Something Rhymes with Purple - All That Jazz

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

"Music makes (Purple) people, come together." That’s not the only Madonna lyric that gets mistreated in this lyrical romp through the fascinating world of musical genres and phrases. We’ll be hip-hopping our way from the house (and garage) all the way to the discotheque to soak up the funk, with just enough time for Susie to channel her inner Wonder Mike and for Gyles to let his hips do the talking… We’ll also be going through the fabulous ‘mondegreens’ you’ve been mishearing, Susie has a brilliant trio, and we learn why you should never, ever let Gyles hold on to something valuable for you… [e-mail] A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s trio: Well-woulder - someone who wishes you success, so long as it’s not more success than they have Quobbled - to have wrinkly fingers Oxyphonia - excessive shrillness of voice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm not alone in saying enough, no more. All of you out there listening are probably saying exactly that. What's going on? It's me, Giles Brandreth, and I'm introducing our new edition of Something Rhymes With Purple. I'm not alone, except I am. I'm in London. But I do have my companion, my friend, my co-host, Susie Dent, waiting for me. Where are you, Susie? Hello. I'm in the same place as I've been throughout lockdown. It's a bit of an oasis

for me, actually, coming in here. This is my study with my books, my dictionaries, a few odd props, as you will remember from 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, the comedy version, a piano and a sofa. You say you're where you've always been since lockdown began. Lockdown is over, Susie. Well, it seems to be. You are not in your 70s. You are not specially shielding. You're a young, young thing. You should be out and about going back to work. I have been out and about. But to be honest, I think lockdown has slightly suited the introvert in me.

I've quite liked being at home. I mean, obviously not for the reasons that we have been shut in. So I am going out. I'm still doing loads of bike rides. You know, I've done that throughout. But I still view it as lockdown. I still sort of, you know, I still see it as the virus is something that we need to be extremely careful about and almost respectful of. Because I'm sure I saw you on Bournemouth Beach. I've been scanning the photographs. And I think you were there in the middle of a big huddle of rugby playing people in your bikini. Was that you? No. I know it wasn't you. While you have been in your lockdown, you mentioned the piano in your room. Have you been playing it? Do you play the piano? I play it more from instinct than any sort of pupillage. I've never been taught how to play the piano, which is totally obvious when I start playing. I grew up playing the clarinet. I really

enjoyed that, which I'd actually really like to take that up again. And the recorder, of course, like everyone else. I moved to the Descant and the treble recorder And the recorder, of course, like everyone else. I moved to the Descant and the treble recorder, so I kind of branched out a bit. But yeah, that's my limit. How about you? I used to play the cello. I've got a lovely wrist movement.

My wrist movement was good. And the best thing about the cello was the smell of the resin, which is what you apply to the bow for some reason. I love the smell of the resin. I was appalling at the cello, and I was equally bad at the piano. I'm not a musician. I have no musical feeling. I discovered this during lockdown,

though I have got a piano. I didn't try to play it, but I have been trying to dance like Fred Astaire. And if you caught me on Celebrity Gogglebox, you'll have seen me and Maureen Lipman attempting to dance like Fred Astaire. You can do it online. You end up dancing like Fred Flintstone, in my case.

He is so effortlessly good, Fred Astaire. He's beyond genius. Of course. And I just, you know. For me, music really doesn't mean a great deal. I like words. Did you recognise the words I began with today? If music be the food of love, the quotation was... That's Shakespeare.

Of course it's Shakespeare. Yes. What play? It's the opening of a play. Yes. That's terrible that I don't remember this. It's often... This often comes at the top of the list of people's favourite plays. Yes.

It's Twelfth Night. It's the opening of Twelfth Night. If music be the food of love, play on. Give me... So I thought we'd talk about music. Given the piano in your room and music in our hearts I wanted to ask you about oh we'll talk about music

but I ought to mention we're going to talk about mondegreens later people have been writing in about mondegreens oh yes misheard song lyrics we've all got them

so we'll have some of those but can we talk a little bit about music first I was around in the 1950s. I remember the beginning of rock and roll. Why is it called rock and roll for a start? Well, what you will find with a lot of musical genre terms is that sex comes into it quite a lot.

