As we slithered our way out of Dublin yesterday en route for Waterford averaging about 2 kph I noticed a sign outside a church in Inchicore which I had sped past hundreds of times before.

It was run by the Oblate Fathers, a name I have heard hundreds of times but never questioned.

Being a card carrying nerd nothing would do me when I got home to Waterford (many harrowing hours later) but to look the word up in my copy of Chambers (my OUP’s are in France)
Oblate; Chambers told me meant;
flattened at opposite sides or poles as a spheroid – shaped like an Orange

Well, well, well, I was surprised.
Is that why the cartoon monk is always pictured to be spherical with his tonsure and sandalled feet forming the poles ?

I was really in some confusion until I discovered that I had shot forward onto definition two of oblate.
Definition one is ;
dedicated, offered up
logical but disappointing.