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



Monday 6 February 2012

Spot the frippet: crown.

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

Hurrah!

Sixty years...that's a heck of a long time to do a job, you know. Though I suppose you have to take into account the fact that the retirement rights are awful.

May every blessing be upon her Majesty, anyway.

Now, where can we see a crown? Well, if you're in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Sweden, Iceland, Norway or the Czech Republic, your currency is still based on the local word for crown.

A crown can also be the place where the root of a plant meets the stem, or it can be the visible bit of a tooth.

A crown sits on the top of a monarch, of course:



and also on the top of hills, heads, arches, roads and trees.

Here's another crown:



That one is on a crowned crane.

A crown can be a watch-winding knob, a bit of an anchor, and a size of paper.

You can crown a king, or a queen, or a draught (we use draughts in England to play the game that's called checkers in America); and if someone's being annoying you may well want to crown him, too, though probably not with a golden circlet but with a baseball bat.

But you mustn't.

A crown cap is a bottle top of the sort still used for beer, a crown green is a place where you play crown green bowls, and a crown-of-thorns can be a bush or a starfish.

About half of you will possess some crown jewels, too.

But keep those to yourselves, do.

Spot the frippet: crown. This word comes from the Old French corone, from the Latin corōna wreath or crown, from the Greek korōnē, which means either a crown or something curved.

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