Pronounced: kahn-TOO-muh-lee, noun
Notes: I have run across this word (or a close relative), but I couldn’t properly define it
Yesterday’s word
The word winkle means, as a noun, “a periwinkle, any of various mollusks with a spiral shell”. As a verb, it means “to extract with difficulty”.
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1500s
Background / Comments
As I noted yesterday, I have run across our word as a verb, but the noun was not known. In a similar vein, the background of the noun is not known. The verb comes from the process of extracting a periwinkle from its shell with a pin for eating its meat.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 