So we'll come on to jazz later. But with rock and roll, it could be the rhythmic body movements of sex or it could just be the rhythmic body movements of sex, or it could just be the rhythmic body movements of dancing. Oh, you're rocking and you're rolling. Yeah. Obviously, everybody who can't see what Giles just did, I'm hoping that that was his dance move. There's a bit of a kind of strange sideward stuff going on. Anyway, sorry, I'm in articulate having seen that. No, not at all. I'm pleased that in a small way, I can either turn you on or off at a great distance. We're 100 miles or more apart. And I was doing a bit of rocking and a bit of rolling.

You were. Okay. So that's rock and roll. Well, music itself is nice, though. I like just the word music because it goes back to the muses, of course, of the nine goddesses who presided over learning and the arts and especially poetry and music and that's where we get the museum from so i just love that that's the rather magical beginning of music itself but um yes you've got rock and roll as a sort of slight euphemism for sex and then you've got jazz which might possibly come from another word jasmasm, meaning pep or energy.

And you'll know that that's very similar to jism, basically. So we've got liveliness, energy, spirit. That's what kind of goes into the idea, the spirit of jazz. An expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Another Shakespearean quotation. And that is actually, that phrase, though, is said to be about jism. Okay. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action.

That's the point, defining the difference between love and lust. Expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Okay. What about disco? Disco. Well, that's just simply for, I can imagine you in a disco. It's from the French discothèque. Because there's a French word, bibliothèque, which is library, isn't it? It is, exactly. So it's a library of music records, of course. Disc, and then O is a kind of connected

thing, and then tech, right, the tech from bibliothèque. And there's so many types of music, aren't there? What about funk? Funk's a really interesting one. Funk and punk, actually. The sort of original meaning of funk, and I think you'll find this in Samuel Johnson's dictionaries, have a really strong smell and particularly strong smell of tobacco. And there's a great adjective associated with it, which is mundungus. And something mundungus had the smell of old tobacco. Funk could also mean smelling of sweat, so just kind of musky and pungent and rancid. And is that what funk music is? Has it got that? That funk was also applied to food or drink, particularly food that had a sort of really

intense taste to it, which is a good thing, but sometimes slightly overripe. So more, again, on the kind of mouldy side. But the reason I think it was applied to the music was maybe because it was down to earth. It was kind of authentic. It was earthy, if you like. And I think that's why it was translated over. So I'm sure they would, you know, to have a sort of funky atmosphere was in a jazz club or a blues club to have a sort of atmosphere that was full of smoke. So, you know, to have a sort of funky atmosphere was in a jazz club or a blues club, to have a sort of atmosphere that was full of smoke. So, you know, it's quite a nice analogy. You mentioned blues. Yes.

What's that to do with it? I think we talked about this possibly before, and it's quite a surprising one. So if you had the blues a few centuries ago, you would probably have the DTs. So the delirium tremens from coming off alcohol or trying to come off alcohol. And the blues themselves were blue devils. They were malevolent spirits that were said to visit you and haunt your mind and make you very melancholy. It was the melancholy bit that kind of survived. So the blues music, which, of course, is quite soulful and often quite sad, is a reference to the blue devils that were associated with that kind of

low spirit. Okay, we've done jazz, we've done funk, we've done the blues, you mentioned punk. And is that punk related to funk? Well, no, not etymologically, but it's got a really long and varied history of the term punk. So, you know, in the sort of the old kind of US detective histories, they'd say you punk. I imagine Clint Eastwood talking about the punk. They're using it there as a kind of, in a way, in the sort of original sense of the word, because Shakespeare, for example, in All's Well That Ends Well, he used it to mean a useless person, so someone lacking in moral fibre. But even before then, looking right back to the word history, it was associated with prostitution and with paedophilia and a thug. It was really unpleasant, the word to begin with. Originally, it was

applied to music that was played in a really fast, aggressive, unpolished manner. So it's that idea of something really kind of basic, you know, and possibly deliberately unpleasant or deliberately offensive. Then, of course, you know, it was a kind of outrageous or confrontational attitude that people associate with punk. They were deliberately outrageous and offensive. I must have told you about my meeting with Johnny Rotten. No, I want to hear this. Ah, well, I was up in Manchester. Can't imagine two less similar people than you and Johnny Rotten.

