Something Rhymes with Purple - A Cat’s Whisker

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

This week’s episode explores the rich world of radio & television. Tune in for a linguistic journey with Susie & Gyles, that'll leave you 'channel'-ing your curiosity and 'wave'-ing hello to the fascinating origins of these media marvels." We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email  address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  1. Crinkum-crankum: Full of twists and turns 2. Eftsoons: Soon after 3. Lethophobia: A fear of oblivion Gyles' poem this week was ‘I Had A Dove’ by John Keats I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving; Sweet little red feet! why should you die - Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why? You liv'd alone in the forest-tree, Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me? I kiss'd you oft and gave you white peas; Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees? A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. If you're new to our podcast, it's all about words and language, and particularly the origins of words. And I'm Giles Brandreth, and my fellow presenter is my friend of many years standing, one of the most brilliant and beautiful people in the world, in my view, and in the view of many, it's Susie Dent. Susie, how are you today? I think many would be my children and you, and that would be it. But thank you so much for that. No, no. Can I tell you, people love you, they admire you, they respect you. You've been on

Countdown for so many years. You do all sorts of other programmes, including the comedy version of Countdown. If you're listening in another country, you may not know these programs, but they're hugely popular television programs. And Susie Dent is actually the star of them. There are other people in them, but she is the star in my view. And she and I have also been appearing on a television program in the UK called Celebrity Gogglebox, where we pop up saying inconsequential things. And that's been quite fun, too. We've had some very strange things to look at, haven't we? Yeah. It's a program.

It's called Gogglebox. Actually, maybe this should be the theme for today. Gogglebox is a word that's come from somewhere that means television, doesn't it? It does, yeah. We're goggling at the Gogglebox. Do you know the origin? How long has the phrase Gogglebox been around?

That's a really good question. I am now looking up in my trusty OED, 1959. And the first reference is from an article in The Guardian. Switch the goggle box on at 10 a.m. Very good. Because the television set, now it's a sort of flat screen, but then it was a box that sat, not a very big box, as I remember from the early 1950s,

that stood in the corner of the room on a little table and you sat goggling at it. Yes, and you'll like this, Giles, actually. Let me just, I'm still in the entry for Gogglebox in the OED. 1967, the Times is reporting that Mr. Wilson, Harold Wilson, was so good at television appearances that he had convinced himself that he single-handed could win elections with the help of the Gogglebox. How interesting. Is that true? Because he's the only PM that you haven't met? Did you meet Harold Wilson?

No, no. I've met every prime minister since, well, I was going to say since Harold Macmillan, but including Harold Macmillan. So since Anthony Eden. Amazing. But I was lucky enough, Mr. Wilson, Harold Wilson, and his lovely wife, Mary, who was a poet, were very kind to me when I was young. And I mean, Harold Wilson was a remarkable person. And he was the first Labour Prime Minister of the 1960s. He served two terms. And I'm lucky

enough to be a friend of one of his children, Robin Wilson, who's a great mathematician. Do you know who it was, I think, who hadn't met Harold Wilson, but had met every other prime minister in his lifetime? And that was Richard Whiteley. Ah. That's who. I find that hard to believe he hadn't met Harold Wilson because... Well, there was one that he hadn't met.

Oh, because Harold Wilson came from up north. Okay. A famous statue of him, I think, outside Huddersfield Railway Station. I think it's Huddersfield. Maybe I got that wrong. There was anyone anyway, but we miss Richard. Richard Whiteley, I ought to explain to global listeners, was the presenter for many years of Countdown. Look, we've strayed into the world of television. Why don't we stay in that world? Why don't we devote this episode to television and maybe radio?

Can you remember the first time you appeared on television, what it was? Well, it would have been Countdown. I mean, it was in May 1992 when, as you know, I was one of many who sat alongside you and other celebrity guests just to, you know, to be a referee on the dictionary. But I think I probably only went up to Leeds, where the studio was for Yorkshire TV, about twice a year. So it was quite an irregular thing for me. And all the time I was still working at Oxford University Press. But yes, that was my first appearance alongside Rula Lenska. Not you, sadly.

Were you nervous in 1992? You were very young. I mean, did you have any training or did you just turn up and do it? No training. And as I'm sure I've said to you before, the evidence, unfortunately, is there on YouTube, my first appearance on Countdown. And I'm sitting straight as a rod.

