “knocking up” bore no resemblance to our modern slang terminology (ahem).

In fact, it was a valued service generally provided by elderly women and men, and occasionally undertaken by police constables looking to pad their paychecks during early-morning patrols.

Each morning, the knocker up was charged with rousing sleeping people so they could get to work on time. She would use a heavy stick called a truncheon to knock on clients’ first-floor doors. For residents above arm’s reach, the knocker up would wield a long stick, often made of bamboo, to tap upper-story windows.

Image courtesy of Au Bout de la Route blog

Some of the more adventurous knocker ups, like Mary Smith of London’s Brenton Street (shown below), employed pea shooters to hurl dried peas at windows until the sleeper within woke up.

Image courtesy of Basilica Fields blog

In return for their services, knocker-ups were paid a few pence a week.

Now you know!