piebald

UK/ˈpaɪ.bɔːld/US/ˈpaɪ.bɔld/

adjectiveC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Piebald means marked in patches of black and white. A piebald horse.

Black and white is piebald and any other colour with white is skewbald. The pie in it is the magpie, which is exactly the colouring meant.

Definitions of piebald

1adjectivepiebaldMarked in patches of black and white.C2
“The piebald pony was recognised in three counties.”

piebald is a marking.

Where it comes from

Pie, a magpie, plus bald in the old sense of having a white patch.

Proto-Indo-European
*(s)peyk-
English, today
piebald

Built from

pie · English — magpie
bald · English — having white patches or blazes

From pie (“magpie”) + bald (“having white patches or blazes”). Compare typologically srokaty < sroka.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

piebald in the wild

Commerson's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus commersonii) is also referred to by the common names jacobita, skunk dolphin, piebald dolphin, panda dolphin, or tonina overa (in South America).
Commerson's dolphin
A piebald or pied animal is one that has a pattern of unpigmented spots (white) on a pigmented background of hair, feathers or scales.
Piebald
Thus a piebald black and white dog is a black dog with white spots.
Piebald
Other than colour, it is similar in appearance to the piebald pattern.
Skewbald
Pinto coloration is also called paint, particolored, or in nations that use British English, piebald.
Pinto horse

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the bald family

bald bold

piebald — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

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