Richard introduces me. Ruler is lovely. And so was Carol Vorderman. And I just, I think I looked quite arrogant when, in fact, I was, yes, absolutely rigid with terror. But thankfully, they put up with me for a while. You may have looked arrogant. I think in my early appearances on television, I looked supercilious. Ah, you know where that comes from? Oh, the word supercilious? Tell me. I love that because it's got C-I-L in it, which is an eyebrow. So super means above. So it's like you've got one

eyebrow raised as if you were looking back with haughty, or looking down on someone with haughty disdain. Well, I did come across, I think, as a completely ludicrous figure. I had this very sort of strangulated accent, you know, oh, hello, here I am. Deeply embarrassing. And the first time I think I appeared on television, I was at a boarding school and somebody came to film something at a boarding school, and somebody came to film something at the boarding school about the boarding school. And that would have been in the early 1960s, and I popped up then. And then when I went to university, the first sort of big television interview I did, and I was still a student, was actually was to do with Harold Wilson's government. It was when Roy Jenkins became Home Secretary, and there was a reshuffle.

And for some reason, Panorama sent a crew to Oxford to interview young people about what they thought about Roy Jenkins and him being Home Secretary. And I was interviewed by Robin Day, who was a very famous interviewer, famous for his bow ties. And he clearly didn't think much of me. And I mean, I must say, I thought he was a bit rude, but I think he was trying to put me in my place. And that was my first interview on television. And I was quite nervous. But anyway. It's interesting how it manifests itself. You and I both think we look arrogant and haughty,

but actually felt anything but. Has your accent changed? Has your voice changed? actually felt anything but. Has your accent changed? Has your voice changed? Not as much as the Queen's did in the course of her Christmas broadcasts. I don't think so. But I think like everybody, we've probably become much more informal because that is now allowed and we no longer need the RP accent, the Received Pronunciation accent associated with BBC. And in fact, the BBC and other broadcasters now openly invite regional accents, which I think is wonderful because they want as much diversity as possible. Let's go into this world now. Maybe talk first about radio since that predates television.

Can you remember your first radio broadcast? No, I can't actually. And I'm much more, strangely, even though I am on TV most afternoons, I am much more of a radio person. So I listen to all sporting events on the radio, much prefer that, which, you know, I think the commentary can help you visualize something almost more accurately than if you're staring at a TV screen. So I love the radio. I grew up with my mum constantly having Radio 4 on. The Archers is my sort of, The Archers is, for those who don't know, it is one of the longest running radio soaps, may even be the longest running radio soap in Britain. So that's my kind of comfort listening.

But I can't remember the first time I was on. Well, I definitely can remember the first time I was on. I gave a series of talks for Woman's Hour. Oh, yes. We love Woman's Hour. When I was still a student, again, in the 1960s, they asked me to come and give sort of the voice of youth. And Woman's Hour, again, for our international listeners, is a daily program aimed originally at women. But actually, it's available for everybody to listen to. And when I went to appear on it, we used to go out in the afternoon. And there was a lunch that contributors sat down to before

the broadcast. And they took themselves very seriously. And I arrived at the building for a rehearsal. It was supposed to be an interview. But in fact, everything was scripted. The questions were scripted, the answers were scripted. And I was supposed to arrive at 11. I got to the building at 11, but it took an age to be taken up to the right studio. And they looked at me and said, you don't seem to be on time. I said, I apologize. And we sat down for this lunch with waitress service. Sat the BBC in the building with the presenter of the program, I think was called Marjorie Anderson.

She sat like the principal of an Oxford college in the middle of the table, very grandly. And I was on one side because I was one of the guests speaking on the program. There was another guest on the other side. And it was a very formal luncheon at the end of which we moved through to the studio. And having done the rehearsal before lunch, we then did the program. But every word of it was scripted. Quite extraordinary, different world altogether. Yes, so different from today. Radio. Well, should I tell you where radio comes from? Yes, please. So just to let you know that unfortunately,

engineering is not my forte. So I'm not completely well versed in the technology of these things. But etymologically, it is actually very rich, this subject. So radio recorded in the early 20th century, but it was actually based on the Latin radius, meaning a ray or a beam, also known as the wireless, of course. And that was because the receiver had no wires linking it to the transmitting station. Even though it might have been plugged in, there was no direct connection, obviously, to the transmitting station. And it was called radio from that idea of a ray or beam because the transmitting station radiated electromagnetic waves, as I understand it. Yes, and radio came to us in the UK at the beginning of the 1920s with the British Broadcasting Company, as I think it was originally called before it became the corporation.