Well, you know how I find it exciting to meet these international stars. And then I was in the foyer of the Midland Hotel, having just dined at the French, as it used to be called, the French restaurant there, and coming across the foyer. And who should be checking into the hotel but Johnny Rotten himself. Whenever this was, 80s, 90s, this man was world famous. I was so excited. Anyway, I went up to him. I shook him warmly by the hand. And I said, oh, how exciting to meet you, Mr. Rotten. And he said to me, fuck off. Great. But that's, he wouldn't be him if he hadn't said that. That's all he said. I have told you in a previous pod, a friend of a friend went up to Meatloaf in an audience and

said, hello, Mr. Loaf, I'm such a great fan. That's quite similar, Mr. Rotten. Oh, lovely. That's brilliant. That's funny. Okay, so more of these expressions. R&B, that's the sort of rhythm and blues, I know. I don't know much about the origin of rhythm and blues, really.

It's just kind of, again, it's a combination of two specific styles of music. You've got house music, haven't you? There was a club in Chicago in the 70s and 80s called The Warehouse. But then there were sort of variations on that. So garage music came along and, you know, the kind of unpolished, again,

the energetic music that is associated with suburban amateur bands. And I think it comes from the idea of those amateur bands practising in garages. I think that's as simple as it gets. Yes, I'd only ever seen it written down, and I remember humiliatingly much. Did I say garage or garage?

I hope I said garage. You said garage, which I think is correct. It is. Because I remember my children being deeply impressed when I said to them some years ago, oh, is this garage music that I've been hearing about? And I said, Dad. That was a real point of you, non-you pronunciation, wasn't it?

You could not say garage if you were supposedly remotely kind of middle. In the world where one said napkin if one was middle class. Yes, and serviette. Serviette if you were lower middle class. Yes. Now, anything goes. Quite right. Which is fine by us.

Yes, it is. So hip hop, hip hop, hip hop. I began in the hip hop generation and I've ended up in the hip hop generation. That's the story of my life. I think Richard Whiteley used to use that joke, if I remember rightly. Maybe he got it from you. He could. Do you know, I'll mention this in passing, the day we are recording this happens to be the 15th anniversary of the day Richard Whiteley died. And I was just thinking, well, the great thing about Richard is that Richard Whiteley died. And I was just thinking, well,

the great thing about Richard is that he was constantly amusing. I mean, he must have had down days, but if he did, I never saw them. He was always genial and jolly and good-humoured and easy company, intelligent and interesting. You can't say that of many people, can you? No. And we should explain, because we have visitors and listeners from around the world, that Richard Whiteley hosted the show on which Giles and I met, which was called Countdown. Oh, yes. It's a words and numbers game that's been going on our television channel, Channel 4, since it began back in the early 1980s. And it's been tried in America, not very successfully. The game began in France, if we have any French listeners, as Les Lettres et les Chiffres. Les Chiffres et les Lettres. Les Lettres et les Chiffres.

Les Chiffres et les Lettres. Les Chiffres et les Lettres. Oh, in France there, you see, the numbers came first. Anyway, R&B, we've done house music, garage music, funk, the blues, hip hop. We haven't really talked about hip hop. I would, apart from hip hops. I love the fact that they're slight mysteries, the actual origin of these terms, as if they kind of, you know, emerged organically from these kind of wonderful styles that were emerging. But there was an early hip hop group,

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I'm sure you know those, Giles. And Keith Wiggins, who was the MC, is credited with introducing the formula of hip hop because he's said to have used it as part of his performance at a party, I think in the mid to late 70s. Apparently, he was messing with a boy in the audience and teasing him with the marching hip hop rhythm, hip hop, hip hop, hip hop, because the boy was going to go to the army. And it just went on from there, which is quite an interesting idea. No one knows if that's a true story, but certainly he lays claim to it. And there's a great line,

which I'm not going to say properly, I'm sure, but it's called Rapper's Delight. And it goes, said a hip hop, the hibbit, the hibbity hibbity, hip hop, yoppa, you don't stop. I love that. Even though I said it badly. No, you said it well.

You know, we haven't touched on, which we should do before the break, reggae. Oh yeah, reggae. I loved reggae. And we haven't really talked about our music choices, but if I think back to when I was at university, Bob Marley all the way in the first year for me. This defines the difference between us.

You had Bob Marley when you were a girl. And when I was a boy, we had Marley Tiles in the kitchen. They were people who make tiles, were called Marley Tiles, hugely famous. And you had Bob Marley. That defines us. Yes. And Gregory Isaacs as well, night nurse. All of those are tracks of my student days. Anyway, apparently Bob Marley himself said that reggae goes back to a Spanish word meaning the king's music. And I did investigate this and can't find anything that substantiates that. And In actual fact, it probably goes back to Jamaican slang, reggae reggae, which is rags or ragged clothing. And there's another sense of the word which meant a kind of quarrel or a row, but nobody quite knows why that then transferred over to the music. But again, you know, I know that our listeners are more experts at this than

we are probably. So if they know the origin of the word reggae, I'd love to hear. Particularly if they come from Jamaica. I have been to Jamaica a number of times, and I've been more than once to the birthplace of Bob Marley, where in fact, he is now buried with other members of his family, huge sarcophagus. And I remember the day that I went on the tour there, there was this elderly couple of American hippies and they were straight from the 60s. They were shrunken now, they were very round, they had long hair, they were 60s types.

