There are three banks - three different words all sounding the same, that is. One's basically Italian, one's Scandinavian, and one's French.
One's a slope, one's a place to keep money, and one's a load of stuff arranged so you can see it easily.
Two are closely related.
Which do you think those are?
Answer later.
Anyway, while these kind of bank:
are getting rarer as we all are obliged to move online; and these, too:
have been replaced with smart hard-to-read digital displays (again, there's progress for you), these:
are still everywhere, and are very good for sitting on and watching the world go by.
And according to Shakespeare, they're visited by fairies.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime
of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in
Whether that is an inducement to linger must be an individual decision.
Take care!
Spot the Frippet: bank. The money word comes, probably, from the Italian banca, which means bench or money-exchanger's table. The arrangement word comes from the Old French banc, which also means bench (both these words have similar Germanic origins). The word meaning a slope is Scandinavian. The Old Icelandic word bakki means hill.
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