And this material, these radio waves, were transmitted. Transmitted, that's an easy word, isn't it? I mean, it's trans as in... Sending across. Yes, so trans across and then emittery, which is incredibly productive in English because it gave us message, emission, all sorts of things, emissive. So to transmit is to send something across. And you needed to get, there was a sort of dial on these early radios or wirelesses. emission, all sorts of things, emissive. So to transmit is to send something across. And you needed to get, there was a sort of dial on these early radios or wirelesses. Oh, yeah. You need to get the right frequency so that you were receiving the beam that was sent over to you.

Frequency. Why is it called a frequency? So frequency goes back to the Latin frequens, which actually just meant crowded or frequent. And frequency is essentially the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. So it's measured in hertz, which is one event per second. And the best explanation I had of this really is that if a heart beats at a frequency of 120 times a minute, which is quite high, the interval at which the beats repeat is half a second because it's 60 seconds divided by 120 beats. So that one's quite obvious. That's the kind of formula that you would use. And radio frequency is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage. So I kind of think of it in terms of a heartbeat. I'm not sure if that's right. And there will be far, far more able purple people out there who will be able to explain it better.

But ultimately, like so much of this vocabulary, it goes back to Latin, weirdly, because it's new technology. Well, not entirely Latin. My father used to refer to the radio set when he was a boy as the cat's whiskers. Ah, yes. Or a cat's whisker. It was a kind of, well, why was it or a cat's whisker it was a kind of well why was it called a cat's whisker yes so today we think of the cat's whisker obviously as being the acme of excellence don't we like the bees knees kippers knickers elephants adenoids dogs bollocks but actually originally

and actually this goes back to 1910 1915 a cat's whisker was a really fine copper wire, adjustable copper wire in a crystal wireless receiver or type of electronic circuit. So yeah, first recorded, I'm just looking here, in 1915, a cat whisker detector. Good. So my father's original radio, when he was listening in the teens and 20s of the 20th century was a cat's whisker. But you mentioned there crystal, the word crystal. And I, in the 1950s, when I was a very little boy, had a crystal set, a radio set. Why was it called a crystal set? So did you actually refer to it as a crystal set? I was given it for Christmas as a crystal set. My parents had a big radiogram, which was a large, big box-like thing,

which there was a dial on it. And I had this little crystal set with headphones. And I would lie in bed with this crystal set and listen to the wireless. And basically, there was on the BBC, there were two channels that I remember. There was the Home Service, which is now what is called Radio 4. And there was the Light Program, which is now Radio 2. And I remember when the third program was introduced in the 1950s, which became Radio 3, which did serious music and also special interest programs. I remember it because my father, who was a lawyer specialized in motoring law,

was regularly on a program they had on the third program called Motoring and the Motorist. Anyway, so I would lie in bed listening to things like Hancock's Half Hour, The Goons, programs with people like Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams, having a happy old time on a crystal set. Love that. Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams having a happy old time on a crystal set. Love that. Well, as you say, simple radio set had an aerial tuner and a crystal detector, and that was the key, usually used with headphones. And they were really simple because they didn't need an amplifier and they were quite easy to make. So

they quickly became really popular in homes up and down the land, apparently. First recorded in 1920. The BBC staff magazine, as I recall, used to be called Ariel, spelt A-R-I-E-L after the mythic figure of Ariel. But an Ariel that you just mentioned now, being something that a signal comes through, is spelt differently. And what is the origin of that word? Yes. So you're right. So an aerial originally was a creature or spirit of the air. And that's what it means. So aerial as an adjective means dwelling or flying or moving in the air. But in the early 1900s, it was used for a wire or a rod by which radio waves are transmitted or received. So they became an antenna because they're up in the air. And they're called radio waves because the waves,

it's like waves in the sea that come and go. Is that why radio waves? I think that is right. Yeah. As I say, I'm not, I wish I was better at all of these. I can tell you about antenna though, which is quite strange because it's just a really good example of how when we don't fully, not that we don't fully understand something, but that we immediately take something

which is new or foreign to us, and we move it linguistically to something with which we're more familiar. And an antenna, the Latin word antenna, was actually an alteration of a word antenna, which meant a sail yard. So on old Mediterranean sailing ships, there were certain types of triangular sails and they were supported by long poles. And obviously this must have reminded them of an insect's antennae. So when they needed a word for an antennae, either in technology or for an insect itself, they took that antennae, meaning a sail or a sail yard, and made up antennae, which I think is very sweet. And interestingly, the Greek was keraioi. I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but that was the horns of insect is what they called them.

