Word.ws English Dictionary

purfle

/ˈpɜːfəl/US/ˈpɝfəl/

purfle noun: an ornamental border on clothing, furniture or a violin; beading, stringing.

purfle: an ornamental border on clothing, furniture or a violin; beading, stringing
Image: de:Partyhead, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

purfle (plural purfles)

  1. An ornamental border on clothing, furniture or a violin; beading, stringing.
    • the messager came for kyng Arthurs berd / For kyng Ryons had purfyled a mantel with kynges berdes /[…]/ wherfor he sente for his berd or els he wold entre in to his landes /[…]/ & neuer leue tyl he haue the hede and the berd / wel sayd Arthur thow hast said thy message / the whiche is the most...1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “xxvij”, in Le Morte Darthur, book I
  2. An ornamental border, edge, or line of a different tincture or material.
    • Adumbration (or Transparency) is a clear Exemption of the Substance of the Charge, so that there remaineth only the outward Strokes or Purfle of a Thing;1726, John Guillim, The banner display'd: or, An abridgment of Guillim [in his Display of heraldrie] by S. Kent, page 43
    • Cross […] has its extremities ending in a flower of three leaves, or flower-de-luces, with a purfle, or line between them and the ends of the cross.1804, Alexander Nisbet, A system of heraldry, speculative and practical, page 117

Verb

purfle (third-person singular simple present purfles, present participle purfling, simple past and past participle purfled)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To decorate (wood, cloth etc.) with a purfle or ornamental border; to border.
    • And this was his message gretynge wel kynge Arthur in this manere wyse sayenge / that kynge Ryons had discomfyte and ouercome xj kynges /[…]/ they gaf hym their berdys clene flayne[…]/ wher for the messager came for kyng Arthurs berd / For kyng Ryons had purfyled a mantel with kynges berdes / and...1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “xxvij”, in Le Morte Darthur, book I
    • He had a faire companion of his way, / A goodly Lady, clad in ſcarlot red, / Purfled with gold and pearle of rich aſſay, […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 13, page 10
  2. (transitive) To ornament with purfle.
    • Crest; a dragon passant proper, wings elevated and purfled gules.1815, John Wilkes, Encyclopaedia Londinensis, page 606

Forms of purfle

Noun
pluralpurfles
alternative formpurflew
alternative formpurfyle
Verb
third-person singular presentpurfles
present participlepurfling
past participlepurfled
pastpurfled

Origin of purfle

From Old French porfiler, from Latin pro- + filum (“thread”). Doublet of profile.

Words formed from purfle

Questions about purfle

What does purfle mean?
Purfle means an ornamental border on clothing, furniture or a violin; beading, stringing.
What part of speech is purfle?
Purfle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce purfle?
Purfle is pronounced /ˈpɜːfəl/ (UK).
What is the plural of purfle?
The plural of purfle is purfles.

Words near purfle in the dictionary

  1. purey
  2. pureys
  3. purfalcamine
  4. purfile
  5. purfiles
  6. purfle
  7. purfled
  8. Purfleet
  9. purfles
  10. purfling
  11. purflings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: purfle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-purfle.wav.

Cite this entry: “purfle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/purfle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.