Spot the Frippet: something paly.

Something can be paly without being pale.

In fact, something paly is usually not pale at all.

Paly means vertically striped. It's a term used in heraldry, and if you're being very heraldic about it then you put the word paly after the thing it describes. (This is because heralds haven't really noticed that the English language has been invented and so still talk a variety of French: so a blazer paly is a vertically striped blazer.)


Oxford half blue blazer (the word blue and half  here are nothing to do with the pattern or colour). Photo by Rmbyoung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rmbyoung

Strictly speaking, heraldic rules say that you can't put two colours next to each other, which you might think makes it difficult to draw stripes; but once you know that in heraldry white and yellow aren't colours (they're called argent and or, that is gold and silver, so they count as metals) then things make more sense.

By Robin S. Taylor - Own work, with stag heads File:Coat of Arms of John Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst, KG, KCMG, GCStJ.png by Rs-nourse, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71942749

Luckily, there are vertical stripes to spot all over the place.

Here, delightfully, is a pin striped tit-babbler:

photo taken in India by Dr. Raju Kasambe

But even for those of us not lucky enough to be in India, there will be some wall paper paly, or a shirt paly, somewhere not too far away.

See if you can find it!

Spot the Frippet: something paly. This word comes from the Old French palé, from the Latin pālus, stake. It's basically the same word as the sort of pales you find making up a fence.