Something Rhymes with Purple - Bang-a-bonk

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

Word nerds Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth explore the surprising origins of the English language. A Somethin’ Else Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello, my name's Giles Brandreth. I'm Susie Dent. And did you know, Susie, that this Brandreth is a word that's in the dictionary? B-R-A-N-D-r-e-t-h and when i looked it up last i think the definition of a brand with was a substructure of piles is dent in the dictionary uh dental yes dents in the dictionary i and in no way is it a good uh a good word in the dictionary i think it's always about bashes and you know having your um ego dented or It probably actually goes back to French conquerors,

so Anglo-Norman conquerors who had funny teeth. So you think about dent in French and the dent, they probably had some kind of prominent tooth work going on. So the dent, as it were, when your car is bashed into, there's a dent, is the same sort of dent as dentist, dentistry? Well. Dental? Is it the same origin? Possibly. I mean, there's a topographical element there too.

So there's dent in Yorkshire. So it could be that I've got Yorkshire roots. I tend to go for that one rather than the, you know, the dent. And Brandreth is a hill in Yorkshire. Well, there you go. So with a couple of hills, I've been called a hillock or something quite approaching it in my time. So we're a couple of Yorkshire hills, also words in the dictionary,

and we are old friends. When did we first meet? I don't think I've been doing Countdown very long, and I have now been doing Countdown for 26 years, so a long time ago. Gosh, it will. How long have you been doing Countdown? I began doing Countdown when it began. Yes.

Countdown, for people who are listening to our podcast and don't know it, it's a TV show in Britain and it's been running since 1982. Susie sits in a corner of the studio and has access to the Oxford English Dictionary where you work? I don't actually work there anymore. In those days you did, didn't you? Yes, I was one of many people who sat in the corner and then was booted out and another one came along. And essentially we judge the words that the contestants come up with

and try to come up with the longest words from nine letters that we can as well. So it's fairly full on for the 30 seconds of the famous countdown clock. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. We're going to talk about words and language and the importance of words and language. And we both of us, I think, love language. I love language because my parents loved words and language. But I've become a sort of passionate about it because I've realized as the years go by that language is power. Language is what defines us. It's really what makes us human.

You can do marvelous things with a hug. You can send a warm message with an emoji. But somehow you need words to really communicate. The famous philosopher Bertrand Russell said, no matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest. Only words can do that. And in my experience, words make all the difference. Words give you a happier life, a healthier life. Being able to use the language I say, people say to me, a healthier life? And I say yes, because the research shows that if you communicate more clearly, you can communicate to research shows that if you communicate more clearly,

you can communicate to your doctor more clearly, nurses more clearly, and you can understand what they're saying. You actually can look after yourself better. You'll be more successful in life and in love. Words are everything. Think Cyrano de Bergerac. Oh. He knows great words.

Love of his life. Cyrano de Bergerac. Oh. He knows great words. Love of his life. Cyrano de Bergerac. One of my favourite plays, favourite movies. Who is the French actor in the movie? Gérard Depardieu. Gérard Depardieu with your nameless conk. What is the origin of the word conk? That is a very good question.

I know it's dialect and I have no idea. It may be related to conkers, do you reckon? I don't know. Oh, well, I should know. You can look that up. I'm going to look it up. So the idea of this podcast is that we're going to talk about words in different ways, shapes, forms around the world. And we're going to share with you the origin of some words when we come across them, words like conk.

But we're also, I think, I hope, going to show you ways in which, if you're interested, you can increase your word power. Can you give me conch? OK, I have the wonderful OED online in front of me. Conch, the nose. It says, possibly related to conker, it is slang. I don't think they've completely nailed the origin down, but it says possibly a figurative application of conch. And that's a shell, of course. And the first conkers in the conker game were actually played with shells of mollusks rather than the horse chestnut fruit that we know today.

