Spot the Frippet: cobbler.

In the olden days cobblers lived in ancient cottages and relied on elves to save them from bankruptcy.

Now most cobblers are hidden away in factories, and the elves have been mostly replaced by angels.

People - real people - are still around to mend shoes, though, if not to make them, and the higher your heels the more often you will need their rubber tips renewing.


Photo by THOR

But if you're addicted to flats then there are other cobblers around. A cobbler can be a sweetened iced drink, usually made from wine and fruit, or it can be a pudding, in which case it consists of hot fruit covered by a scone dough (that's a biscuit dough if you're in America).

Cobbler's wax is a sort of resin used for waxing thread, and cobbler's pegs is an Australian weed, Bidens pilosa:



Commonest of all, though, are a load of cobblers, which is a slightly rude expression for a load of rubbish.

You'll find that sort of cobblers absolutely everywhere.

Spot the Frippet: cobbler. No one knows where the word for shoe maker comes from, but it's been a surname since the 1200s. The drink may be a shortened form of cobbler's punch. Cobblers meaning rubbish is rhyming slang, and the original expression was cobbler's awls.