pergole

English

Etymology

From Italian pergole, plural of pergola.

Noun

pergole

1. plural of pergola
   • 1872, W. W. Fenn, “Rambles in Retrospect”, in Norman Macleod, editor, Good Words for 1872, Strahan & Co., […], page 603, column 2:

     The flax-growth of Switzerland is replaced in Italy by the waving masses of maize or Indian corn, and birch and pine are represented by fig and chestnut; whilst the trim and meagre vineyards on the northern Alpine slopes scarcely suggest the same plant as that we find in its wild luxuriance, festooning from bough to bough or from column to column along the pergole, when we have once descended to the south.

   • 1883 January, Harriet W. Preston, “An Apennine Valley”, in The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, volume LI, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; New York: […] The Riverside Press, […], page 39, column 2:

     Your afternoon stroll across the flax-fields and under the pergole on the shady side of the hill takes you somewhat abruptly into a tiny piazza, smoothly paved and remarkably clean, though the grass is growing thickly between the flag-stones.

   • 1911, Charles Prestwood Lucas, A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, page 192:

     The final process of drying cod in the sun takes place in wooden erections called flakes, which resemble the pergole of southern Europe, but on whose roof instead of roses the hardly less odorous dead and split cod basks.

   • 1915, Gaston du C. De Vere, transl., Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Philip Lee Warner, […], translation of original by Giorgio Vasari, page 77:

     Then, proceeding to execute the first range below those Loggie, Giovanni used another and quite different method in the distribution of the stucco-work and paintings on the walls and vaultings of the other Loggie; but nevertheless those also were very beautiful, by reason of the pleasing invention of the pergole of canes counterfeited in various compartments, all covered with vines laden with grapes, and with clematis, jasmine, roses, and various kinds of birds and beasts.

   • 1971, The Wine Mine: A Mine of Wine Information, page 144:

     Suitably dressed, and armed with home-made triangular step-ladders, baskets with hooks on them so that we can hang them from the pergole (wine trellises) while we cut the grapes with scissors, secateurs or knives, all of which become equally painful to use after a day or two, we turn up at the right farm-house about seven-thirty. […] The grapes are trained on the pergole over steep banks, anything up to eight feet high, which is picturesque but no longer accords with modern practice—no more pergole are being constructed and new vineyards are planted in regular widely spaced, parallel rows in fields bulldozed out of the hillside.

Anagrams

• Ploeger, leg rope, legrope

Italian

Noun

pergole f

1. plural of pergola