Pied

Here's a bit of trivia.  I used the word 'pied' in one of my online scrabble games today.  I've neither heard nor seen the word used anywhere other than The Pied Piper, and it occurred to me that I had no clue what it meant.

Do you know what it means?  Were you thinking that maybe on the way to serenade the gerbils or guinea pigs or whatever, Mr P stopped at Denny's for a large slice of apple pie?  Or, like me, have you never thought about it at all?

Remember seeing pictures of Mr P in the fairy tale books?  Remember he always wore a colorful court jester/Swiss Guard outfit?  That's the clue: pied means having 2 or more colors.  Otherwise, he would have been called The Monochromatic Piper.

Now, I can say that I know more today than I did yesterday.  Well.......... maybe not.  Lots of things that I know darn well I once knew I now know not.  There's a black hole somewhere in the memory banks, and I strongly suspect said hole is sucking stuff out the back door more rapidly than I'm stuffing stuff in the front door!