Recently I read the following sentence.

Padorin had worked long and hard for the perqs that came with this office.

My ears perked up at the strange word perq. It seemed to mean perk. Maybe perk came from perq?

It turns out that perq is short for perquisite, which is not a mistyping of prerequisite, but a perfectly legitimate word which means a benefit, a tip, a bonus. Basically, a perk. I can understand the joy of synonyms, yes, but why do we have two synonyms that also sound like each other?

It gets stranger, though. Grammarist says, “Perk means lively, pert, though perky is the form most often used for this definition.” Why does perk mean pert? Are they two separate words with two separate etymologies, or are they one word that half of everybody says differently? Is this like how some people say buck naked but others say butt naked and nobody knows which one is “correct”?

And I know that’s not the same definition that perq is relevant to, but still one can’t help but notice: perq means perk and perk means pert.

English.