So yeah. And then when Marconi and others developed radio at the end of the 19th century, antenna was quickly taken up along with aerial to refer to the wire by which signals are received. And why is the spelling aerial, A-E-R-I-L, whereas the creature, aerial, is A-R-E-I-L? A-R-E-I-L. Well, the creature actually was, if you look back to the 17th century, was also spelled A-E-R-I-I-L. A-R-E-I-L. Well, the creature actually was, if you look back to the 17th century, was also spelled A-E-R-I-A-L. Are you thinking of the Ariel the mermaid in the Disney film? No, I wasn't. But I'm pleased to know there is an Ariel the mermaid. I mean, I used to have a bit of a fetish about mermaids. I've grown out of it, I'm pleased to say.

Did you? There was a film in the early 1950s called Miranda. In fact, I think there were two films starring Glynis Johns as a mermaid. And I was completely gripped. And my father actually appeared in a play when he was an amateur actor, a rather good one. Written, I'm trying to remember, I think it was written by Roland Pertwee, who was related to John Pertwee, who later was famous as Wurzel Gummidge and realizes that she's a mermaid and she's a mermaid who's coming on the tide and being washed up on the thames embankment so he thinks oh god what am i going to do so he takes her into his house and begins unfortunately he's got a wife and a

family and now he's got a mermaid and of course he knows nobody would believe in the idea of a mermaid so he sort of wraps up her tail in a dressing gown or a blanket, and I think begins to fall in love with the mermaid. I think that's the crux of the drama. But good sense prevails. And at the end of the play, he takes her back down to the Thames, drops her, and off she swims on the right tide. Anyway, don't know how we got there. But that's why I love doing this podcast with you because it takes us into realms we do not know. We are speaking through a microphone. Is there an interesting origin of the word microphone? Yes. Now, this is quite strange because the first use of it is actually in an essay by an English-born Church of Ireland cleric called Narcissus Marsh.

Oh, what a name. In the 17th century. You can't have been called, imagine calling your offspring Narcissus Marsh. Oh, what a name. In the 17th century. You can't have been called, imagine calling your offspring Narcissus. Good grief. I know, or Aphrodite or something. Anyway, it says, he says, he wrote, as microscopes or magnifying glasses help the eye to see near objects

that by reason of their smallness were invisible before, which objects they magnify to a strange greatness. So microphones or micro acoustics, that is magnifying ear instruments, may be contrived after that manner that they shall render the most minute sound in nature distinctly audible by magnifying it to an unconceivable loudness. So he clearly based his coinage on microscope and also telescope, which means far-seeing. But as a

piece of word invention, it's not totally spot on, because if you take the Greek element, microphone, it actually means having a small sound or voice. So although he's saying it takes a small sound and it makes it bigger, what the word means is small sound. So a better alternative might actually be megaphone, which, of course, was coined centuries later. We, in a way was coined centuries later.

We, in a way, are podcast hosts. People who broadcast on the radio now are called radio hosts. I don't know how recently that's come in as a word, to be a host. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, host itself is very, very old. And it actually, in Latin, a host was both a guest and the host as we understand it today. So somebody who receives or entertains other people as guests. It actually gave us hostile as well because guests can often turn nasty, which is quite strange.

But the radio host, I think, has been around for a while. But I mean, I think it's quite nice because it's quite friendly, isn't it? And yeah, I think it's a totally benign word to use for podcast presenters. If you've got the dictionary there, or you may know this off the top of your head, the host as in Holy Communion, giving the host, how does that differ from the other host? And how old is that host? And how old is that host, the biblical host? That's a good question. I suspect that that one will be pretty old, yes. So this actually has nothing to do with the host that I've been talking about in Latin. But it is still Latin, but it comes from a different word meaning a victim or a sacrifice

because the very first meaning in the 14th century was a sacrifice, often said of Christ, which is why the bread that's consecrated in the Euchar century was a sacrifice, often said, of Christ, which is why the bread that's consecrated in the Eucharist and regarded as the body of Christ, you know, it's a sort of wafer that we have in communion, was took on that form. And actually, that's just as old, the 14th century. Oh, gosh. So you're receiving the host. That's what that means.

