I was enjoying a late morning break in the park on a
beautiful day when an equally beautiful butterfly found a nice pollen depot
nearby. I wasn't especially close to this butterfly, yet I swear I saw it drop
some refuse from its body as it fluttered gracefully from flower to flower.
Then I saw it again. Then I google it: "Do butterflies...(poop" is
number three on the autofill, go figure).
I couldn't help but record here what I'll call the
folk entymology -
As it turns out, yes, butterflies DO poop. The bowel
movement of insects, including butterflies, is known as frass. I assume that's
a made-up word that combines "fragrance " and "ass" into an
optimistic euphemism for excrement.
And the correction -
The etymology of frass is the German "fressen",
meaning "to devour".
No comments:
Post a Comment