Something Rhymes with Purple - Ataraxy

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Recorded live at the first of our London shows at the Cadogan Hall, Susie and Gyles focus on the lost language of positivity. Susie is on a mission to bring back the orphaned partners of uncouth, unkempt, and ruthless, and she also has some wonderful words to keep you thinking positively throughout 2022. Elsewhere Gyles reveals his secrets to happiness, there are lots of questions and suggestions from the audience, a few script mishaps, a trio, and a poem. It’s jam-packed with upbeat goodness. A Somethin’ Else production.  We love answering your wordy questions on the show so please do keep sending them into [e-mail]  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to sign up to Apple Subs please follow this link https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823 and make sure that you are running the most up-to-date IOS on your computer/device otherwise it won’t work.  If you would like to see Gyles and Susie LIVE and in person on our Something Rhymes With Purple UK Tour then please go to https://www.tiltedco.com/somethingrhymeswithpurple for tickets and more information.  Susie’s Trio: Periplus – account or narrative of a circumnavigation or other voyage  Shivviness – the uncomfortableness of wearing new underwear  Dispester – to get rid of a pest  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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Wow. Amazing. Wow. My. Amazing. I'm Giles Brownruth, and with me is my friend Susie Dent, the world's leading lexicographer. And we're speaking to you. This podcast is coming from the stage of the Cadogan Hall in London. Yes. Off Sloane Square. Yes.

It's a beautiful hall. Once upon a time, I think it was a Christian Science Church. Okay. Then it was acquired by Muhammad Fayyad. Do you remember him? Mm-hmm. Yeah, Harrods. Fellow of Harrods. He wanted, he wanted to have it as a home. This room that we're in now, this huge hall seating 600 people with galleries, wonderful

hall, this was going to be his sitting room. I'm not joking. This room was to be his sitting room. Well, so for those who can't see us, we are actually in a sort be his sitting room. I'm not joking. This room was to be his sitting room. Well, for those who can't see us, we are actually in a sort of quasi-sitting room. So we're sitting in some lovely purple chairs with our purple cushions and our purple iPads. And everything is purple, apart from Giles' jumper,

which is a Snakes and Ladders jumper, I think. It is. It's a reminder, if we needed it, that sometimes one goes up in life and sometimes one comes down. Yes. So that's why I'm wearing this. And we've got a lovely audience of purple people and some people who are new to the podcast. This, I think, is our 148th edition of Something Rhymes with Purple.

What are we wanting to discuss today? What are we going to talk about? Well, it's been very easy to get sort of down, hasn't it, in the last few years and to get sort of bogged down, I suppose, in the language of despair because so many of us have been feeling that over the last couple of years. And actually, if you look in a dictionary, English reflects that a lot of the time. So dictionaries love to be negative, reflecting, of course, the fact that we love to be negative. So they are full of words that are sort of quite bad and sad and dwell on the seamy side of life, if you like. But today, we're going to buck the trend

and we're going to talk about words for happiness and positivity because we thought that was a good theme for the year to come. So we're going to accentuate the positive. We are. When you say that the language is negative, in terms of emotions, there are many more words you're telling me that describe the depressing, the down, than there are that describe the positive and the up. Yes. And when you say that, how do you know that? Have you been through the dictionary

counting, or is this just anecdotal? No, but you can just tell. You get a flavour every time you visit the dictionary. So I used to think it was just dialect dictionaries, because I do genuinely spend quite a lot of my time just flicking through dictionaries you know I do it on the podcast as well don't I'm literally looking at my screen look at virtual dictionaries and if you look in a dialect dictionary regional language you will see that we love to gossip about other people and we love to insult them so go back 50 years and you will find hundreds of words for people who are bow-legged, bandy-legged, sort of have smelly armpits. I mean, we just, yes, that does not include you, Giles. I have never had the occasion to use it. But lots and lots and lots of different words for

those. And I thought, okay, that makes sense because dialect is largely spoken and we are gossipy by nature. But actually, look in the normal OED as well, and it's quite difficult to pull out the positive words. And when I do find one, I just leap on it and think, finally, you know, this is one that we can use. So, as we will see, I mean, take the letter A, okay? So, I've just taken a handful of words from the letter A, just to give you a flavour. So, there's a panthropy. Apanthropy. Yeah, so apanthropy is the desire to be away from other people, which I always think is quite useful at Christmastime. If you're feeling slightly apanthropic,

it's just, please leave me alone. That kind of sentiment. Then you've got abhorrence. Abhorrence. Then you've got abdabs, as in the screaming variety. Hold on. Give me the origins of abhorrence. Abhorrence. So to abhor something.