They still had, you know, Stop the War banners with them. And all they wanted to do was sit by the tomb of Bob Marley and smoke their spliffs. Unfortunately, they weren't allowed to do so because they don't encourage that sort of thing by the coffin or rather by their sarcophagus. But they were allowed to go out and sit on the hill and smoke their spliffs. That's as close as I've ever got to. Is it called gandra? Yes, I think you're right. I should know that because there are loads and loads of slang terms for marijuana.

I actually just looked up the origin of spliff because I didn't know it. And it says origin unknown from the Caribbean. But yeah, ganja smoking, that's what it is, isn't it? If you know the origin of spliff or want to put us right on any of these musical terms, you know where to get hold of us. It's purple at something else dot com. Yes, and ganja is hindi i've just checked that out so we do know that that was indian hemp

originally strongly intoxicating and narcotic more about music and all that jazz after a little break 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.

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Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth and I'm with Susie Dent and this is Something Rhymes With Purple where we explore the wonder of the world of words. Susie, all that jazz is a phrase I use there. Is that an old phrase? It's been around since at least the 40s and 50s. So if you think that probably 1930s was the big heyday wasn't it people like charlie parker and we've talked before about how they gave us the

word cool or at least they popularized the use of cool to mean hip and trendy it was more than trendy isn't it you don't have to be trendy to be cool anyway the multi-purpose adjective that we still have today it goes back to that jazz heyday but, it's about the 1950s that we start to get an all that jazz. I think the song in the musical Chicago has obviously popularised the phrase as well, and all that jazz. There's so many phrases that involve music. We can't explore them all. I'll just throw some up. And if you know something interesting, say it to me. Blowing your own trumpet. Well, that's obvious in a way, isn't it? Yeah, it's really old though, that one. So it's, yes, it's to, you know, brag and praise oneself. But yeah, that's at least five or six centuries old. So we've been making musical metaphors for

a long time. Pulling out all the stops. Is that to do with organs? Pulling out your organ stops? Exactly. Pulling out the organ stops. And likewise, the bells and whistles. I mean, you know, the old fairground organs that you used to get, they'd have lots of bells and whistles. So that's where that one comes from. Why do we become as fit as a fiddle, of all things? You know, do you? Well, no, I just think it's all about alliteration. So quite often you will find that these similes or whatever don't actually make a huge amount of sense. It's just because they sound good, fit as a fiddle. But there's a really nice story behind

another idiom that I was thinking about the other day. You know, we say it ain't over till the fat lady sings, which means, you know, don't worry, there's still time for something good to happen, even though it looks like it's all over. Particularly in sport, you think about it, it's often attributed to Yogi Berra, who was the league baseball, major league baseball player and manager. He was famous for saying really silly things. So he would say like,

half the lies they tell about me aren't true or the future ain't what it used to be. So it sounds a bit, you know, it ain't over till it's over. Sounds like it's one of his. But in fact, it kind of predates him and it obviously it was probably a reference to opera because they frequently involve a well-endowed soprano closing the proceedings with the famous aria but there are lots of other forms to the saying as well so you

will find in quotes from southern america so the deep south of america things like church ain't over till the fat lady sings. It was just used in many, many different contexts. And actually it might well be part of an oral tradition that goes back decades and decades, but I quite like it, but probably linked to opera. Mentioning Fiddler's a Fiddle, I must have told you about Yehudi Menuhin's Stradivarius, haven't I? No. We're coming up to the 50th anniversary of this story. In the year 1970 or 71, it was the 800th anniversary of the murder of Thomas a Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yeah. And I was starting out in television and I was sent by Southern Television to make a

special programme at Canterbury Cathedral about the murder of Thomas a Becket. And there was going to be a great service conducted by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, a man called Michael Ramsey, he had wonderful bushy eyebrows, I don't know if you remember him. And the climax of the service was Yehudi Menuhin, the great solo violinist, virtuoso, playing unaccompanied Bach. And I was there to greet him with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the great Yehudi Menuhin turned up, got out of his limousine. I was standing with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the top of the stone steps leading down to the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. Yehudi Menuhin arrived. I noticed that he had his violin in a

