Summary
Once widespread, this word may now have slipped out of use. It comes from Old French "par queur", which translates into English as "by heart". It's used John Barbour in Legends of the Saints (1380): "Than all perquer he suld it wyt." Rote learning was a valuable skill in the days when written or printed material was expensive. Polwart, in his Flyting with Montgomerie (1585), puts it in perspective as a means of data storage and transmission: "I neuir haid ... Ane vers in wreit in print or yit perquere."
The feats of memory documented in the dictionary are amazing. There is a genuine expectation in the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery, and Synod of Aberdeen (1604) "that be the oft repetitioun ...of the said catechisme the people may lerne the same perqueir". The skill of learning perqueer seems to be dying too. The meaning was extended to become "without hesitation". So, in Simon Haliburton's Memories of Magopico (1761) a feat of literacy rather than memory is under discussion: "He made such progress that ... he could read you very perqueerly the x chapter of Neihimia." The sense further morphs into clearly as intended by the Gallovidian John Nicholson, in Historical and Traditional Tales (1843): "The English cou'dna mak' out the preceese meaning o' the words perqueerly." In this sense, the word survived into the 20th century, in the Orkney and Shetland Miscellany edited by Alfred and Amy Johnston, with this quotation from 1912: "He saw his son coman' wi' them for da house as prequier as dae."See the full content of this document
Extract
Perqueer Adv. By Heart, Verbatim; Clearly
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