Yes, and the horare bit actually gave us horror and horrible, as well as horripilation. So do you know what horripilation is? I'm taking, I've got some cream for it. Okay. Horripilation, what is horripilation? Yes, well, you might have cream for it. It is when your hair stands on end. Oh. So, yeah What is horripilation? Yes, well, you might have cream for it. It is when your hair stands on end. Oh.

So, yeah, so horripilation is, you know, when you get those cartoon cats, the scaredy cats and their hair is just sort of standing up in a kind of shock. That is exactly what horripilation is. So that is what something abhorrent does to you. This is why people listen to Something Rhymes with Purple. There is a word for the hair standing up on the back of a cat, and it's horripilation. Horripilation.

So when you see that, like that, oh, look at that horripilation. Yes, and that's what gave us horror, as I say, abhorrent. Anything that just makes you kind of stand back in horror. Then there's all-overish, if you're feeling a bit all-overish. That is probably the 18th century equivalent of meh, as well as fobbly-mobbly, which is one of my favourites. All-overish? Is that old? And that means, how are you feeling? All-overish.

Yeah, a bit all-overish, just a bit... And this meh that you use, that's M-E-H, is it? M-E-H. We never use that. What is... No. What is the origin of well? It's just it's kind of if you were to express it in emoji terms It would just be a sort of straight face. Has anyone seen the emoji movie? No, okay

There is it's not the best to be fair But but there is a lovely emoji who is meh and wants to be anything but. So it's just kind of, well, you know. Meh. Meh. And how recent is meh? Very. So I think if not this century, then very late 20th century. Quite a few words come from The Simpsons, the television series.

Doh is what you're thinking. Doh. Yeah. Doh. D-O-H. Okay, go on. I'm going to stick with the A's. So we have excedia.

Who? So excedia is, it goes back to the Greek for without, and then care, without care or concern. So that means it's not really so much carelessness in the sense of you are not taking consideration of other people's feelings, but it just means total kind of apathy and unwillingness to do anything. And that, of of course was seen as being quite sinful because you were doing absolutely nothing for yourself or for society and there was one aesthetic you know the people who just sort of lived very kind of pared down lives aesthetic I would say aesthetic aesthetic is that a s c acetic acid I should know this. That's vinegar, isn't it? Yeah, A-C-E-T-I-C, isn't it? A-S-C-E-T-I-C.

And this was one who lived in the Egyptian desert, and he called Exeter the demon of noontide. Demon of noontide. Yes, so that was when he wanted to sleep and do nothing at all. So anyway, it's just another example of something that's not particularly good in the dictionary. And then you have one of my favourite recent words, recent coinages, which is a blend. So one of the most productive ways of

creating new words these days is mashing together existing words. And we've been doing it for ages, as we always say, you know, with brunch, we've had bromance and that kind of thing. This is antisappointment. And antisappointment is when you've been really looking forward to something for so long hopefully this is not going to apply today and then you you know you're there and it's just it's anti-disappointment i think it's a brilliant word and disappointment because that happens so often doesn't it it does oh i suppose it could also mean just the knowledge that something is going to be disappointing i suppose but i prefer the first one because we've all been there. Anyway, there are so many, but actually in between these, just in the corners of the dictionary, you will find something called

ataraxia, which is such a horrible sounding word. Can you spell it out to me? A-T-A-R-A-X-Y, ataraxia. Ataraxia. And it means a state of serenity. Again, from the Greek for not being disturbed. Not a very nice sounding word, but it is there. But should I tell you where happiness itself comes from? I want to know about that. Because we're going to talk about being happy. And in some ways, this just sort of sums it up, really, because it's all about chance or luck. That's exactly what hap meant. It was your fate. You left it up to your destiny to bring you good fortune. So to be happy actually was to be blessed with good fortune, but it was a matter of sheer luck. And that hap survives in perhaps, perhaps meaning by good fortune or by fortune,

in other words, you know, what will come will come. And also hapless, if you are hapless, what will come will come. And also hapless. If you are hapless, you have bad luck and so are a bit clumsy with it. Very good. Okay. Any other A positive words? Well, not just A's, but I was going to tell you about the orphaned negatives that I so often talk about and made it a bit of a mission last year, the last couple of years, to bring them back. Do you know what I mean by an orphaned negative? No. Okay. So this is the thing about being a lexicographer. Lexicographer itself is such an unsexy, unappetizing word, isn't it? Lexicographer. It's very hard to say. And the job that I do comes with vocabulary that sounds really alien and off-putting. So we study these beautiful, vast databases of current language, whether it's text messages or chat rooms, blogs, transcripts of newspapers, tabloids, journals, novels, you name it.