So that's where conkers come from as well. Well, listen to this podcast. You will live and learn. And then, of course, you'll die and forget it all. But in the interim, we hope you will find it quite amusing. Susie, why are words important to you? Words have always been important to me, but I actually can't give you a reason because it's so instinctive for me. And I always tell the story of when I was sitting in the bath, pretty much as a toddler, I think. Maybe I was about three, maybe a tiny bit older, and just marvelling at shampoo bottles sitting on the side of the bath,

noticing that the ingredients were written in different scripts, scripts that I couldn't decipher at all. But I remember seeing the different shapes and marvelling at the fact that there were children across the world who would be able to understand one of those lines, but not the other, so that there were different things going on in people's brains, I guess. Obviously, my thought pattern was not so sophisticated when i was that young but just just marveling at the shape of words and the differences between them and from then on in i just became very nerdy indeed and would sit in the back of the car reading vocabulary books but first it was french and german that really really got to me first it was foreign languages. And I would sit in the back of the car. My sister would be playing around with

eyelash curlers. I would be literally absorbing as much vocabulary as I could. But I honestly can't tell you why, except they thrilled me and they still do. I think I was introduced to words by my parents, both of whom had a love of words. My mother was a teacher and she was a remedial English teacher. And so she loved language and communicating that way. My father was a lawyer, an old school lawyer born in 1910. So he was virtually an Edwardian. And he loved telling stories about old school lawyers. And my father was brought up near Liverpool. And when he was young, the famous barrister in that part of the world was a man called F.E. Smith. Have you heard of him?

No. He became the first Earl of Birkenhead. He was Lord Chancellor. Very, very, very famous barrister. And he was in court one day pointing at the accused and said to the accused, or rather said to the jury, at the time of the alleged offense, the accused, the time of the alleged offense, the accused was drunk as a judge. At which point the judge intervened to say, I think you'll find, Mr. Smith, the expression is drunk as a lord, as your lordship pleases. And the play on words, I remember hearing this when I was a little boy

and thinking, oh, it's so clever. And so I loved the fun you could have with language. I have to just interpolate something there, which is, you know, drunk as a lord. You know, the swear word bloody, and I know we're going to devote an entire podcast actually to swearing. Yeah, look forward to that, chaps. It used to be drunk as a blood. Blood's been kind of rowdy aristocrats in the 18th century.

He would go out and paint the town red, sometimes literally. And they were the bloods. They were the aristocrats. They were those with the supposedly good blood. And so drunk as a blood became bloody drunk. And bloody, our swear word, actually isn't, we think, anything. It hasn't anything to do with the blood of Mary or Christ, but everything to do with those aristocratic rowdies

and hooligans who were known as bloods. They were bloody drunk. I always thought it was by our Lord's blood. Yeah, no. Nothing to do with that at all. No, not as far as we can tell. This is an educational podcast. Do not be put off by that. It's incident. Yeah, no. Nothing to do with that at all. No, not as far as we can tell. This is an educational podcast. Do not be put off by that.

It's incidental learning. How amazing. Yeah. Painting the town red. Where does that come from? Well, those in Meltemobre would say that it did come from those bloody drunks who literally took a sort of can of paint and just graffitied with that red paint all the walls. I think walls of the theatre, etc. We know that that incident did take place.

Not quite sure. And one of the things that we will talk about lots, I think, in the course of our podcast is the fact that we can't always nail down the sort of tricky origins. And we have to be word detectives always. And that work is ongoing. But anyway, the dates don't quite fit of that episode and the first records that we have of painting the town red. But who

knows? Sometime the link may be found. But as I say, we're just digging all the time. We're kind of archaeologists as well as detectives. Let's then begin at the beginning. We are speaking in the English language. Am I right in saying it is perhaps the richest language in the world? Well, that's up for debate, isn't it um there's a famous quote i think it might be go to possibly who talks about english being um a country garden so you can sort of wonder you know at your will that french is like a sort of noble park and very organized um quite sort of purist i suppose and that german is a deep dark wood that you can get completely lost in. So me being a Germanist, I love German. It's just for me, it's the greatest love of my life. And that was probably because I adore English.

