What’s a dornick?

Dave Lefebre uttered a word yesterday previously unheard on the Elite Series – dornick. When asked to explain, he said, “We call them dornicks, wood that’s sticking out in the (lily) pads. That might be a bad word in some other language. I don’t know. My buddies always called them that.”

I checked the Urban Dictionary, and dornick isn’t in there. Here’s what Wikipedia has to offer: Dornick is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary as a dialectal US term originating in the mid-19th century, meaning “pebble, stone or small boulder.” The OED suggests a derivation from Irish “dornog” (small stone). “Hard as dornick” was a colloquial way of affirming a man’s toughness in Indiana in 1939. Cartoonist George Herriman used “dornick” frequently in his strip Krazy Kat to refer to the brick which Ignatz Mouse threw at Krazy’s head in most episodes. Dornick also refers to a thick cloth which gets its name from the Flemish town ‘Doornick’ where it was first manufactured.

Whatever it’s origin, Lefebre will definitely be dabbling in the dornicks today.