And that's how we study language in action. And they are called corpora. And yet they are the most amazing living things. So orphan to negatives, another sort of slightly strange word. things. So, orphan to negatives, another sort of slightly strange word, but these are the words that actually began with a positive most of the time, and then the positives just fell away, and we are stuck with their negative counterparts. Like unkempt. Unkempt. Kempt is a real word, is it? Kempt is a real word. It goes back to the German gekempt, meaning well combcombed. Lovely. Yes,

if you're kempt, you're well-turned-out. Unkempt is the word we use all the time, meaning not well-turned-out. Kooth. You can be koothy in Scotland if you're nice and polite. Koothy. Koothy. But you are unkooth these days because that's the way that we prefer to see the world. And thanks to P.G. Woodhouse, one of your favourites, we could be gruntled as well. Oh, that was a genuine word? That was him. Well, to be fair, gruntled was in the dictionary before, meaning to grunt like a pig or grunted like a pig. But he introduced it. He said, I can't remember which book it was, but he said he was, if not disgruntled, he was on the way to being gruntled or something

like that. So he was the first to give it to us. Yeah, which is lovely. And then you could be wieldy, you could be pecunious, you could be full of gorm as well. Full of gorm, so it's a Viking. Oh, you're really gorm. Yeah, that's a compliment. You'll be full of gorm. So gorm was care, heed, consideration. Oh, so you're somebody. Oh, how interesting. I think if we use the word gormless, it would be meaning stupid. They're gormless. Yeah, but not.

It's just being heedless. But that doesn't, in fact, it means heedless. Heedless. I mean, that's. Unthinking. Unthinking. Thoughtless. Unthinking, yeah.

Yeah. But gormless is almost, I suppose you're sort of clumsy because you're not paying attention possibly but to be gorm-like was to have an intelligent look about you which is great so these are all for negative so we have lost those you could be full of Ruth as well Ruth meant compassion you could be feckful as well as feckless and so the list goes on and on so what you're proving to me is that we like to accentuate the negative. Yes, we do. I do remember you saying to me, but I can't believe this is true, that there are virtually no synonyms for love,

but there are a multitude for hate. Just unwrap that. What do you mean when you say that? Well, if you look in, this is the brilliant thing about the Oxford English Dictionary, for anyone who can get their hands on it, and you can get it online now as well, is that it actually now has a historical thesaurus attached to it. So you can look up any word, gormless being one of them, and click on the thesaurus thing, and you will find all the synonyms for that particular word through history. A thesaurus thing and you will find all the synonyms for that particular word through history. A thesaurus is what? A thesaurus is a collection of synonyms really but it goes back to the Greek for treasure house. A thesaurus is a treasure house. It's a treasure house yeah. I love it.

So if you look up love and you look up hate you're telling me the list under hate is a lot longer than the list under love. It is unfortunately and if you go back to old English it wasn't really always that way. So there was a great word, win, which was actually part of the runic alphabet, but that meant joy and happiness. And you could find all sorts of different, it was W-Y-N-N,

you could find all sorts of different kinds of joy and different kinds of love, but those have faded away. So we really only have love. And love is such, I mean, there are so many aspects of love, you know, so many different manifestations of love. Is this the noun love you mean, rather than the verb?

Yes, but even as the verb, you know, there aren't really that many that would express it. No, you're right. It's interesting, isn't it? Because I love you is different from I like you, or I fancy you, or I respect you, or... Yeah, I'm seeing what you're saying. Whereas I hate you, you can do in all sorts of...

I hate you, I loathe you, I despise you. you oh I'm warming to this just go to Shakespeare yeah and insults talking of Shakespeare I mean you can find the best insults which quite often I turn to on my Twitter feed if anybody has ever looked because they are just amazing the insults in the dictionary but it's really hard I mean as you will know we've done 148 of these podcasts and the words that I always come back to because they're such rare delights in our dictionary are words like risper, which I talk about all the time. Risper. Risper, the opposite of despair, which is fresh hope and a recovery from despair. That's one of them. And confelicity, which is the opposite in a way of schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is pleasure in

someone else's unhappiness or pain. Con felicity is joy in other people's happiness. Felicity does mean happiness, doesn't it? Because Felix, as in Felix, people often call their cats Felix. And there was a famous cartoon cat called Felix. Felix is Latin for happy. So felicity is basically happiness. It is. So it's often used as a girl's name, Felicity, and that simply means joy, happiness. Exactly.

And the con bit means with. Lovely. Well, I've been in pursuit of happiness in a professional way for some years. And I went about 20 years ago, I went to see a wonderful psychiatrist called Dr. Anthony Clare. Yes.

He used to do a radio program called In the Psychiatrist's Chair. Yeah, yeah. And I went to see him to talk about happiness, who gets to be happy, how and why. And together, he and I sort of evolved the seven secrets of happiness. And I might drip some of those into our conversation today. What's number one? Well, I'll give you number one. What's interesting, though, is what is happiness?

