This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Monday 10 May 2021

Spot the Frippet: bank.

 There are three banks - three different words all sounding the same, that is. One's basically Italian, one's Scandinavian, and one's French.

One's a slope, one's a place to keep money, and one's a load of stuff arranged so you can see it easily.

Two are closely related.

Which do you think those are?

Answer later. 

Anyway, while these kind of bank:

High Street bank: HSBC, London, photo by Stanley Howe

are getting rarer as we all are obliged to move online; and these, too:


1965 Shelby Dash. Photo by Joe Mabel

 have been replaced with smart hard-to-read digital displays (again, there's progress for you), these:


Sloping verge of the A377, UK. Photo by David Brinicombe

are still everywhere, and are very good for sitting on and watching the world go by.

And according to Shakespeare, they're visited by fairies.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in

Whether that is an inducement to linger must be an individual decision.

Take care!

Spot the Frippet: bank. The money word comes, probably, from the Italian banca, which means bench or money-exchanger's table. The arrangement word comes from the Old French banc, which also means bench (both these words have similar Germanic origins). The word meaning a slope is Scandinavian. The Old Icelandic word bakki means hill.


No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are very welcome, but please make them suitable for The Word Den's family audience.