violin case that was actually padlocked on sort of handcuffs to his wrists. I said, what's this about? And he said, well, this is for reasons of security. The insurance people insist on this. It's a Stradivarius. It's very valuable. Anyway, he undid the lock. He opened the case and there was this beautiful Stradivarius, a gorgeous instrument. He explained it is, he said, this is the oldest Stradivarius still being played in the world. It has a perfect tone. It was made by the father of the Stradivarius family. And I said to him, oh, Mr. Menuhin, this is so exciting. I've never seen a Stradivarius.

I've never held a Stradivarius. Might I be allowed to hold your Stradivarius? And Yehudi Menuhin placed into my rather nervous hands his priceless Stradivarius violin. And I looked at it and it was beautiful. And I turned to show it to the Archbishop of Canterbury because I didn't feel I could sort of hog it to myself. And obviously I turned a little bit quickly because as I turned, the Stradivarius slipped my grasp. Oh no. And the Archbishop leant forward to catch it.

And in trying to catch it, he tipped it. And this Stradivarius was very light. And it sort of floated up into the air. And it did a double somersault, rather like Wayne Rooney on film. And it did a double somersault. And then, out of our grasp, it fell down the stone steps of the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. Boing, boing, boing, smash. No.

And it landed, this is true, in several pieces. Oh, no. At the foot of the steps of Canterbury Cathedral, the crypt, at the very spot, it turned out, where 800 years before Thomas Apec had been murdered. I don't believe it. Wasn't that an amazing coincidence? Anyway.

What happened? Now, Yudi Menuhin was, you may know this, he was very into sort of Buddhist meditation, macrobiotic diet. We needed it after this. He was a very calm man. He stood there. He didn't say a word.

He just gazed at this shattered instrument. And we said, what are we going to do? That's what the archbishop said. I said, a miracle would help, archbishop. We had to do this concert live on a company park. So Yehudi Menuhin explained. And I said, a miracle would help, Archbishop. We had to do this concert live, unaccompanied Bach. So who do you mean? You wouldn't explain. He said, well, I do always, in case of emergencies,

I have a spare violin in the boot of my car. And I piped up happily. I said, oh, can I fetch it for you, sir? He said, no, you can't. At least, I think he said, no, you can't. Anyway, he told me I couldn't. And it's a true story. And you can see the violin to this day.

And you can see the repair marks on it. He left all his violins, including this one, to the, is it the Royal College of Music? The one that's in the Marylebone Road? You go there. On the first floor, there's the display of the violins. And you can see this instrument patched up. But I am responsible for the damage. Antonio Stradivari, I've just looked up, because he's the greatest violin maker of all time.

I've just looked up how much his instruments sell for these days. Guess how much? Oh, tell me. $16 million. What? Yes. You should have run off with it. Oh, dear.

Instead, I dropped it on the floor. That's me. There we are. If you have a great story to tell us about famous instruments belonging to great people that you have dropped, do feel free to share it with... There's so much to talk... I want to ask you about...

We haven't got time. I took my harp to the party, but nobody asked me to play. Don't harp on it. All the phrases involve the word harp. Oh, yes, harping on something. Yes. We've got to come back to this subject. Yeah, we do, because there is a lot to talk about.

I promised people that we'd discuss mondegreens, because we introduced the concept a week or two ago, and I gave you my example from the Lord's Prayer, Our Father, we shout in heaven, hallowed be thy name. You had one as well. These are real songs. Yes, I had Lord of the Dance, dance seti instead of said he um first

of all i should explain what the term mondegreen means and where it came from so mondegreen is as you say it's a misheard song lyric so one that you just can't help tripping over and your your ear just converts it to something that's not why is it called a mondigreen? Because it was coined by an American writer called Sylvia Wright. She wrote that as a girl, when her mother read to her from something very lofty, it was from Percy's Relique. She misheard the lyric, laid him on the green, in a Scottish ballad, which was called The Bonnie Earl of Moray. And she heard laid him on the green as Lady Mondegreen. So that's where it comes from.

