Spot the frippet: tragus.

I didn't know I had one of these.

And actually, such is my good fortune, I've discovered I have two.

Two tragi. That's the plural form of tragus. It looks rather ordinary until you realise that the g in tragus is hard, as in goat (more goats later) and the g in tragi is soft, as in jaw. (That i at the end of tragi is pronounced as is the word I, by the way.)

And do you have tragi? Well, probably, because this is a tragus:



See the label? It's the gristly bit that protects your earhole. If you look, you'll see you have anti-tragi, too.

If you're an over-mature man you may well have hundreds of tragi, because the hairs sprouting out of your ears are called tragi, too.

There we are. I hope you're pleased.

If an ear tragus is too easy to spot, then these are also tragus:




Or, at least, those are tragus seeds. Tragus is a genus of grasses. They originally comes from Africa, but have now spread all over the place.

The Tragus was also a river in Arcadia in Ancient Greece. No one knows where it was, but, hey, if you have a time machine and fancy a real challenge...

Spot the frippet: tragus. the word to do with the ear comes from the Greek tragos, which means hairy bit of the ear, or literally, goat.