But for me, German is the one that really, really has it. I would kind of agree with that. You can get entirely lost with German. I know it has a bad rap all the time. But so can you get lost in English. And part of the thing I really want to do is bring back some of the joys of English that I think we've lost a little bit over time. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the English language is a great river into which so many tributaries have flowed. That's true. And maybe the difference between French and English is that French has attempted to stay pure. It has attempted to be this rather refined garden you spoke of, like the gardens of Versailles, whereas ours is more rambling and open to...

Because we've accepted words, whereas the French actually have a system, don't they, where they try to keep foreign words out of the language. Yes, well, they have an academy. We have always resisted an academy. So they have a sort of legal authority who can dictate and preside over language. I have to say it's a bit of a losing battle.

I mean, you know, as everyone knows, the French use English words, whether it's le weekend or le sandwich all the time. Although some people have wanted it over the centuries, we have always thankfully resisted it. And I think that is why English is as robust as it is today. But we haven't just accepted words. We have gone out and, you know, hoovered them up actively. We have plundered words from every single continent we've encountered. So it's 20% the French language of the English language at its most generous. And as you say, that 20% includes le week-end, le snack bar, le feel-good factor, le Brexit. I should just say that, of course,

we have no authority. So when people say to me, can I have this word, Not in Countdown, because obviously we have to have an alphabets there and there. It is the Oxford Dictionary and what's in there is what you can have. But outside, in the general world, people will often say to me, is that a word? And the answer I always give is yes, if you want it to be. Because any word is a word. You know, we can all make up a word and it exists. It's all, when it comes to the dictionary, it's all about democracy. It's all about usage. And for a word to go in, we can all make up a word and it exists. It's all, when it comes to the dictionary, it's all about democracy,

it's all about usage. And for a word to go in, it has to be used often enough. And that has to be evidenced in lots of different places and we can go into that. But, you know, language is as elastic and as liberal as you want it to be. So anything can be a word. It's constantly evolving. It is.

How has it evolved? What were we speaking a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, 2,000 years ago? Well, it's such a complicated story, really, because as you say, English is an amalgam of so many different influences. But we probably start with Old English. So Old English displacing the language of the Celts, which I have to say their language survives in very, very few words. It's quite surprising how dramatic those invading Germanic tribes,

the Angles and the Saxons, were. What's the oldest word we're currently using? What's the oldest word around? Well, if you look at Celtic words, you'll find them in place names like Tor and Pen and things like that. So they would be very good contenders. But then, of course, you've got, and I'm going to get really nerdy here, you've got the ultimate ancestor of English, which is something called

Proto-Indo-European. Now, that is an ancient, ancient language that gave us so many different languages. So sort of all the Romance languages will descend from this Proto-Indo-European. And we shouldn't get into that because it is incredibly complicated. But that's our sort of all the Romance languages will descend from this Proto-Indo-European. And we shouldn't get into that because it is incredibly complicated. But that's our sort of ultimate sort of forebear, if you like. But then we have Old English. And then quite soon after, we have the Vikings, of course. So the Vikings came, they plundered. They were savage, as we know, although after a a while they did coexist quite happily with um with

the natives and so english and old norse of the language of the vikings sort of coexisted quite happily and then you know as will always happen the uh you know one of them will kind of gain supremacy and viking words we can see in so many fantastic vocabulary items today so we've got um the obvious ones like ransack um but we've got quite cute ones like freckle um we have husband we have dagger and knife and that kind of thing and um you know quite often it was the sort of language of aggression but quite often it was just as i say the language that was earthy and rich um and came from their scandinavian heritage so you know already you've got all these things going on. And then we had another huge conquest, of course, at 1066,

when William was made king. He spoke in Latin and French and speak a word of English. The Normans flooded English with their aristocratic French. So it's William the Conqueror conquered the language as well. He did not speak the Celt language. No, not so much. He did not speak the Celt language. No, not at all. He did not speak as Vikings spoke. Nor the Anglo-Saxons, no.

So he brought, what languages did you bring? French. He brought French. And Latin. And Latin. And we again sort of adapted. So we came up with something, which was a sort of strange hybrid called Anglo-Norman.

