Purloin: a memory-conjuring word.

Do you like the word ‘purloin’? Perhaps the activity to which it refers gives the word a bad reputation, but it’s not the word’s fault. If you need to be cross with someone then vent your spleen on those who purloin and not on the word itself. I think it’s a lovely word. It makes me think of raw meat kept on a breezy veranda in a meat safe when no other method of refrigeration is available. That’s where my mother kept meat when we lived in rural Malawi in the 1960s. We had no electricity, and every Tuesday a local farmer killed a cow. He chopped it up in pieces and one piece ended up in our meat safe, still warm and oozing blood, it’s ‘moo’ still disturbing the otherwise quiet, afternoon air, and flies gathering on the fine mesh of the safe, unable to reach the bloody flesh. I don’t know how the vision relates to the word purloin, but in my 6 year old mind the sight and smell and horror of slaughtered cow chimed well with the sound the word makes when uttered aloud