But it's a different meaning to the one of the radio host. It's almost time for us to segue into our commercial break. The segue, is that a radio term or is that just a term from somewhere else? Segue, famously mispronounced, including by me, I have to say. I did once call it Segue mortifyingly on Countdown. But it's occasionally found spelled segue because the way suffix is in driveway and runway. It kind of makes sense, doesn't it? The notion of a Segway as a path along which something crosses. And then there's, of course, the electric motoring things called Segways,

the trade name for the American company. But the spelling is Segway, S-E-G-U-E, the standard spelling. And it comes from Italian. And the use of that word is a direction in music. And it means a smooth transition without any interruption. Are there any, before we segue into our break, are there any other words from the world of radio? I mean, there's so many things that we could touch on,

but avoiding the deep technology about which we know nothing, I've never understood what analogue meant for a start, but I think that's one of the words. Is there anything that you want to touch on in the radio world? Well, yes, just very, very briefly. So, analogue itself, if you think about an analogy, it's something that has characteristics in common with something else. So, an analogue in animal terms is a group that has general similarities in appearance, that has general similarities in appearance, same with organisms. But analogue technology means non-digital, really. And it's, I don't know, maybe it just means that it's analogous to

existing technology, whereas digital, as we know, is lovely because it has very physical beginnings, it goes back to the Latin digitus, meaning a finger, and digital signals or digital data is expressed as a series of the digits, zero and one, which can easily be counted on one's fingers. Oh, and I can tell you about podcast itself. We have touched on this before, but I love the fact that it's taking a really, really old word like broadcast, which originally meant, as you know, Giles, the scattering of seeds widely in farming before it was the scattering of signals and information. So we took the broadcast and we added the pod from iPod. And the earliest use of podcasting that we have is from a Guardian

columnist called Ben Hammersley, and he may have coined it in February 2004. Thank you. We've been talking audio, which I take it is Latin for I hear. Yeah, just as video as I see. Good. Well, let's go to the world of video and let's explore television after the break. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars. Like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime.

And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, I didn't want to be comfortable. Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be comfortable. Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me

wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And this is Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. We are a new show breaking down the anime news, views, and shows you care about each and every week. I can't think of a better studio to bring something like this to life. Yeah, I agree.

We're covering all the classics. I don't know a lot about Godzilla, which I do, but I'm trying to pretend that I don't. Hold it in. And our current faves. Luffy must have his due. Tune in every week for the latest anime updates and possibly a few debates.

I remember, what was that? Say what you're gonna say and I'll circle back. You can listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday

wherever you get your podcasts. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Some people call it a commercial. I wonder, is the phrase commercial break, that's quite old, isn't it? Yeah, I would say that sounds quite American to me. I'm right in thinking, aren't I, that the origin of the phrase soap opera is 1930s American radio, where they had dramas on the radio that were sponsored by soap companies. Soap manufacturers.

Soap manufacturers. And therefore, they became known as soap operas. Why not soap dramas? I don't know. But anyway. No, I think it's because they thought there was a lot of hysteria in them. Yeah. It was probably the idea.

Now I'm looking at commercial break. It doesn't actually have it on its own in the OED. You'll have to leave that one with me as to when it first came out. There is an Italian definition of bed. Bed. Bed, B-E-D, what happens in bed. The Italians define what happens in bed as the poor man's opera, because of the high drama that goes on. Oh, really? Oh, I love that. In the bedroom. Anyway, that's by the by. Okay, so let's move

to the world of television. And we've established that radio, wireless from the 1920s. Television, I think, comes to the UK in the 1930s. I was a friend of a lovely comedian entertainer called Cyril Fletcher. And he remembered, he told me about how he went to do some television before the Second World War. And they had to wear extraordinary makeup. They made their faces, I think they painted their faces green, but then their lips were painted yellow so that they could be seen more clearly on the flickering black and white screen. And then because of the war, television was put on the back burner

and then didn't return till the end of the 1940s and really got going properly in the 1950s. But where does the word television come from? Yeah, it's interesting. First demonstrated by John Logie Baird, but the word was thought up quite a long time before the design was perfected, really, because that was in 1907 that we have the first record. So the first part is tele, again, as I mentioned, with telescope, far off or at a distance. Telescope, you can see something from a distance, television, you can see it from a distance. And that is from Greek. And the second part is from the Latin videre, meaning to see, which gave us video. And famously, C.P. Scott, a journalist of the Manchester Guardian, didn't like it at all. He said, television, the word is half Greek,

half Latin, no good can come of it. And it was first shortened to TV just after the Second World War. Well, C.P. Scott was one of the great men of journalism. I think he was editor of the Manchester Guardian from the 1870s, almost till the 1930s. Yes, from 1872 to 1929. And if he felt that way, well, he had something going for him. I love that. Words half Greek, half Latin, no good can come of it. No good can come of it. Well, how amusing. A print journalist would say that.

Now we're fixated by television. Though, of course, the nature of television has changed very, very much so. Well, yeah. Can you remember what programs when you were a little girl did you enjoy watching? Can you remember the first program you ever watched? The first program, when I was really really tiny was probably Andy Pandy. Oh, I love, oh my gosh. Andy Pandy in his pajamas. I don't remember very much.