What to you is happiness? And a lot of people, I think, confuse happiness with ecstasy. I mean, happiness, I think, is that mellow sense of being at ease, that things are right. But sometimes people confuse it with ecstasy, a high, you know, that you can get maybe from drinking or from something exciting happening. I think that, after every high, there can be a low.

What is the origin of ecstasy as opposed to high? So ecstasy is a Greek word, really, and it just meant, it did actually mean rapture, so very much the same thing. Whereas as happy, as I say, was much more about chance or fortune. Well, happiness is important because the research shows that happy people tend to live seven to ten years longer than unhappy people. So it's worth pursuing happiness.

Though interestingly, it is a fairly modern idea, the idea of being happy. We all now expect to be happy all the time, you know, as a right. Whereas in ancient times, people didn't. If you look at the Book of Psalms, people were told that life was a veil of tears. People of my grandparents' generation, certainly their grandparents' generation, they assumed that happiness was for the next world. That's why it's called heaven. What's the origin of heaven? Heaven is, gosh, that's a really good question. I don't know where heaven comes from. I'm going to have to look up in the dictionary. Obviously, you're not planning to go there. No. I went to a convent. Please don't tell

the nuns that I don't know the etymology of heaven. It's just not good. Just leave it with me while I figure it out. Okay, I'll leave it with you for a moment. But people used to think that the grave was the way to lead you to heaven. Paradise. It wasn't for this world. Life was a veil of tears. And then I think with the coming of the American Constitution and the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness being the right of every American, it became the idea that we could all have access to this thing called happiness. Yes.

I know where hell comes from, by the way. Where does hell come from? Hell comes from a really old word meaning to cover or conceal. So the idea has always been that it's kind of underground and it's covered. So clearly, that's where I've been expecting to go. And I don't know the answer on the other hand. But yeah, anyway. You carry on looking for heaven while I go on explaining about this. I went to see Anthony Clare and he put me in the psychiatrist's chair. And the first thing we began talking about was my parents, because I said to him,

now explain this to me, Dr. Clare. My father had recently died, and I think that was one of the reasons that I was interested in having this conversation about happiness, because I was feeling low, understandably, because of losing my father. And I said, tell me this, why do, why did my parents often talk about the Second World War

as the happiest time of their lives? And people of their generation, I said, sometimes do. I said, because during the Second World War, my mother was young, mother, and it was before I was born. I was born after the war, but she had my sisters who were much older than me, and they were born just before the Second World War. And born after the war. But she had my sisters, who were much older than me. And they were born just before the Second World War. And they were little babies. And she lived in London. Bombs were forming. And she talked about it as the happiest time of her life.

And my father, like many of your grandfathers or great-grandfathers, would have served in the Second World War, risking their lives for six long years. Why on earth would people of that generation talk about that time as the happiest time of their lives? You know, that's easy to explain. I said, really? Well, tell me.

He said, yes. He said, your mother, yes, bombs were falling on the flat she lived in in London. But there was a sense of community in London during the war. There was a sense of solidarity, of shared values, of common purpose. And that sense of community and shared values makes people very happy. So there was contentment from that. And your father, yes, the soldiers, the sailors, the airmen during the Second World War, risking their lives on a daily basis. But they were also on a daily basis being tested. And all the research shows that being tested, being challenged,

is a key element to finding happiness in life. You very rarely find happy people sitting around not doing very much. An engagement with life, being tested, being challenged, is key to finding happiness. So from that, I began to realize that what we think makes us happy is not necessarily the obvious things that make us happy. So before we take our break, I'll just maybe share one of those with you, one of the seven secrets. The first, in a way, was to be a leaf on a tree. That relates to having common values and a shared sense of

community. What does it mean, being a leaf on a tree? Well, we all are unique. Every single person is unique. You're unique. I'm unique. All of us here is unique. But like every leaf on every tree is separate, unique. But a leaf of a tree, when it floats about a bit, it feels free. That's quite exciting. But quite quickly, it floats to the ground and it dies. The point is, if you're a leaf on a tree, you're attached to something that is larger than yourself and still growing.

Yeah. And in a way, in a curious way, us being here with these people is part of us being a leaf on a tree. Because if you're self-employed, as we are, it's more difficult to be. And older people find it difficult to be a leaf on a tree once they become isolated. My mother, for example, when my father died, she lived alone in her flat in London. She was then retired. There was no tree for her to be a leaf on. And in fact, she brilliantly, sensibly, even though she was in her 70s, went to live in

America. She got a job in a school. She became part of a community. She became part of something that was growing again. It can be anything. A leaf on a tree. You can belong to a golf club. You can belong to a choir.

