pompillion, a term applied in contempt to a man. Fletcher, Women Pleased, iii. 4 (Bartello). Not found elsewhere. See below.
pompion, a pumpkin. Tusser, Husbandry, § 41; B. Jonson, Time Vindicated (Fame); ‘Pompon, a pumpion or melon’, Cotgrave. A Lanc. word for a pumpkin, see EDD. (s.v. Pumpion). Du. pompoen, ‘a pompion, pumpkin’ (Sewel).
pon, a pan, hollow, basin. Drayton, Pol. xxviii. 169. The pronunc. of ‘pan’ in the north-west of England (EDD.).
ponder, weight. Heywood, Silver Age, A. ii (Alcmena); vol. iii, p. 102; a heavy blow, id. (Hercules), p. 142.
pontifical, bridge-making. Milton, P. L. x. 313. L. pons (bridge) + facere (to make). It may be noted that L. pontifex (a pontiff) has probably nothing to do with bridge-making. See NED.
pooke; see [pouke].
poop-noddie, pup-noddie, cony-catching, the art of befooling the simpleton; ‘I saw them close together at Poop-noddie, in her closet’, Wily Beguiled, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, ix. 242; see NED.
poor-john, a coarse fish (usually hake), salted and dried. Temp. ii. 2. 28; Beaumont and Fl., Lover’s Progress, i. 1. 15. See EDD. (s.v. Poor).
pooter, the same as [poting-stick], q.v. Warner, Alb. England, bk. ix, ch. 47, st. 8.
pope-holy, sanctimonious, hypocritical. Foxe, Martyrs (ed. 2, 205 b, 2); pop-holy, Skelton, Replycacion, 247; Garland of Laurell, 612. ME. pope-holy (P. Plowman, B. xiii. 284). In Chaucer, Rom. Rose, 415, Pope-Holy is used in the sense of ‘Hypocrisy’, being the translation of the papelardie of the French original.