Architecture: all gargoyles are grotesques, but not all grotesques are gargoyles.
Notre Dame Cathedrale, Ile de la Citè: grotesques above, gargoyles below
Gargoyle and Grotesque sculptures around the world
13 Eerie Photos of Gargoyles & Grotesques
Gargoyles:
Not gargoyles:
As you were, then.
Categories: arts & entertainment, education, fun & hobbies, language
Australian Women Writers Challenge 2014 
So it’s only a gargoyle when it’s functionally a rainspout?
Also, technically it’s ‘more pedantic’ 😛
angharad, that is indeed the strict (right and proper) definition, yes. Some grotesques are chimeras, too. Others are just exaggerated people or animals but not hybrids of the two nor fictional creatures.
😛 right back atcha.
‘ere, that black and white one isn’t a gargoyle (though if kitty decided to spit that might be different) and isn’t grotesque, either!
Is there a word like Cutesques for kitties doing that? There should be.
There is a cat sculpture on Westminster Abbey; it commemorates Biggles, who was an evil-tempered tabby who lived there in the 1980s or so.
I should have known you’d be the first one to comment on the furry not-a-gargoyle, Kitteh!
I found some info on Biggles from a book published in 1997 called Cathedral Cats:
Are there no ‘men peeing’ gargoyles? Surely there must be one somewhere. I mean there are fountains…
I’m yet to see a picture of one, angharad – but I agree that surely there must be one somewhere.
Now I really want to see one!
LOL I have a reputation to keep up, tigtog!
I’m glad you found that reference to Biggles online. I’ve got the Cathedral Cats book (and the College Cats one), which is where I learned about Biggles. I was trying to find a pic of his grotesque online, but no luck yet.
There are some interesting gargoyles at St Andrew’s in Skipton, Vic. In the Phryne Fisher book Blood and Circuses, they’re described as fanged and feral sheep, but the only reference to ‘em I could find online said they’re meant to be kangaroos. 😛 I thought they looked more like skinny sheep, from the one not-detailed photo I’ve found.
@angharad – there are BOUND to be “men peeing” gargoyles. I found this one (rude!) that’s in Freiburg, Germany, earlier.
Mind you I’d rather see it than all those dire fountains with sculptures of little boys piddling.
And to show she reads my mind and is getting into the spirit of things, here’s Mads, photographed while I was typing this.
I like the word pedanticer. But as a noun, not an intensified adjective. Pronounced ped-ant-ee-see-ay. A person employed to ensure everything is precisely as it should be.
Orlando – I like it.
A pedancier could go pedancing along, which is even more precise than someone mincing along.
But then it would be pedanticier.
My preference would be to spell it pedanticker.
A pedanticker spews out lots of paper tape when you make a mistake.
Well if it was a job description, you would be on probation for twenty minutes instead of three months. If you haven’t corrected or modified the statement of duties in that time, you don’t get the job.
I’m a bit late to the party here, but the US National Cathedral, built in 1909-1990, got some interesting results in 20th century grotesques. Darth Vader is probably the most popular.