g.l. kirk

noun

Grayson (Louis) 1903–1997, U.S. educator: president of Columbia University 1953–68.

a male given name.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Collins

World English Dictionary

kirk (kɜːk, Scottish kɪrk)

—n
1.	a Scot word for church
2.	a Scottish church

[C12: from Old Norse kirkja, from Old English ciricechurch]

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G.l. kirk is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Kirk¹ (kɜːk, Scottish kɪrk)

—n
	informal the Kirk the Presbyterian Church of Scotland

Kirk² (kɜːk)

—n
	Norman. 1923--74, prime minister of New Zealand (1972--74)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

kirk

c.1200, northern England and Scot. dial. form of church, from O.N. kirkja "church," from O.E. cirice (see church).

Matching Quote

"The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,—for the sun acts on one side first,—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me,—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (leibo, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; lobos, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally, a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single-lobed, or B, double-lobed), with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the gutteral g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feather and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit."

-Henry David Thoreau

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