Five questions about strange words – Quick Quiz answers

By Kay McMahon, 7 December 2010

We asked you five quick trivia questions about strange words. Here are the answers:

1. baldric
   It’s a belt worn over one shoulder, typically made of leather and used to carry a weapon (especially a sword) or a musical instrument (especially a drum or a bugle).
2. gadroon
   To gadroon something is to give it a decorative motif consisting of a series of convex curves; it’s often used on 18th-century silver and in plasterwork. Here’s an example.
3. abba
   From the Aramaic word for “father”, this is the term for a bishop in the Syriac or Coptic churches. (Nothing to do with Swedish Eurovision-winning pop groups; they were ABBA.)
4. terebinth
   Sounds a bit like one of those tortoise-like things you used to get in tanks at school, doesn’t it? But this is the name given to two species of tree, Pistacia terebinthus and Pistacia palaestina, and was the original source of turpentine. As the botanical names suggest, it’s closely related to the pistachio, which is Pistacia vera.
5. mavis
   Forget Coronation Street – a mavis is simply the Old English name for a song thrush (Turdus philomelos), although the name is still in use in some parts of England.

How did you get on? Why not let us know?