tempura

Flemish artists used mixed tempura and oil painting during the 1400s[....]

--Oil paint entry in Wikipedia, until 16 January 2006

I corrected this in the entry, of course, but I was amused enough by it to preserve it here for posterity. I picture old Flemish artists frying up some vegetables and prawns and then dipping them in paint and using them as brushes.

(The Wikipedia article on "tempura" suggests that it's possible the word indirectly derives from "tempera." No idea how plausible that is. But it does remind me of one of my favorite pun phrases: O tempura! O morays!)

By the way, the Wikipedia articles about paint could benefit greatly from editing and expansion by someone who knows something about art (unlike me). If you're interested, follow that link to the "oil paint" entry, edit as needed, then follow links from that page to other pages and edit those too.

For example, the entry on paint is full of clumsy sentences; the tempera entry contains oddly phrased assertions like "True tempera paintings are quite permanent" (as opposed to the false tempera paintings that are only somewhat permanent?); the entry on gouache is listed as a "stub," meaning it's brief and incomplete (for example, there's no explanation of what "poster paint" is or why it's called that); the entries on decal and decalcomania could use some cleanup; and so on and so on.