Something Rhymes with Purple - Bokeh

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Strike a pose with us this week as we give you a snapshot of the language behind the lens of photography. Our hosts – one camera shy, one a lover of the limelight – guide us through the whirrs and clicks of the camera, unearthing the first paparazzo and the surprising first person to coin the term ‘photo’ along the way. Elsewhere Gyles reveals the rollcall of great photographers for whom he has posed, we discover the first uses of terms like ‘selfie’ and ‘photobomb’, and Susie has a brilliant trio of words to take with you into the week.  A Somethin’ Else production We love answering your wordy questions on the show so please do keep sending them in to [e-mail]  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to join the Purple Plus Club on 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.  Susie’s Trio: Clipsome: fit to be embraced or clasped Poppinoddles: old Cumberland dialect for a somersault Barcarole: a gondolier’s song  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Flash, bang, wallop. Ooh, what a picture. What a photograph. I remember that song from a lovely film, sung, I think, by Tommy Steele. We are in the world of photography this week on Something Rhymes with Purple,

the podcast all about words and language, the origin of words, the importance of language. And to make this possible, we have with us every week the world's leading lexicographer. In my view, she's very self-deprecating. She'd protest. But I don't know that there's anybody who knows more about words and language than she does. It's Susie Dent. I like the way you said Dent, because frequently my name is mangled in emails and you made a confession to me that you had done

exactly that, didn't you? I did. I wrote it. It's quite funny. I called you Susie Debt, D-E-B-T. I just started typing it quickly, Susie Debt. But that shows I realise how much I am in your debt. No, I've had worse. I've had Susie dead before now. I must have had a cold that day when I was giving my name over the phone. If you're new to the podcast, essentially what happens is this. We get together once a week and we talk about words and language because we love words, we love language.

And because Susie knows so much about the origins of words, she tells us when she knows, and if she doesn't know, she digs it out, about the etymology. What's the origin, origin actually of etymology? What does that mean? The etymology of etymology. It goes back to the Greek for word, essentially. So it is obviously, as you say, the word detection part. It's the study of the origin of words, but also crucially, the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history. And if you go all the way back to the very first root of etymology, you will find that it goes back to the Greek for true, which I love because etymologists

are essentially speaking the truth about a word. This is our 160th episode, which means you can go back over 159 episodes where we're talking about all sorts of things. We take a theme usually and use that theme as a kind of springboard for our conversation. Last week, I think our theme was time. This week, our theme is photography. You are a very reluctant photographic subject, aren't you, Susie? Oh my goodness. I'm the last person in the world, really, that should talk about photography because I avoid it at all costs. So it just shows on social media, really, because I love Twitter and really struggle with Instagram because it involves selfies, at least I think it does. And that's just so not me. I've always hated being photographed. I cannot look natural to a photographer's lens.

I had to do a photo shoot the other day and it was absolute agony. So where some people I know would go and look at this, such a rail of clothes that a stylist just brought and thinking, wow, I want to try all of these. I just, yeah, I basically just snuck or sneaked around the back of the screen and just thought, well, how on earth am I going to do this? And then just put on a rick to smile. Have you dug deep and tried to get to the origin of this? What's the source of this, Susie Dent?

Why are you like this? I just don't like being above the radar, do I? I mean, that's just me. I'm really, I love doing what I do. I love talking about words and I can do that publicly. I don't have TV nerves anymore. But when it comes to focusing on me, that's a totally different kettle of fish. That's just not really where I feel comfortable. Well, it's very interesting because I think you take a lovely photograph, but all the pictures we've got of us together, and we've had to do some occasionally formal pictures because we've worked together.

You are always looking away from the camera. And people laugh because you're usually looking at me so as to have something to look at. But the way the picture comes out, it often looks quite quaint that you're sort of gazing at me. Either gazing at you or just, yes, sometimes I look at you. Or looking anywhere, casting your eyes. Well, I don't mind being photographed.

Yeah, I can't caress the camera with my eyes. I don't like that. Oh, do you surprise me, Daz? You don't mind being photographed. And I never have. I've always been quite happy to be photographed. And I've been photographed by some interesting people. And given that what you offer our podcast is etymology, and what I offer our podcast is name dropping. I shall drop a trio of names of people who have photographed me. I think the best photograph taken of me was taken by a woman called Jane Bone. B-O-W-N. Have you heard of her? No. She is a great photographer. Oh dear. Was the photographer for the Observer newspaper for many, many years. And she

was famous. She used to turn up just with one camera, almost like a little box brownie. And she just took the picture and it was done. And she took, well, 40 years ago, a fabulous picture of me. She just turned up. I was standing at the bottom of some stairs. She stood at the top and it was over in five minutes. And that was it. Wow. That's my kind of photographer, I have to say. But often those instant pictures can work. You will have heard of Karsh of Ottawa, a famous photographer in the 30s, 40s and 1950s. I saw a wonderful exhibition of his photographs at Expo 66, 67. Anyway, it was a big international show in Ottawa. And his photographs were on display.