So we're going to talk about spelling, I know, at some point. But quite a lot of the weird spellings that we have today go back to that kind of other strange hybrid of French and English. And I'm right in thinking that people who are interested in oratory, like Winston Churchill, would always recommend the Anglo-Saxon language over the French and Latin language, so that blood, toil, tears and sweat, these are old Anglo-Saxon terms,

whereas blood would be sanguinary in the Latin or French version. Toil would be labour, as in laborious from the Latin labor. So that if you want to speak directly to people, you should use Anglo-Saxon. That's absolutely right. And it's all about register, isn't it? You want to be formal, choose the French. You want to be earthy, plain speaking, choose the Anglo-Saxon. Is that why French was the language of diplomacy for so many years?

French was the language of diplomacy. French was the language of aristocratic pursuits. So quite a lot of our sort of everyday vocabulary items come, for example, from falconry. So if we talk about an old codger, the codger was the cadger. He was the person who actually worked with the falconer and held or caught the hawks. They were haggard hawks, haggard going back to a wild, untamed hawk. That was the first meaning of that. Allure was the leash that the hawk was kept on. And so it goes on. All these aristocratic pursuits, I mean, we now know the well-known fact

that it was the sort of English peasants, if you like, who looked after the cows and the sheep and the pigs. And it was the French elite who ate the results. So cows, pigs, sheeps, all Anglo-Saxon words. Pork, beef, muffin, muffin, mutton, etc. Well, come on to muffin. That's another episode. I think you'll enjoy it.

They're all French words. So, I mean, you know, that's a very well-known fact, but it absolutely highlights who had the power in those days. Hold that thought, Susie Dent. Break time. RBC Advantage banking account for students so you can vibe with friends even more this semester. POV, you're unlocking more perks for less with RBC. Up to $330 in value is a combined total of three available offers, each in accordance with the respective terms and conditions. Limited time offer ends October 31, 2024. Conditions apply. Visit rbc.com slash student offers.

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Must be legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly. Carlsberg Canada Inc. Waterloo, Ontario. How do words nowadays get into the language? It's evolved over thousands of years. You mentioned, you said you were a bit nerdy. I happen to know, I hope I'm right in this,

that the word nerd originates from a story by Dr. Zeus, Dr. Zeus. Yes. The American writer, died not long ago, children's writer. Yeah, how many? He wrote a story in the 1950s that had a character called Nerd. Yes. Who had nerdish qualities. Slightly nerdy qualities.

And quite what the journey was from there, we're not sure. that had a character called Nerd, who had nerdish qualities. Slightly nerdy qualities. And quite what the journey was from there, we're not sure. Actually, do you know what? I shouldn't have used the word journey. I hate it when people talk about journeys these days. But anyway. Oh, I can't bear it. You're right.

When we get onto it, nuanced is another one. It used to be a nice word, but now it's so overused. I agree. But I'm liking your nuanced answers as you go on this journey. Okay, good. Thank you. And while we're on nerds, I'm also a geek. Who knows what's cooler? I think a geek is cooler than a nerd, personally.

So I probably should call myself a geek. But geeks originally were performers at freak shows. And they were the sort of assistants sometimes to the charlatans, but also the sort of people who would do weird acts on stage, but slightly obsessive acts, slightly extreme acts. So they would bite the heads off live chickens and eat them in front of their audiences. Awful. It goes back to a dialect word,

gek meaning fool or simpleton. And then it became somebody who was extremely obsessive. That gek and gull. Well, I played Malvolio, the part in Twelfth Night. And I remember, you've made me the most notorious geck and gull. There you go. Yes, that's a fool and a dupe. And that's the original of geek.

Geek. Comes from geck. Comes from geck. We are learning a lot. I made a list the other day of new words based on Brexit. Because I came across, obviously, Brexit somebody. I read somewhere that Brexit was the fastest moving new word of our time in the sense that it had gone around the world more quickly. Blog may have been a word that has gone further than Brexit, but Brexit more rapidly went around the world than which seems possible.