You can belong to a group of people like the purple people. Something that is larger than yourself and still growing. We all need to be leaves on a tree. So that's one of the seven secrets of happiness. What's intriguing about the seven secrets is you need all seven of them to have happiness. One of them on its own, just being a leaf on a tree, is not sufficient of itself.

You need all the others as well. And I may drip those in later. But one thing I will share with you, because it's quite amusing, is this. Because my mother was still alive and my father had died, we began talking about this. I said to Dr. Clare, what sort of people get to be happy? Are rich people happier than poor people? He said, no, no. He said, great riches does not make you particularly happy. Look at the newspapers, you'll see endless stories of that. I said, what about being beautiful? Does being beautiful make you happier than being ugly? He said, curiously, not.

He said, human beings find extremes of any kind quite difficult to cope with. So very beautiful people find it quite difficult to form relationships. Marilyn Monroe, very, very beautiful, but not very, very happy. So if you are more homely looking, you're going to be happier than if you're very beautiful, which is, I must say, good news for this audience. But this will amuse you. I said, what about married people? And he said, well, on the whole, married people are marginally happier

than unmarried people, and married men tend to be he said, well, on the whole, married people are marginally happier than unmarried people, and married men tend to be happier than married women. On the whole. He said, but an interesting thing happens when with two married people, he married a while, one of the parties dies. He said, a couple, when they've been married, if the wife dies, the husband,

within three years, he will either have remarried or he will be dead himself. Wow. Within a longstanding couple, one of them dies, the wife dies, the husband, within three years. He showed me the charts. Within three years, the husband has either found a new partner or he is dead himself. And I said, what happens when it's the other way around? He said, well, when it's the other way around, when the husband dies for the woman, it makes no difference whatsoever.

I love that. I'm feeling slightly better about not knowing the etymology of heaven because nobody does. It says origin unknown. And interestingly, it might also go back to the idea of being covered in a word meaning that. But who knows? Who knows?

Who knows? Thank you. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome?

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like Ed O'Neill. I had friends in organized crime. Sofia Vergara. Well, how do you want to be comfortable? Julie Bowen. I used to be the crier. And Aubrey Anderson-Emmons. I was so down bad for the middle of Miranda when I was like eight.

You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are back. Oh, we are back. Oh, wasn't that an exciting interval? Oh, that's marvelous.

There were some traumatic moments during the interval because more than one person came up and said, Doh, doh. Nothing to do with The Simpsons, much earlier than that. Laurel and Hardy. Oh. That's what they're all saying. Wow. So are they right?

Well, I do know that the… I'm just trying to find if I can actually work out how to use an iPad. I do know that The Simpsons is credited in the OED, but whether or not it's the first one, I can… If you keep talking, Jessica… But you see, not everybody knows everything. It's rather nice to find that the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't always get it right.

Or actually, it may get it right because it actually has different standards from others. Well, the work goes on. We were talking about this the other day. It's an ongoing thing. So the word detection and the word archaeology, you know, will go on. So, okay, I'm looking at dough. This is the musical dough. A dear, a female deer. Yeah, thank you. Oh, good. Oh, yes. Let's do, while she's looking up,

should we do some group singing? Oh, that's lovely. Let's see how far we can get with that one. Does it begin with Doe? Oh. Doe, a deer, a female deer. Doe, a son, far away. I call myself far, a long, long way to run.

So beautiful is the day, a moment of our souls, to sing a little bit of our prayer, that we may not have to go alone. Oh, this, you are, what a musical, I mean, honestly, did I sense there was almost an erotic charge during that? I mean, we all just came together in the most amazing way. As per usual, when there was an erotic charge, I was looking at the dictionary. And I can tell you, 1945, and it was that radio show, Itmar. Itmar. Yes, it's that man again. That's the first mention of Doe. And then The Simpsons are there, but not until, yeah, much, much later. So there you go.

It's pronounced Itmar, not Itmar. Oh, sorry. The advantage of having an older person here is I actually met Richard Murdoch, the man who, one of the people who was the stars of Itmar. Anyway, it's about that. I'm turning away from you because a very kind lady in the audience said that she couldn't quite hear. So I'm turning more towards you. Sorry about that.

I was turning more towards Giles before. I thought it was because you felt I was spitting at you. Well, that's true. Do you remember the German word for pretending not to notice when someone is spitting at you in conversation? There's a German word for pretending not to notice when somebody spits at you. Only the Germans would need to think of such a word.

What is the word? The word is Speichelgleichmut, which means saliva stoicism. That's what I have. Brilliant. This is why people tune into the podcast. And we've had people getting in touch with us. And what have they been writing to us about?

So we have people from our audience. This is one for you, Giles. This is from Pip Leonard. We know Susie hates flange as a word. I mean, who actually likes the word flange? Does anybody like the word flange here? Oh, okay. There's always one.

