Spot the Frippet: cherub.

A cherub is a type of angel, but how senior an angel a cherub is depends upon which God they happen to be attending. They can be in either the second or ninth rank (the ninth rank is second from bottom).

A cherub's distinctive gift, it has been said, is knowledge, and one of their main jobs is guarding things, particularly the entrance to the garden of Eden.

There are other distinctive things about cherubs (or cherubim, if you prefer). The fact that they have two pairs of wings tends to make them stand out in a crowd, and the four faces (lion, ox, human, eagle) is also a bit of a give-away. Their hooves, it is said, are of polished brass (I wonder who polishes the hooves of a cherub?).

Having said that, there are those who say the cherubs they have spotted look more like small fat winged toddlers which sometimes dissolve into cloud below the chest.

So how do you spot a cherub?

Well, you get them carved onto buildings and walls: 

photo by Wolfgang Sauber

and they often appear in illustrations:


illustration by Wenceslas Hollar

and because very young people are all very beautiful:


Auckland Museum collection

 they are quite often called cherubs.

Anyone hoping to find anything else angelic about them may be disappointed, so I would advise observing them rather briefly, and at a distance.

Spot the Frippet: cherub. The Assyrian word kirubu means great or mighty. The Babylonian word karâbu might have the same sort of meaning, or might mean propitious. There's also an Assyrian word kāribu, which are beings who convey messages to the gods. The word came into English through Hebrew, hence the -im plural ending.