pilgrim
/ˈpɪlɡrɪm/noun
A traveler to a sacred place
From Latin per- (through) + Latin agri (field).
Lineage
per-
agri
The story
Before a pilgrim was a pious traveler, the word described someone simply from somewhere else: a foreigner, a stranger, a person standing outside the familiar map. Latin built that idea from per, “beyond,” and ager, “land,” producing peregrīnus—roughly, someone from beyond the fields. Medieval French softened the awkward repeated r sounds, turning peregrinus into pelegrin or pelerin, and English inherited pilegrim around 1200; the final spelling eventually settled into pilgrim. The same family also gave English peregrine, while a palm-bearing traveler returning from the Holy Land could be called a palmer. In 1620, the English Separatists who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower adopted “Pilgrims” as a biblical self-description, helping transform an old word for an outsider into a famous name for settlers—and reminding us that every pilgrim begins as someone who has crossed beyond familiar ground.
Modern usage
A clueless newcomer or inexperienced outsider
- Heard in
- Western slang · informal speech
- See
- Urban Dictionary entry describing an inexperienced person who looks newly arrived; U.S. Western usage for a newcomer or tenderfoot