That was very neatly explained Mark. Some of us would have purfled away for yonks trying to explain that.

But isn't it a great word? Sentences like "My main violin has painted purfling" have a surreal quality. Purfle passages indeed.

It sort of rhymes with careful, but I can't think of any other word. (Well, not for a full rhyme.) Oddly enough, purfling and purfled (and purfle, which I'm not too sure officially exists) are not included in the rhyming dictionary on my shelf. This is, I think, a first. (It's even got orange, which it suggests, rather optimistically, rhymes with such words as lozenge and scavenge.)