A dialectal or archaic term for a probe or a pointed stick used to poke or examine something.
Possibly related to 'probe' or dialectal variations of words meaning 'to poke.' The exact origin is uncertain, but it appears in regional British English and may have connections to words describing pointed implements.
This is one of those wonderful dialectal words that nearly disappeared from English—it survives mainly in regional speech and old texts, reminding us that dialects contain entire vocabularies that never made it into standard dictionaries.
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