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piebald: msg#00008

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: piebald

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The Word of the Day for October 9 is:

piebald \ PYE-bawld \ adjective
*1 : composed of incongruous parts
2 : of different colors; especially : spotted or blotched with black and
white

Example sentence:
Lee's self-proclaimed "experimental novel" was a piebald accumulation of
random stories woven together with the thinnest of narrative threads.

Did you know?
To many people, the species _Pica pica_ is nothing but a pest -- and a
pest those noisy black-and-white birds, better known as magpies, may be. But
the Latin root "pica" that was adopted for their name isn't a linguistic
nuisance; it played an important role in the development of "piebald." The
"pie" of "piebald" ("pie" is another name for a magpie) derives from "pica,"
Latin for "magpie," and "bald" has the meaning "marked with white." Knowing
those two facts surely makes the origin of "piebald" black-and-white (so to
speak).

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.







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