Andy Pandy's coming to play. Oh, Play School, obviously. I remember Play School with Floella Benjamin. I remember Hector's House. I remember Hector's House. I loved Hector's House. Do you remember this? Yes, I do. Okay. So Hector's House was a lovely little, it kind of animated these sort of puppets.

And then, yeah, I think those are my earliest memories. What about yours? Well, what was funny about, well, Andy Pandy, very much so. There had been on the radio a program called Listen With Mother, where you sat down with your mother after lunch, I think it was, and before your afternoon nap, and stories were told to you. And then it was transferred to television. It was called Watch with Mother. And there were different programs every day of the week.

And I think Andy Pandy was possibly on a Monday. No, maybe I've got that wrong. Maybe a Tuesday. Well, people who are of my vintage will say, no, no. It was Bill and Ben. The flowerpot men were on a Tuesday. Oh, I remember got that wrong. Maybe a Tuesday. Well, people who are of my vintage will say, no, no. It was Bill and Ben. The flowerpot men were on a Tuesday. Oh, I remember Bill and Ben. Yes.

Weed. Yes. Weed. Oh, and the clangers. The clangers have come back, I'm so pleased to say. But I remember the clangers. Yes, the clangers were a different thing. They weren't part of this afternoon programme, like the Wooden Tops and Andy Pandy.

But the clangers, I associate the clangers with Michael Benteen. I wonder if he was the person, the human who appeared, and may have been one of the co-authors. Anyway, children's television obviously plays a big part in our lives. Take us into the language, please, of television, because that's what we're looking at today. Yes. Well, we mentioned the latin

videre which gave us video it also gave us visa it gave us visual um so that's really important one when it comes to tv we have things that appear on tv obviously they appear via a camera and a camera at the first meaning of that was a legislative chamber in Italy or Spain. And the word is borrowed from Latin where it meant a vault or a chamber. And we still talk about a camera today, don't we? In camera, meaning in a private chamber when it comes to a court instead of open court. And the camera gave us chamber, but it also gave us the photography sense of that very word because a camera obscura, literally a dark chamber, was a device gave us the photography sense of that very word, because a camera obscura, literally a dark chamber, was a device popular in the 18th century that recorded visual images.

And that is where we get the cameras that we use today. Now, film was usually recorded in footage. We still talk about footage today. And that comes from the early silent film, which was traditionally measured in feet and frames and also film was measured by length in cutting rooms so footage make is because of feet because the measurement feet three feet three feet is a yard so but it was called footage because it was the number of feet that you'd recorded and filmed on your film. How interesting. Yeah, and there was 16 frames in one foot of 35mm film. So that was about one second of screen time. And this was in the early silent film.

So it was a kind of natural unit of measure, really. We have reporters on the screens if we're talking about news. And that's from the Latin. So interesting how we always look back to the classical languages here when it comes to technology. Reportare, meaning to bring back. So the idea is that you're bringing back an account of something. We have a bulletin, again, very old. It goes back to an Italian word, bulletta, meaning an official warrant or a certificate. And the root is a medieval Latin word, actually, bullet bullet meaning a sealed document

so that gave us both our modern bill but also a bull as in a papal edict gosh so a reporter gives you a news bulletin sometimes working from a script which again is a latin word isn't it screamer to write exactly right absolutely yeah you might have cues as in cue for filming action. And if you think of the cue as in a cue of people, there is a connection there because the cue of people, if you visualize one stretching back from a bus stop, for example, looks a bit like an animal's tail. And indeed, a cue of people comes from the French Q, which means a tail. And in the 18th and 19th centuries, it also referred to a pigtail, which was sometimes spelled Q-C-U-E. And that is where we get the long, thin rod that's used in snooker.

But when you Q someone, you are, I guess, maybe you're just sort of, the idea is that you're kind of bringing them into line somehow, but we're not quite sure of the connection there, but there is one. I was watching something on television yesterday where it was a film of somebody who was apparently a criminal. And you could see the person who was a criminal, but the other people in the photograph, in the picture on television, had been, I think the word is pixelated. Oh, yes. Is that to do with pixels?

And where does all that come from? Pixelation, pixels? It is to do with pixels. So that's a minute area of illumination on a screen. And that is simply an abbreviation of picture element. And we talk about pictures as pics, don't we, sometimes for short, P-I-X or P-I-C-S. Well, look, let's turn off the TV and leave it in the corner of the room. And, you know, my mother, this will amuse you. Well, maybe it won't amuse you,

but it amuses me to think of it. When my father died, my mother didn't know how to change channels on the television because my father had always done it. Always done it. And she knew how to do it when she was younger because you would get up and you would press the button that was either one, two, three. One was BBC One, two was BBC Two, three was ITV. That's all she had. And then she'd heard that Channel Four had come along, and she would occasionally watch me on things like Countdown with you, and she'd press four. But then in came, what do they call those things, channel changer? What are they called?

