»ordure

Reading an article on beetle armament and sexual selection, I found ordure, a cognate with Latin. It comes to contemporary English from the Middle English, from Anglo-French, from ord dirty, foul, from Latin horridus horrid. The article also contains this colourful, editorial remark:

People have pathetically puny teeth and claws compared with the armaments of other dominant species. This is a sign not of pacific intent but of the fact that they manufacture their weapons. The manufactured weapons, just like biological ones, have assumed a display function — think of the fearsome appearance of samurai helmets or armored knights, or the menacing tanks and rockets that paraded through Red Square in Moscow in the days of the Soviet Union.

... which, upon re-reading, calls to mind a Gary Larson cartoon -- not any one in particular, but the notion of one.