Spot the Frippet: spine.

 We're having a heat-wave in England as I write this, and so people's spines are more visible than usual. Well, not their actual spines, of course, but sometimes, on the not-too-fat people, the knobbly bumps where the skin stretches over the bone.

Most animals with spines are furry or scaly or feathery, so their spines aren't even as obvious as that. Still, if you happen to be frying a fish or roasting a chicken...

But there are other things that have spines. Books, for instance:

photo by User:Pouya sh

and leaves:

photo by Harry Rose

a porcupine's quill is called a spine:

photo by Eric Kilby

and so is the long summit of a hill:

The spine of the Andes in Peru. Photo by Rod Waddington

A spine is usually to do with holding things in place, so the word can be used in a lot of contexts. Even a novel may have a spine (and if it doesn't then that might be why it's uninteresting).

Today is perhaps a day to consider the structure of things.

Spot the Frippet: spine. This word comes from the Old French espine, from the Latin spīna, which means thorn or spine.