Remote control. Remote control. I suppose it's called a remote control because you're controlling it remotely. It is. But I have to say that single object invites more homespun phrases than almost anything else. So all the purple people will probably have their own, you know, doodah, woof it, dingus, what do you call it, you know, to call their remote control. Well, my mother had one of these channel changers, but she had never used it. My father always changed the channels. So when my father died, she was desperate. It was on BBC One at the time he died. And for months, we didn't know that she couldn't change channels. And we went to see her

in her flat one day, and she was sitting there saying, I can't change the channels. What do I do? Because there was no longer a button she could press and she said i thought digital television was supposed to mean you could use your digits to change the channels i said no it's all it's all changed mum and here is this channel changer and she still couldn't she had this thing with all these endless what are all the buttons on the channel changer we don't use most of them i work in media city right so media city the home of the media you would think in salford outside manchester where we film countdown etc but no one can operate the tvs in our rooms because you have to go to hdm1 or whatever

it's just that it's impossible the remote controls don't work yeah they are overly fussy if you ask me oh i think we just need numbers on the control and that's it. We want simplicity, please. And we do not want on these newfangled machines that we get the words to be printed in tiny writing on black background. They're printed almost in black themselves. You can't read anything that's on the machine. And the new technology, I can't bear it.

The words that I dread, the seven most dreaded words in my vocabulary are, good news, we have improved the app. I mean, a machine that worked effectively yesterday doesn't work today. Well, I think that's enough from radio and television for today. Let's see, have we had people corresponding with us? Have we had any communications? We love this. Yes, purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Yes. So we have one from sunny Northern California and it's Jeremy who's written. Have you got that one there? Oh, yes. Somebody from Mount Shasta, California, just south of Oregon. They were wondering why it is that the word restaurateur is pronounced restaurateur when there is no N in the word itself. Well, I have to say, I say restaurateur is pronounced restaurateur when there is no N in the word itself. Well, I have to say, I say restaurateur, not restaurateur, but our friend Jeremy comes from

California, so it may be different there. What do you think? Is it restaurateur? Is it restaurateur? Explain it to us. Yes, most people now put the N in and pronounce it as restaurateur, even though there is no N in this word. And take restaurateur without the N in it all the way back to the Middle Ages. And they were assistants to doctors essentially who would help get patients ready for surgery. And these restorers, so to speak, because that's what it means, it's from the French restaurer, to restore, but apparently became known for this special soup they'd prepare to fortify a person either before or after their operation. And that restorative soup was called a restaurant, meaning restoring. And it wasn't until later that the places where those soups and other healthy foods were served also became known as a restaurant, so restoring places.

And the restaurant as we know it now is basically the descendant of those places that sold healthy, fortifying, restoring broths and other things, which is lovely. So interestingly, the restaurateur came before the restaurant, and it's all really down to different forms of the same French verb. This is gripping. This is why people listen to this podcast. I would never have known that. So restaurant comes from the restaurant, the modern restaurant that we know is based on this old idea of a restorer and this revivifying soup that was served by the restaurateurs back in the Middle Ages. Exactly. And sometimes when an N is added to a French word, and that's not really what's

going on here, but that is the result of our making things easier to pronounce. So messenger, for example, came from the French messager. But that is, messenger is a little bit harder than messenger, so we stuck an N in it. Likewise with passager in French, a passenger. We had passenger for a while, but then we thought, hmm, it sounds easier as passenger. And that's called the intrusive N amongst linguists, but we simply put it in to make it easier for our tongues.

You know so much and share it so delightfully. Alan Worrell has been in touch. He's not from California. He's from Starbridge in the West Midlands in the UK. He writes, Not long ago, I was listening to a radio discussion, and one of the speakers referred to the word entrainment, which he said described the movement which happens among a group of people when they're listening to music with a strong beat. Invariably, their shoulders will sway, their heads will nod, and their feet will tap. Some listeners go into full solo dance mode. It set me thinking about other involuntary movements such as flinch, shudder, spasm, twitch, and tick. Can you explain the origins of some of these words? Well, please,

start with entrainment. Yes, isn't that gorgeous? And now quite often when people say, oh, I visited a place the other day and the tourist guy told me X, Y, and Z, and almost always it's a folk etymology. So it's a lovely story, but barely borne out. But entrainment really is. So entrainment in science is used for a current or a fluid, for example, that sweeps everything along in its flow. And in biology, I guess, by extension in music, it describes something which varies rhythmically and then causes something else to fall into synchrony with it. So it can be, talk about the body's kind of electrical control, for example, which is lovely. But as a music thing, I love the idea that it just takes over and everybody follows it as a kind of collective response. So it's gorgeous. It comes from the French entrenez, to lead into, which is wonderful.