And clearly it goes into the dictionary because it's in newspapers. possible. And clearly it goes into the dictionary because it's in newspapers. And Brexit is a modern new word, wasn't heard of ten years ago, but here it is. Everybody now is using it around the world. It's what's called a portmanteau word. It is, from Lewis Carroll, that word.

Lewis Carroll was somebody who liked putting two words into one basket. He did. Portmanteau being a Victorian carrying case. Yes, two sides. Oh, it had two sides to it. Two sides, yesmanteau being a Victorian carrying case. Yes. Two sides. Oh, it had two sides to it. Two sides, yes. So you opened it up, put things on either side, put it together and you have the blend, which

we also use for portmanteaus. And Lewis Carroll wrote, Alison Wonderland came up with such portmanteau words as... Chortle. Chortle, which was... Chuckle and snort. Very good. Love that. Mimsy. Mimsy, which was what? Mimsy. Mimsy was flimsy and... That's in Jabberwocky, isn't it?

While you're checking it, because she's able to cheat. Can I tell you? I am cheating, big time. She has actually got her apple, which used to be, when I was a boy, it was just a fruit. Now it seems to be a machine. Anyway, what does Mimsy come along with? Okay, let's give you Mimsy. It's definitely flimsy and

what do you reckon? I know galumph comes from gallop and triumph. Gallop and triumph. And actually the meanings change a little bit because, yes, for him it was triumphantly galloping and for us it's more like I glumped to the kettle this morning. Miserable and flimsy. Miserable and flimsy.

Log comes from web and log. Yeah. Do you know what Botox comes from? Because I don't know why anyone would have Botox if they knew what the origin of the word was. Botulinum toxin. Botulism and toxin, you're right. But botulism doesn't sound very nice. And toxin is a kind of poison, isn't it?

Botulism is actually related to pudding, believe it or not. Because the word pudding, you know all the puddings in olden days, if you saw one on Henry VIII's table, it would definitely be a savoury pudding. Like a steak pudding, something like that. And they were known as boudin. And ultimately it goes back to the Roman

botulus, meaning sausage. So there you go. So it's like having a sausage pushing you forward. I go to the dentist now now to have my teeth checked, and the man is trying to flog me Botox. That's what it's come to. Talk to him about sausages. Please.

I don't know where that would end up. But anyway, so I'll give you one more, a few more of these. Biopic. Do you pronounce that biopic? Well, that's a big debate. Yes, it should be biopic. Everybody talks about biopics. Yeah, but it's biography and picture, isn't it? Yes.

Bootylicious? Bootylicious, booty and delicious. Britpop, bromance, quite like that. Portman Bros, they're called. Bruceploitation. Do you know that one? Bruce? Bruce Lee and exploitation. Movies that are Bruce...

Bruce... Bruceploitation. What a mouthful. No one's ever going to use that. Banoffee, as in Banoffee Pie. Oh, yes. What's that? Love that.

Burkini. Burkini, Burko and Burkini. Yeah. So these... Actually, one of the interesting ones, I think, is Brunch. I love Brunch. Yes, that's one of the really early ones. 1897, I think. All right.

Very nice. People come up with new words. How do they get of the really early ones. 1897, I think. All right. Very nice. People come up with new words. How do they get into the dictionary? Right. Well, contrary to belief, you can't petition for a new word to go in the dictionary. So we had, when I worked at Oxford University Press, when I was working on the dictionary, we had protesters, for example, one day from the British Potato Council, I think it was, and they really objected to the use of couch potato because they thought it was

defamatory to the potato. So it was very unfair to the poor potato because they said, you know, it kind of encouraged the idea that potatoes cause you to be fat and therefore lazy. So they wanted couch slouch instead. That didn't really work. Then, of course, we had McJob and McDonald's very vehemently objecting to the McJob when it went into the dictionary, which at that time was a sort of poorly paid, you know, sort of bottom of the rung job.