They were extraordinary. But that famous photograph he took of Churchill, Winston Churchill, I think was taken during the war, towards the end of the war, looking so Churchillian and gruff at the camera. That was taken instantly. Churchill came downstairs at Downing Street. Karshaf Ottawa was set up at the bottom of the stairs. And Karshaf Ottawa took the cigar out of Winston Churchill's mouth. Winston Churchill growled at him and he took the picture.

And so the picture of Churchill looking like the British Bulldog's turn and that is because he's had a cigar removed from his mouth a moment before. So instant photograph taken to me by jane bone she's one of my i've just as you've been talking i have googled jane bone giles bradford and i can't find it i can only find pictures of you in period costume uh looking slightly gruff you wouldn't find it on my website because to reproduce a picture by jane bone would probably cost several thousand pounds oh right okay so but if you go to her archive do look look her up, J-B-O-W-N, and you will see she's photographed everybody. And I think you'll find the pictures very striking.

Okay. Another photographer who has photographed me and who was a friend of mine was the photographer who began life as a theatre photographer, really, called Tony Armstrong Jones. He married Princess Margaret and was made the Earl of Snowdon, and therefore became known as Snowdon, photographs by Snowdon. And he, again, was a photographer where you could recognise a photograph by Snowdon across a crowded room. And he took some fabulous photographs, particularly theatre photographs,

from the 50s and 60s of people like Laurence Olivier. I know his story from The Crown. I'm not sure how accurate that may be. That is, but yes. I could do a whole programme with you. We might one day just get together and gossip about people. I could gossip a great deal about Tony Snowden. He was a very charming person, charming to have as a friend. I wouldn't go any closer than that because he could be that way, madness lay. But he was a genius photographer, no doubt at all. So I was lucky enough to be photographed by him. But again, I don't reproduce pictures by him because they cost thousands of pounds to have a picture by him. So if ever I want

other people have pictures by Snowden, I've got some pictures of me with Snowden. So my pictures are with Snowden as well as by Snowden. And then I think probably the most famous, well, maybe not the most famous of the three I'm going to mention today was a lady called Eve Arnold. Eve Arnold was a photographer, an American photographer who took famously photographs of Marilyn Monroe. Most of the best photographs of Marilyn Monroe were taken by Eve Arnold, and she became a friend of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe trusted Eve Arnold, and so the pictures, she's relaxed and she's easy in the pictures now. Well, Marilyn Monroe was staggeringly beautiful. They are fabulous photographs. And I was lucky enough to go to school with Eve Arnold's son, and that's how I met her. So when I was lucky enough to go to school with Yvonne's son. And that's how I met

her. So when I was a boy, she took some photographs of me. So these are great photographers who I've been lucky enough to be snapped by over the years. But they are well-known photographers because they took pictures of rather more interesting and remarkable people than I. But nonetheless, it's exciting to be photographed by the greats. Now, before we get to the origin of Snap, let's get down to basics and etymology. Photograph, where does that word come from? Yes, okay. So we have to go back to someone called Nisefor Nieps.

I've no idea if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, but he was a French inventor and he achieved something very significant in photographic history in around 1826-1827 when he permanently fixed the view of the courtyard of his house onto a pewter plate using bitumen. So using his process, essentially any plate could be produced and then etched and prints could be named from it. And so his fame rests not only on producing the first permanent photograph, but also on developing a way to reproduce it. And he originally called his method of capturing permanent images by the action of light on, I guess, chemically treated surfaces as heliography. And that means sun drawing.

And then others came along and obviously wanted to improve the process. So there was a guy called Louis Daguerre who painted scenery for, you know, the Saint-Lumière Entertainment in France. Yeah, those are amazing firework displays, etc. I mean, much more than that. He regularly made use of a camera obscura, which we'll come to as well. And he, after loads of trial and error, he used, I think, common table salt to kind of fix an image, if you like. And eventually, after lots and lots of different people had their hands in this, the term was coined photograph. And that was from the Greek photo, from phos, meaning light,

and graphia, as in autobiography, biography, graphic, which means writing. So it goes back to the Greek for write. So it is writing with light, which I think is really quite beautiful. goes back to the Greek for right. So it is writing with light, which I think is really quite beautiful. And when they were coined, they immediately gained acceptance. As I say, I think there's something sort of slightly poetic and imaginative about them. And then it fixed. And the Victorians were really captivated by photography. And it's from Queen Victoria herself that we have the earliest mention of the abbreviation photo.

Good grief. Yeah. So photograph comes in the early Victorian era or just before. Yes, yes. And the word photograph is first used in Queen Victoria's diaries or in a letter by Queen Victoria, something like that, is it? The first abbreviation, the first use of photo. So photograph was used particularly in presentations to the Royal Society. So we're talking about 1820s, 1830s.

And then Queen Victoria herself gave us a photo. So we've had photographs for 200 years. And they were taken, a photograph was taken with a photographic device, or was it called a camera from an early stage? So the camera, the word camera is actually very, very old. So the ancients, for example, knew that if light is allowed to filter through a tiny hole into a darkened room, you get images of outside objects and views. They're kind of reversed, aren't they? Sort of upside down on the wall. And so you could look at solar eclipses that way, for example. It gave you a really good way of tracing a projected object.