Yeah, there's three. What is your least favourite word, Giles? Mucus. Oh. Yes. It's a horrid word to spell, isn'tiles? Mucus. Oh. Yes. It's a horrid word to spell, isn't it? Because I'm never quite sure if it's one C or two. One.

It's a very good word then for Wordle, isn't it? Mucus. M-U-C-U-S. It's a five-letter word. In a way, I chose mucus because I don't like the idea of mucus. It's because of the association. One word that Susie introduced me to is apricity, A-P-R-I-C-I-T-Y, which is a word that describes that sensation of warmth on your back when the sun is shining on you. And I love that. We were talking about happiness earlier. That, for me, epitomizes happiness, that feeling of warmth.

But apricity isn't, for me, a very warm word. It's quite a cold word. I think if you say apricity, I think it sounds beautiful. Oh, as in April? Just apricity. A lot of people wonder if it's linked to the apricot. And it might share an ancient root, but the apricot goes back to the idea of being precocious. It's linked to precocious because it ripens early. So that's where that one comes from. But I think apricity has got a beautiful sound to it. Apricity. The feeling of that is one of my favorites.

The reason I don't like mucus is because the idea of mucus is rather... Yeah, it's all about the psychology. But I have, as I often say to you, I have moved on from the M word now. I can stay moist and I feel fine. Is that the word that comes top of the list for words people don't like? Always, yes. But I think I decided that too many people didn't like it, so it needed to be loved. I'm not sure I'm there with the love bit yet. And I always put it together with gusset, do you remember? Oh, gusset. Yes, there's something quite uncomfortable about the word gusset, isn't there?

You'll be advertising them soon. OK. Thank you. This is from, what a name, Troy Ezra. That is the most amazing. Troy Ezra is in the room. Are you related to George? OK, it's a brilliant, brilliant name.

Why do we have so many words that mean very different things, starting with para, paragraph, paranoid, etc? Well, para meant essentially for the Greek, it was beside. So a parasite, for example, is somebody who sits beside you at the table and pinches your food. That was the original word for that. And we have paranoid because paranoid means to be beside your mind. So it's almost like you are beside yourself. So para, beside, and then it comes from the Greek for minus. So beside or through is quite often where para comes in. And paragraph goes back to the idea that there was a marker in a manuscript that showed for a division of the text. So it's beside the main text, if you like. So they do often

quite have a common thread to them. But suffixes and prefixes in language are really complicated. Paradigm. Paradigm. Paradigm. What does that mean? Yeah, so a paradigm. That's a really good one. Okay, I'm going to list it. You were asking me all sorts of computers. A paradigm is a kind of perfect pattern, isn't it? A paradigm for something. Yeah, it's a model, isn't it? A model. Yeah, so that would be an example of a model,

and it comes from parabaside, and then actually, we're not sure about this, but it is linked to a Latin word meaning to show. So it's to show, to set alongside something else so you can follow it, I suppose. It's a model or pattern to follow. Okay. Yeah, I like that.

I'm just going back to the questions here. We have something from Harriet, our producer. You skipped some of the script. So if you have a chance to go back, that would be great. What? Thanks, Harriet. Okay. We'll go back to that but there's one one more here i'm not sure richard how if i'm pronouncing your uh name right katma yeah thank you richard can you shed some light on the origins of palm of the hand is it anything to do with the trees

and yes it does because the idea is that the palm leaves actually look like fingers. And fingers come into lots of different things, lots of different parts, because date as well. Dates of the year were originally counted on the fingers, and the date that is a fruit goes back to, or comes from a tree that has leaves like fingers. Well, hold on. Why aren't there 10 days in the week and 10 months in the year? Well, we used to count to 10. So that is essentially how we used to count up. So hang on, let me keep with the dates. So the fruit that is a date comes from a tree which also has leaves,

certain varieties that look like fingers. And they all go back to dactylos, meaning fingers. So those are all linked as well. Now, what did you just ask me? Well, if you're saying that fingers give you the number of days in the week and months in the year, why aren't there ten days? Well, that's why we get digits, so digits of fingers, so the idea of digits, it was one to ten originally.

I appreciate that. Yes. That bit I'd absorbed. So I don't know why we're in that. But you were linking it to dates. I don't know, honestly. And I'm simply saying, why are there not ten days in the week? Yeah, well, different numbering systems, they're really complicated.

I think go back to the ancient Egyptians, they had a different one, and it was all linked into the planets and the planetary influences and stars, etc. We could do a whole episode on this, actually. On counting. On dates and on counting time. Our plan is to come back occasionally to the Cadogan Hall. And if we do, we will always come with a different subject to talk about, so it won't be the same old stuff.

