Word To Use Today: painter/painting/painted.

While a painter is someone who paints (either the walls of houses or pictures), or else it's a piece of rope attached to the front end of a ship for tying it to something that's less likely to float away.

Unless, of course, it's this magnificent beast:

(though usually they're called cougars. This one is in Montana, USA.

Painter's colic is another name for lead colic. (Yes, it's because painters got stomach ache because their paint was full of lead.)

While I'm here, painting-by-numbers describes someone who shows no sign of originality; and while a painted lady:


photo by Renee Grayson

 is a migratory butterfly, a painted woman is one whose make-up suggests she might be likely to wander, but may, all the same, be of irreproachable respectability.

Word To Use Today: painter. The word paint comes from French, from the Latin word pingere, to paint or adorn. The word painter, as in boat, comes, probably, from the Old French penteur, strong rope. The animal word is a form of panther.