Mar 2, 2009

"pip"

I have a friend from China who reads all sorts of funny books and emails me when she doesn't know what something means. It's amazing the things she finds - she's actually really a good reader, so usually what she'll send me that doesn't make sense to her will be a very poorly worded passage, or a typo or something. But sometimes she's just found a funny expression or a really obscure word.

Today, she sent me a word I have never seen before. I thought it was a made-up word, or maybe that her book was British. Because I know they say "pip pip old chap" and things in British movies. But last I heard they don't say it referring to newly hatched turtles. It turns out that it is a real word, and it means "to break through the shell of the egg pipped> transitive verb : to break open (the shell of an egg) in hatching "

It is truly wonderful that there is a word specifically for being a baby bird and trying to be born. Or turtle. Or duck-billed platypus. I am happy.

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