Spot the Frippet: brownie.

The oldest form of brownie is almost impossible to spot, but the results of his work are very commonly encountered.

You know the way your sock drawer always has laundered socks in it, no matter how often you put on clean ones? The way there's always bread in the bread bin? The way the grass on the lawn never gets too long?

That's brownies who have done that. It says so in all the books. They're small men (there must be female brownies but I imagine they have careers in finance or something) who come into the house at night and do useful chores.

If your house doesn't appear to have been blessed with the services of a brownie I can only say that brownies do tend to gravitate to households which include mothers, or at least motherly types. 

I don't know why.

Easier to spot are the squishy square chocolate cakes called brownies - or, in Australia, the current bread of the same name.

Then there are the junior members of the Girl Guides Association:



- though even these modern Brownies, like this Canadian one, are apparently sometimes invisible. 
Photo by Browniepoints https://www.flickr.com/photos/duluoz_cats/477726220/

And then there's Brownie points. These are invisible, too. They describe the reward given to someone by his or her superiors for helpful or flattering deeds over and beyond the needs of a work contract.

Yes, that's right: for sucking up to the boss.

The only tangible evidence of this will be in a certain smugness of expression, and the dislike and distaste in the eyes of colleagues.

Spot the Frippet: brownie. The original brownie was a little brown man. The Girl Guides are named after the elves, and the other things are, well, brown. The word brown has been around for ages and is related to the Greek phrunos, toad and the Sanskrit babhru, reddish-brown.