Word To Use Today: tutu.

I don't know if there's a sillier garment than the tutu:


Dancers: Tamara Toumanova and Serge Lifar. Photographer: Max Dupain.
but, hey, why shouldn't clothing be silly?

(The tutu is the sticky-out skirt.)


I suppose a tutu does allow a ballerina to be more or less naked and yet look sweetly innocent at the same time. That's quite an achievement.

Talking of achievements, we mustn't forget the lovely Desmond Tutu: archbishop, opponent of apartheid, and winner of the Albert Schweitzer and Pacem in Terris Prizes, as well as the Sydney, Gandhi and Nobel Peace Prizes. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, too.



As if that wasn't enough for one man, in Britain a second class degree of the second rank, a 2:2, is sometimes called a Desmond.

A 2:2. Geddit?

Lastly (as far as I know) there's the New Zealand tutu, which is a shrub, Coriaria arboria, which has seeds poisonous to farm animals.

What a word, eh? I'm beginning to feel amazed we don't use it every day. 

Word To Use Today: tutu. The dress sort of a tutu is a French word. It comes from the nursery word cucu, which means backside, from the Latin cūlus, which means the buttocks.

The bush tutu was named by the Māoris.

The archbishop got his name from his dad.