This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Monday 2 November 2020

Spot the Frippet: bishop.

 A bishop is the man in charge of the religious stuff in a large area.

You can usually tell him by his purple shirt (but not always):

Bishop Adelakun 

Of course bishops are pretty thin on the ground (though not always round the middle) but there are other kinds of bishop which can be found much more easily: 

photo by MichaelMaggs


These bishops are everywhere and even come in at least two fashionable colours.

If you can't find a chess set, then you can make your own bishop by getting some wine (usually port) and warming it up with some cloves and slices of orange. Very comforting on a cold night, too.

In Africa there are bishopbirds:

photo by Derek Keats

In Europe there are bishop's mitres:


photo by gbohne

and everywhere there are bishop sleeves, which are full and gathered at the wrist.

If you do see a real live human bishop you could call him My Lord or My Lady...

...except that nowadays he'd probably much rather be called Alan.

Sopt the Frippet: bishop. This word was biscop in Old English, from the Greek episkopos, from epi- which mean on or above or stuff like that, and skopos, which means watcher.



No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are very welcome, but please make them suitable for The Word Den's family audience.