So we might talk about dates next time. Yes. Anyway, go on. We haven't got any more questions here, I think, but I am going to try and answer Harriet's questions to what we've missed out, which is, oh, yes, happiness. Seventh Heaven and Cloud Nine. I think Harriet really likes these, so she wants us to talk about these.

The definition of being on cloud nine. And in seventh heaven. And in seventh heaven. Yes. So do you know these? Cloud nine, I think, dates back to somebody like Aeschylus or Aristophanes. Hmm, okay. Well.

Over the years, I just let people know this, over the years I find this is a very useful way of flooring her. I usually say, I think you'll find Plato says something quite interesting on this, and for a moment she's lost. I have to say, the first time I met you on Countdown I think I was astounded because you would come across a word and then you would say, yes, first used in 1822 by Harald Estner. And I was thinking, how does he know this?

This is not in the dictionary. And it turned out that quite often it was just something to say. It was so convincing. The truth is... For ages I thought, I was so impressed. Now this is, if you'll regularly listen to this, basically I invent things as I go along. He does.

And Susie checks it in the dictionary. But I have to invent things as I go along to give her time to check it in the dictionary. That's true. That is very true. Okay, so at Cloud9, there was, in fact, a Cloud8 and a Cloud7 originally. So when it comes to numbers,

and it would be a lovely theme to revisit, quite often these are just arbitrary choices. So we have dressed to the nines and there are so many theories as to why that is to give it the full nine yards, that kind of thing, the whole nine yards. But in this one, there was a Cloud 8 and there's a lovely quote

from the comedian George Carlin, who said, Cloud 9 gets all the publicity, but Cloud 8 is actually cheaper, less crowded and has a better view, which I like. But what were cloud seven and eight? What was the point of them? So the idea is there was an international cloud atlas. So this is where some people point to the origin. And it classified 10 basic types of cloud. And the loftiest one and the fluffiest one was the cumulonimbus so the idea was that if you were on that one you were high above just enraptured really in the heavens but also there was a radio show in the 1960s in the US in which a character called Johnny Dollar did you

ever listen to this no because it was in the US and he was a fictional insurance investigator and he used to get up to all sorts of scrapes and And whenever he was knocked unconscious, he would be taken to Cloud Nine, and that's where he would recover. So a really sweet history. And Seventh Heaven is just in a lot of religions, a lot of theology, I think it's Islamic theology, and in the Talmud, in Jewish theology, God is said to exist in the Seventh Heaven with the angels, dwell with the angels and the souls of the righteous and of the unborn. So to be there is to be with God. I love the idea of angels with wings. I would be so disappointed if I get to heaven, it's not like that. I want it all on clouds and I want lots of angels.

Lots of fluffy clouds. of angels. Lots and lots of fluffy clouds. And I want St. Peter at the gate with a big book, you know, checking. I'd be so annoyed when I see you going through the fast trap. I don't think that's going to happen. Any more questions? No, I've got some lovely more words for you, and then we can go to the audience, definitely. So what you were going to ask me, I know, because I could just see it was coming to you, is if you were going to ask me whether there were words in other languages that are better at conveying happiness than English is. Isn't that what you were going to ask me? No, not for a moment.

This is... Play along. Something reminds me of the purpose. We celebrate the English language, the joys of the English language. But of course, we have to be inclusive nowadays. And you want us to include foreign tongues? Are there words, Susie, in other languages that express happiness? Well, funny you should ask that.

So, yes, well, German is, as I was saying to a lady in the audience just before the interval, that was my first love, so I will always come back to German. And there's a great word in German for pleasurable pain, and I'm not talking about the kind of sadomasochistic kind, I'm just talking about if you have a really itchy mosquito bite and there is something incredibly nice about scratching it even though you know it's going to sting like hell afterwards and that's called volve pleasurable pain volve and we don't really have say that again what's the word volve w-o-h-l

v-w-e-h volve-E-H. Voulve. Yes. Voulve. Yeah. Pleasurable pain. Pleasurable, you don't like that one. Okay. So there is also, this is a very recent coinage,

and we love to go back to classical languages if we want to invent a new word, because it just sounds posh and it sounds good. And this is strike hedonia. Now, hedonia, as you might guess, is linked to hedonism and hedonist. It's all about pleasure. And strike is in the sense of striking out to a new destination.

So strike hedonia is the pleasure of saying to hell with it. Oh, I like that. It's great, isn't it? Strike hedonia. Yeah. Anyway, Giles, we've got to finish in a minute. Yeah, we have. We've got to do my trio.

No, we've got to do the trio. Oh, we've got to do the trio. Oh, yes. We've got to. Before we get a note saying don have. We've got to do my trio. No, we've got to do the trio. Oh, we've got to do the trio. Oh, yes. We've got to. Before we get a note saying, don't forget to do the trio, let's do the trio. Thank you for your questions.

