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Monday, 7 December 2015

Spot the Frippet: chocolate.

Yes, yes, anyone can spot chocolate: the stuff is everywhere. In fact, it's probably harder to go a whole day without spotting some chocolate: in a thousand years archaeologists will be digging up a billion plastic chocolate wrappers and pondering their significance. Given that far more words are spent hymning the delights of chocolate than the delights of...well, more or less anything else, really...then our civilisation will probably end up being written off as a chocolate cult.

File:Laura Bush purchases chocolates at Seroogy's in De Pere, Wisconsin.jpg

And, actually, that won't be so very far from the truth, will it.



Spot the Frippet (Or If You Really Want A Challenge Avoid Spotting The Frippet): chocolate. This word comes from Spanish, and before that from the Aztec xococ, sour or bitter, and atl, water.

Which is interesting, as now it tends to be a cloyingly sweet sort of sludge.

PS In Australia a choco is short for chocolate soldier, which is slang either for a member of the World War II citizen army, or a conscript.


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