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Monday, 22 May 2017

Spot the Frippet: verso

You might never have noticed it, but there are versos all over the place.

A verso can be the back of a sheet of printed paper; the left-hand pages of a book (these are also sometimes called reversos, and are the even-numbered ones);

File:Open Book B&W.jpg
photo by Creigpat

or the side of a coin without a big head on it (though, admittedly, this is more usually called the reverse):

File:Moneta del Regno d'Italia da 10 lire 'Biga' del 1927 - verso.jpg
Moneta del Regno d'Italia 10 lire 'Biga' photo by Franco aq

So, verso. Well, that was dead easy, wasn't it?

Spot the Frippet: verso. This word was made up in the 1800s from the Latin phrase versō foliō, which means the leaf having been turned, from the Latin vertere to turn (which also gives us the words vertebra and vertigo), plus folium, a leaf.


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