nurdle [L20th] Nurdles are those little pellets—the form that much unprocessed plastic is transported in—that so often pollute our beaches after accidents at sea. No one knows where the word comes from, but it might have been coined on the pattern of words such as nodule. The word is probably older than its first recorded use, for the person who supplied the first quotation for the word in 1997 is reported as saying ‘that’s what he called them when he was growing up’; a fine example of how much a lexicographer is dependent on chance for evidence.