G'day,

dick: "Pierce" is pretty well what the surgical term started out meanining ('bore', 'perforate' &c) - but this verse could well use Malcolm Douglas's sense of 'seduce', 'lead astray'.

Malcolm Douglas: My (Australian) Macquarie Dictionary derives the surgical sense from Middle English / Mediaeval Latin / Greek: trypanon = "borer'. In the separate entry for the 'ensnare', 'entrap' sense it derives from trapan, presumably an Old English inflection of the root of our modern word 'trap' ... that has been confused with 'trepan'. This fits fairly closely with my (unchecked) theory, on first hearing the song, that an old form of 'trapped' had been confused with the medical term.

Regards,

Bob Bolton