Note 411 — KAMAR AL-ZAMAN AND THE JEWELLER’S WIFE.[375]

Arab. “Awáshik” a rare word, which Dozy translates “osselet” (or osselle) and Mr. Payne, “hucklebones,” concerning which he has obliged me with this note. Chambaud renders osselet by “petit os avec lequel les enfants jouent.” Hucklebone is the hip-bone but in the plural it applies to our cockals or cockles: Latham gives “hucklebone,” (or cockal), one of the small vertebræ of the coccygis, and Littleton translates “Talus,” a hucklebone, a bone to play with like a dye, a play called cockal. (So also in Rider). Hucklebones and knucklebones are syn.: but the latter is modern and liable to give a false idea, besides being tautological. It has nothing to do with the knuckles and derives from the German “Knöchel” (dialectically Knöchelein) a bonelet.