![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordpiebald (PAI-bawld) - adj., spotted or blotched in white and another color, esp. black; of mixed character, heterogeneous. n., a piebald animal, esp. a horse in white and black.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Many kinds of animals can be piebald, including Irish setters and magpies. That last example is chosen deliberately, as that's the origin of the pie- part of the word, which also shows up as pied (as in a pied piper dressed in contrasting colors in quarter), from the Latin name for the magpie, pīca. (The mag part is from the connotation of chattering, taken from Medieval folktales that used Mag/Meg as the name of a talkative woman.) The bald part is all-but-obsolete meaning, white, which shows up in the name of the bald eagle and several year-round-white-topped mountains called Mt. Baldy.
---L.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
Many kinds of animals can be piebald, including Irish setters and magpies. That last example is chosen deliberately, as that's the origin of the pie- part of the word, which also shows up as pied (as in a pied piper dressed in contrasting colors in quarter), from the Latin name for the magpie, pīca. (The mag part is from the connotation of chattering, taken from Medieval folktales that used Mag/Meg as the name of a talkative woman.) The bald part is all-but-obsolete meaning, white, which shows up in the name of the bald eagle and several year-round-white-topped mountains called Mt. Baldy.
---L.