But it hasn't stood the test of time. It hasn't actually, no, because I think they've made big efforts to improve their employment. But in my view, it should still be in the dictionary, because let's say you're reading a novel, a bit of tricklet published in the 1890s,

that might include the word McJob. You wouldn't know what it was. You're reading it in 2020, and you actually want to look it up. So would McJob still be there to help you through understanding? The thing about the Oxford English Dictionary, the wonderful historical Oxford English Dictionary, is once a word goes in, it never comes out. So famously, the dictionary makers, the dictionary compilers at the Oxford English Dictionary are

very careful about what they allow in. So a word has to have shown some longevity, has to have proved itself really before it will go in. On the other hand, there's another team of wonderful people who work on the current English dictionaries at Oxford. And what they do is they study vast databases of English. Now, they go by a really boring name called corpora, plural of corpus. And a corpus is actually really exciting, I promise you. So essentially, you're looking at words in action, in use, from novels, blogs, transcripts of text conversations, scholarly journals, newspapers, you name it, any kind of source of language of English language that you can think of or go into an English language corpus. And from that, we're able to see which words go with the word that

you're particularly looking at. So what are its companions, its normal companions? How often it's being used, of course. Where it's being used, whether it's in form, whether it's slang, whether it's more formal, et cetera. So we can deduce all of this from these wonderful corpora. And I was thinking about this the other day, for example, because I was talking to a German speaker and she was using, she's ambitious, those two words, well, those three words,

in a very positive way. She's ambitious. And what she wasn't getting is the nuance, sorry, I hate that word, that you will pick up in a corpus where if you and I were to say, oh, she's ambitious, there's a slight edge to it.

Very unfairly, I have to say, because you might not think that of a man. But there is an edge, isn't there? And you will be able to pick that up from this corpus because you'll see all sorts of examples. So if a word is used often enough, then it will be put down as a candidate for the dictionary. So as I said before, it's all about democracy. It's all about usage. And the dictionary makers are not judgmental.

I knew many years ago a man called Robert Birchfield. Yes. Who was a very distinguished editor. I met him once too. Lovely man. And I worked with him when I was young because I'm a bit older than you. A lot older than you. Anyway, and he had a terrible time because people in the Jewish community were objecting to definitions given to the word Jew and Jewish in the dictionary.

And he was trying to explain to them that the dictionary simply records the way this word has been used. That doesn't mean to say we approve of the use of it. We are recording the use of it. But I imagine that's problems you get all the time. Very much so. So I remember when I first started, people objecting to Welshing on someone, you know, the idea of that.

And actually, that's a... What does Welshing mean? Welshing means kind of... Just cheating. Cheating. Really, yes. And, you know, the sort of use of Welsh in that context has been going on for centuries.

It doesn't make it right. So, for example, using a Welsh comb means you haven't used a comb, you've just used your fingers and your hair looks a mess. Lots and lots of examples like that. But as you say, we are famously, what we will say is we are descriptive. We aren't prescriptive. It wasn't always the case. So Samuel Johnson, when he set out to make his dictionary, he wanted to freeze English. He wanted to stop it or kind of preserve it, if you like, before it went to the dogs, because he already saw slang infiltrating the language and, you know,

mucking it up, making it all sort of dirty. So that's what he wanted to do when he set out. In the course of writing his wonderful dictionary, even though he was looking at the language of the greats and the classics, etc., he realised that he couldn't preserve it, that it was a futile task. And he used a wonderful phrase, which is, to enchain syllables is as futile as lashing the wind. Isn't that beautiful? I must just tell people, if you're still listening, there'll be lots of these podcasts on a regular basis. I am guaranteeing that we will do one from Dr. Johnson's house in Goff Square

in London off Fleet Street, where some of his books still exist, where we can touch his DNA. Dr. Johnson was a lexicographer and a writer around 1720, that sort of period. Yeah, 1756. Oh, 1765 was his date. A bit later than I thought. So we will be going to Dr Johnson's house. I want to go to the birthplace

of Noah Webster. Oh, yes. Because we are international. We are global. And Noah Webster is the man who defined the American language as opposed to the English language. Don't know where he came from.

