• PYE-bawld • adjective
1 : of different colors; especially : spotted or blotched with black and white 2 : composed of incongruous parts
[Ro] eterogen, amestecat, pestriţ
To many people, the noisy black and white birds that go by the scientific name Pica pica — better known as magpies (coţofană [orn.]) - are nothing but pests. But the Latin root that was adopted for their name isn’t a linguistic nuisance; it played an important role in the development of piebald. The pie of piebald (pie is another name for a magpie) derives from pica, which is Latin for magpie. The other part of piebald comes from the word bald, which can mean marked with white; it can also be found in skewbald, an adjective used to describe animals marked with patches of white and any other color but black.