I'm sorry we haven't had time to answer them all. We will be back at the Cadogan Hall in March, I think. And we maybe will give more time to questions. Yeah, of course. We should do that. Meanwhile, if you want to send us an email, purple at somethingelse.com, we will attempt to answer your questions. Yeah, thank you for all your submissions for my trio.

So at the end of the podcast, I always give a trio of words. They may not be something that things that you will use necessarily in everyday life, but for me, they just, you know, they just illustrate something about the joy of words. So the first one was, what might periplus mean? How do we spell that? P-E-R-I-P-L-U-S. Periplus. Periplus. Periplus.

So this one comes from Russell Boots Taylor from Saturn. So a periplus, says Russell, is the secret off-the-menu sauce at Nando's, which, if overindulged in, may make you walk funny for 13 days. Unlucky for some, which is brilliant. And then Fingers Singleton from Marylebone says, even more than one expected to see from a submarine. Oh, very good. Peri plus. Oh, I like that. Periscope plus. Periscope plus. And then Phil Welch from Catford. A person who, through an accident of birth, has one more perineum than the norm. Which is great.

Now, those are fun ones. Those are fun ones. Should I give you mine and then you tell us what the real one is? Well, I think this might be the real one. Is this something to do with fairies? P-E-R-I. No. Ah. Okay. P-E. Is this something to do with fairies? P-E-R-I. No. Ah. Okay.

P-E-R-I to do with fairies. Yes, I thought peri was a word for a fairy. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to do a podcast? Because I think it could be very useful. Okay, what is the real peri? Okay, it's simply an account or narrative of a circumnavigation.

So a periplus is a voyage around the world. Oh, like going around the perimeter. Yes. So the next word is shiviness. So Sally Burgess from Cambridge. Shiviness is a rumoured ancient animal resident of a Scottish loch armed with a makeshift stabbing device. Ah, the shiv.

Okay, Harry E from London. armed with a makeshift stabbing device. Ah, the shiv. OK. Harry E from London. The sense of loss you feel when a series of succession ends. That's very good. The third one is from Novak Djokovic. From his immigration hotel. To be cold whilst in hot water, i.e. out in the cold. That's clever.

To be cold whilst in hot water, i.e. out in the cold. Oh, clever. I.e. out in the cold whilst the temp is 50 degrees and awaiting deportation. So, is that shiviness? Do you want to have an idea? No, I think those were so good. Okay, this is a really strange one. I don't think any of us are likely to need to use this in everyday life, but you never know.

Shiviness you will find in an old dialect dictionary, and it means the uncomfortableness of wearing new underwear. And actually, a shiv, we've obviously got the knife sense, but also it's a splinter, so it makes you feel like maybe they were just sort of very full of husks. Okay, and the third one, actually, I thought this might encourage some of you, and it certainly has. Dispester. Dispester. It's in the OED. And I love this one. This is from Nathan Tovery from Newcastle. Dispester is not datpester. I really like that one. Natalie Emden from London,

Dispester is to cease giving the person opposite you on the tube the skunk eye over the top of your mask as they aren't wearing one. Oh, that's good. Yes. And this is the one which I was expecting in some ways. Jeff Smith from Manchester, to dispester is to remove bumbling ministers from office. Very good. And actually, Jeff, you are the closest on this one because dispester is simply to get rid of a pest. Very good. To dispester. Yeah, to dispester. So have we almost reached the end of the show? We have, but you have a poem, I think, to share. Well, what happens normally is that we end the show with three amazing words from Susie. And I normally read or recite a poem. And today it's really a poem in prose

because we were talking about the seven secrets of happiness. I only mentioned one. There are so many. Well, there are seven of them. And indeed, I've written a little book called The Seven Secrets of Happiness where you can find the others. And maybe in coming weeks, I might drop the odd one in for people. But anyway, the first one is, remember, to be a leaf on a tree. The second one, incidentally,

is to cultivate a passion, something you really love doing in life. And for me, words is my passion. You need to have something usually beyond your work that is your true passion in life. So, cultivated passion is one. But one of the obvious ones, actually, is simply to be happy, to live in the moment, to savor the moment. Carpe diem. What does that mean? Seize the day. Seize the day. Carpe diem. That's one of the secrets of being happy, to be happy, to live in the moment. And here's some lines from William Soroyan. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. He was an American playwright, mainly. And I've seen a couple of his plays. They were remarkable. I

don't know why he's not better known. William Soroyan? William Soroyan. Anyway, in one of his plays, I came across this, which for me reads like a poem. And it's about, in the essence, living in the moment. Try to learn to breathe deeply. Really to taste food when you eat. And when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might. And when you laugh, laugh like hell.

Try to be alive. When you get angry, get good and angry. Be alive. Be alive. You'll be dead soon enough. Thank you.