Somewhere in New England, I bet. So we can get to New England. It's too exciting. But we've got to go for today because I've got to go to host an awards ceremony. You mentioned the Potato Council. Yes. I once hosted the British Potato Awards. Amazing.

I hope you didn't talk about couch potatoes. I didn't talk about couch potatoes. Not one in the eye. No spud you like jokes. None of that. They took it quite seriously. I do a lot of that sort of thing. Then, most recently, I did the EPIC Awards, E-P-I-C, the EPIC Awards,

the Egg and Poultry Industry Council Award. But the one I'm doing tonight is the British Funeral Directors Awards. Ah, okay. Third year running. Black humour. No black humour. They're lovely people. I bet.

It's a very necessary service. Of course. Can't be said they don't enjoy a cold winter because it is good for business. But they've got a sense of humour. There are two big prizes at the end of the evening. One is for the lifetime achievement. That's for thinking outside the box.

And the other... I knew this was coming. Is for the crematorium of the year, the creme de la creme. We have to talk about death at some point in our journey together. I'm using journey again there. I want to. Because it's really important.

And actually, in the Middle Ages, they talked about death all the time. Why are we so scared of it now? We'll have a podcast on death. Oh, Susie, before you go, you know more words than I do. I know quite a few words. How many words do you think we know? Somebody listening to this who went to uni, went to school, speaks English, how many words will they have in their vocabulary roughly?

It depends. I would say if you have 100,000 words at your disposal, you're doing really well. Shakespeare only had between 30 and 50,000 and look what he did with them. Yeah, there we are. So it's not the words you know, it's the way you use them. You use them amazingly. And you want, through our podcast, to encourage people to increase their vocabulary, to grow their vocabulary. And what trio of words have you brought for us today? always be um alphabetical but um these are all words that were once in um a dictionary it could be a dialect dictionary so it could be a local glossary from yorkshire or it could be in the wonderful oed the wonderful oxford you're just going to give us the word is and shall i guess the definition or just okay yes this is gonna be fun this one right i'm gonna start with a phrase actually bang a bonk oh i like it you should have finished on that one bang a bonk yeah hey i love it i'm writing this down bang a bonk this Yeah. Hey, I love it. I'm writing this down.

Bang a bonk. This is old dialect for sitting lazily on a riverbank. Isn't that gorgeous? That's gorgeous, but I can tell you it's bound to be misunderstood. Of course, that's the beauty of it. When I go home and say to my darling wife, shall we bang a bonk this afternoon? She'll beef me on the nose. I don't want to be there at the time.

Okay, another B for you. Now, this is, I'm not looking at you, Giles, bloviator. A bloviator? Yeah. I don't know. This is somebody who goes up flying in an aeroplane without having had the eye test. A bloviator. A bloviator, or a bloviator, you could pronounce it. That might give you a bit more of a hint. A bloviator? It's a braggart or a blower of hot air. As in blowing? Yes, bloviating is, actually it goes back to Latin roots, not really anything to do with blowing, but if you pronounce it bloviator, it will give you an idea. Bloviator, and that's a braggart, a boaster. Yes. Or somebody full of hot air. Yes. Full of hot air. I'm writing these down. Yeah. And I just love the sound of this one. And I'm hoping that, hopefully we've had one or two today from you. And also hopefully we'll have a few in our future podcast.

Boffalers, a boffaler. A boffaler, is that a kind of cheese? No, nothing to do with mozzarella. It's an uproariously funny joke. A boffaler? Yes. It makes your sides shake. I think it's fantastic.

Eventually, we'll have to have some sort of website where people can go and actually look up how you spell boffler. But for the moment, thank you for your bofflers, Susie. You're fantastic. Shall we actually go... Banger bonking. Shall we go banger bonking? Let's do it.

If you've been enjoying this, please do rate and review us. It'll really help other listeners find out where we are for future episodes. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Paul Smith with additional production from Russell Finch, Steve Ackerman and Josh Gibbs. Are you really going off to an awards day tonight? No. Oh.