So she said this is a she thought this is a great term for a misheard song lyric and as that was a real linguistic gap that's what we got. So have we got some great ones from listeners? We have from all over the world. This is from Beverly Berger from Canada. She writes my late husband was chronically unable or perhaps unwilling to identify song lyrics properly. When he heard the Rod Stewart song, the first cut is the deepest. He never failed to sing out the first coming of Jesus. That's great. I love that. Claire Callaghan goes for the New Year's Eve classic Auld Lang Syne. Claire writes, my sister and I would attend parties

with our family and neighbours and all gather for the rendition after the chimes of midnight. We never understood the lyrics and for years into adulthood, we were convinced we were singing about a blind man for the sake of the old man's eyes. Oh.

Oh, gosh. For the sake of Auld Lang Syne, for the sake of the old man's eyes. We still have no idea what we're singing about and we'll always sing for this man's eyes now. Well, honestly, Robert Burns must be telling in his grave because he wrote the song, didn't he, in Scottish. He sometimes wrote in English, but more often he wrote in Scottish. What does Auld Lang Syne actually mean? It means for old time sex. I it means old long ago i've just thought of

another one um which i think is quite a common mishearing and that's bob dylan when he was you know singing the answer my friend is blowing in the wind a lot of people hear the ants are my friends they're blowing in the wind i can totally get that and i've also remembered another one which is don is it don henley and the boys of summer and i always always heard it as the poison summer and i couldn't quite work out what was going on but it sounded like something very exciting and adventurous grace and lisa in london madonna's la il la bonita, that's how you say it. La Isla Bonita. La Isla Bonita. Instead of Last Night I Dreamt of San Pedro, we've always sung Last Night I Dreamt of Some Bagel.

Well, that totally makes sense. Yeah, I can definitely get that one. Peter Scarfe has written in to say that his partner's mum, Leslie, loves the song Rasputin by Boney M. Unfortunately, for years she misheard the lyrics Ra-Ra Rasputin by Boney M. Unfortunately, for years she misheard the lyrics, rah, rah, Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen, as rah, rah, Rasputin, maker of the rug machine. That's good. I've got another one here. David Williams, who seems to have a particular knack for mishearing his radio. So he's sent in a lot, as well as a really interesting blog article

that he'd written on the topic. So thanks for that, David. But this was a lovely one. It's from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. And I know for a fact that David's not alone in this because when I went on tour last year, someone else said that this is what they hear. You know, spare him his life from this monstrosity.

David likes to sing, sparing his life for his warm sausage tea. It's quite good, isn't it? Look, I think it's time for your three special words of the week, Suzy's Trio. Feel free to send us other mondegreens that come your way. We love the way that you communicate with us from around the world. It lifts our week.

Yeah, it absolutely does. Okay, well, I'm going to start with one that just always makes me laugh. It's in the Oxford English Dictionary. I think there's only a couple of records of it. And it's a well-wooder. So instead of a well-wisher, you've got a well-wooder. That's spelled W-O-U-L-D-E-R because it's a conditional well-wisher. It's somebody who wishes you success, but just not more than they have. You know, you have that sort of slight begrudging oh well done you are a well wooder i love that well wood oh i think it's brilliant go on and you know we talked about my phobia of having

wrinkly fingers from being immersed too long in a bath or a swimming pool and i couldn't think of a word for it and and i came across this the other day and it reminded me there's an old dialect word for fingers like that which are all wrinkly quabbled they're quabbled fingers and i think in the original glossary which is a couple of centuries old it says from fingers who have been who have been too long in the bathtub um and that's definitely what i experience how do you how do you spell that q u o b b l e d my quabbled fingers i like it's a good word and it's simple it is a good word and a third one and this is not very musical but it's something you might hear if somebody's trying to sing along and actually doesn't quite get what's required oxyphonia o-x-y-p-h-o-n-i. In the OED, it's defined as excessive shrillness of voice.

Very good. Anyway, how about you? Have you got a verse or a quotation for us? I've got another joke sent in by my grandchildren. I've got to remember that they're listening because sometimes we use bad language and we're only using it in the interests of etymology. You know, if we say a rude word,

it's not that we're endorsing it necessarily. We're just examining it. Anyway, my grandson has sent me this little gem. He tells me, I don't know what he was doing in a pub, but anyway, his joke goes like this. I got chattering to a lumberjack in a pub. He seemed like a decent fella. Oh, I love that one. Yeah, very good. That's our lot for this week. You can tweet us, email us at purple at somethingelse.com. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett

with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Harriet Wells, Grace Laker and Gully, whose beard is something to believe. And in fact, that's a good subject for the next one.