Now, what Alan is wondering about is all these different words to do with involuntary movements. And very often they are linked, but but you know, when it comes to a certain subject area, but these ones really aren't. So very quickly, twitch is from an old English word, twitchian, meaning to pluck or pull sharply, which is what you do when you twitch. You react very suddenly, sudden short movement. A spasm is from the Greek spasmos, and that's ultimately from span, meaning to pull. So again, it's like you pull your body back suddenly. To shudder is from a Germanic base this time, meaning to shake. To flinch is from old French flancher, meaning to turn aside. And just to round off this wonderful smorgasbord of different languages that have influenced English, we have tick, which is from Italian, dicchio, again, meaning a sudden involuntary movement. So,

I mean, take those five words and you really do get a picture of how we've borrowed from every language under the sun. You do. And you get a picture of me some nights getting ready for bed. I feel I'm flinching with a tick, shuddering. There's a spasm and a twitch. Oh, God, it's not a pretty sight. Oh, dear. Thank you for that. But I want more from you, Susie, because it's time now for three words from your personal dictionary, real words that have fallen out of favour that you'd like to revive. Okay. Well, you know this, I love the old markers of time. I talk about them a lot, like overmorrow or yester-eve. This is one more to add to the list. Eft-soons. Eft-soons means soon after. Eft-soons. I just love that one. I wish we could bring back some of these.

Then we have crincom-crankom. Now, this had sort of fairly X-rated anatomical definition as well. But if you look in the Oxford English dictionary, it will tell you that crinkum crankum means full of twists and turns. So a story may be crinkum crankum and always be taking on a new twist, which I like. And the third one of my trio today is linked to lethargy. Because the ultimate source of lethargy is a Greek word meaning forgetfulness, because the river Lethe in the underworld was said to induce oblivion and total forgetfulness in anyone who drank from it. And lethophobia or lethophobia, which is L-E-T-H-O phobia, is a fear of oblivion. Very good.

So somebody who fears that they will never be remembered or will, you know, all trace of them will disappear might be lethophobic. That's wonderful. How about a poem, Giles? Do you have one for us today? You're definitely going to have a poem. I'm just seeing if I can quickly find you a poem by John Keats. The reason is you mentioned the word lethe there, and of course, Keats refers to lethe in one of his poems. I'm not sure I can find that one, but let me just see if I can find it. I was going to read you something quite different, but inspired by what you say, and because this is as good as a live podcast, we pre-record it. But I'm going to just read you this poem by John Keats.

It's a short poem. It's called I Had a Dove. What is amazing about Keats is, you know, he's remembered for writing some of the most beautiful poetry in all history, and yet he died when he was only 25 years old. Of TB, wasn't it? Yeah. And these lines on a wild bird kept as a pet that sadly, tragically dies in its captivity, reflect upon death. And

that's where the word lethe, I think, comes into one of his other more famous poems. Anyway, this is, I think, particularly poignant. I had a dove, and the sweet dove died, and I have thought it died of grieving. Oh, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied with a silken thread of my own hands weaving. Sweet little red feet, why should you die? Why should you leave me, sweet bird, why? You lived alone on the forest tree. Why, pretty thing, could you not live with me? I kissed you oft and gave you white peas.

Why not live sweetly as in the green trees? Well, it's a poignant poem, isn't it? And it's from an age when people used to keep birds as pets in cages. Some people still do. I'm not sure how good a thing that is to do. No, I just, I think it's awful. The thing that makes me so sad, and I'll have to remember this word for next week, but it is the instinctive urge to migrate.

And it is said that a caged bird will turn in the direction that its fellow animals are migrating and look in the same direction its fellow animals are migrating and look in the same direction, which just makes me so sad because it can't join them. So yeah, I would never, ever, ever recommend keeping a bird in a cage, I have to say. Well, on that good advice from you and on that poignant note from John Keats, that is the end of this episode of Something Rhymes with Purple.

Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Dio and Naomi Oiku, with additional production from Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, and, well, we're sticking with Teddy, aren't we?