Spot the Frippet: something terebrate.

Animals are terebrate, but only some of them.

These are terebrate:


wasp Polistes dominula. Photo by Alvesgaspar

and these:


whip scorpion. Photo by Glenn Bartolotti

and these:

















Photo of an assassin beetle by Simon Egan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31838625. 

(That long thing sticking out of its head is used for sucking the juice out of other insects. Yum!)

Now, you may be recoiling a bit because none of these animals look cuddly - and most of them look dangerous - and you'd be right to be cautious, because something terebrate has a piercing or boring organ, such as a sting.

Still, that's just the sort of thing you want to spot isn't it.

Especially if it's on the seat of your chair.

Spot the Frippet: something terebrate. Collins says the word was made up in the 1900s, but other sources quote Sir Thomas Browne using it (and he died in 1682). In either case the word will have  come from the Latin word terebra, which means borer.