And then a lens was added to this idea in the late 16th century, and that really sharpened the image. And a mirror was used to turn it the right way up. And of course, scaled down versions of these rooms then were produced. So they became kind of boxes, if you like. And a camera obscura meant a dark chamber, but actually it was mostly a box that reproduced this idea of the room where, you know, the light had originally kind of filtered through. And then development of that

into a photographic device began with the man that I mentioned, Nyssa for Neeps, who placed a light-sensitive plate inside and he produced the first photograph, as I say, of his courtyard from an upstairs window. And so the full phrase camera obscura was fully fixed in the language. And then by the middle of the century, you had camera. Simple as that. And eventually- I would just say, Giles, oh, sorry. No, go on.

I didn't, well, camera is really interesting in terms of other members of the same family so as you say it comes goes back to the latin for a vaulted chamber and that actually was borrowed from the greek and so often which meant an arched room if you like but it kind of spread into lots and lots of different ways so of course in old french you have chambre which is a room uh you also have a comrade, somebody who shared the same room as you, originally a camarade. So you can see the link with camera there. And yeah, and you have chum as well, which was originally a sort of chamber mate. And just lots and lots of different kind of ripples from that idea of a vaulted chamber. That's fantastic. So the chamber, the room, chambre, your chambermate, as it were, your camaraderie, it's all the same word.

Yeah, all go back to that same word. Chamber, chambre. Oh, I think it's completely wonderful. Oh, I love language. It's fantastic. So in these cameras, what do we put? We put, well, in the early days, there was film was put once they tried to fix

it on a piece of film. Where does the word film come from? Well, film is really old, but originally it meant a really fine membrane. So, for example, the membrane covering the eye or the brain or the stem of a plant, for example. And then during the 16th century, it was extended to describe any thin layer of anything. And then in the 19th century, it was extended to describe any thin layer of anything. And then in the 19th century, it seemed a really good choice for the pioneers of photography because they applied it to the thin coating, the thin layer of light-sensitive emulsion that they spread on these photographic plates or paper. Very good. And the other details and things like negatives, all this is now ancient history.

Well, except not. I was visiting the University of Chester the other day because I'm the chancellor of the university. I was going around the department where they teach film and photography. And there they still have dark rooms where they work with all this original material. So they have film, negative, et cetera. Negative, I suppose that's just the opposite of positive, isn't it? Yeah, it's just the reverse, isn't it? It's just a photo that kind of shows the reverse of reality, if you like.

And I was just thinking how, you know, dark rooms, there's something really romantic about those, I think, or just something that really appeals to the imagination, the sort of seeing of a photograph come to life slowly as the chemicals do their work. Do you remember those Kodak instant cameras? I mean, gosh, I think those go back, well, George Eastman produced his first Kodak push-button camera, which had that whole roll of sensitive paper in 1888. That's how old that is. I know. remember and you didn't you couldn't risk opening the back and

exposing the film to the light and it all went wrong or it all scrubbed up you know um when you tried to turn it oh i had such terrible times the 1950s i did well likewise with cassettes trying to record the top 20 on a sunday evening and then and then getting stuck in this ball remember all of that nightmare um but yeah so kodak was the obviously proprietary name of a photography company i'm not quite sure where it comes from i'll have to look that up but a kodak moment was in a kind of occasion suitable for you know remembering it with a photograph but nowadays on instagram etc everything seems to be a kodak moment a picture it's like a painting is a picture. But it's interesting, we talk about photographs being pictures, not paintings.

What is a picture? Where does that come from originally? Well, a picture was originally a painting. So really old, it goes back to the Latin pingare, meaning to paint. And in fact, that gave us paint and it gave us pigment. And there's the saying, every picture tells a story, which of course applies very, very much to photography too. And the first to use that strap line was don't backache kidney pills that claim to cure everything from rheumatism to diabetes. And they use that as an advertising slogan. And then Charlotte Bronte had kind of anticipated this because that was in 1904,

but in the mid 19thth century she was writing the letter press i cared little for each picture told a story um but yeah so picture originally goes back to the idea of painting and it's a lovely metaphor i think for taking photographs i was referred to my pictures as snaps um why we call them snaps i suppose because they happen quickly instantly but what's the origin of snap yes the, so snap is a sibling of snack, and it's basically something that, as you say, is done with speed and that often makes a kind of quick, sharp biting sound. So it's probably born for its sound. There's a German word, schnappen, to seize, which means very similar things. So the idea of, yes, it's just grasping or grabbing the moment and doing something very quickly,

a snapshot. Yes. Disparaging people talking about Lord Snowden sometimes called him Lord Snapshot. Oh, did they? You didn't find that amusing. They don't like to be called snappers, photographers, understandably.

Or paps. I don't know whether pap is a... I don't know. That's obviously an abbreviation of paparazzi or paparazzo. What is the origin of that and what is a pap? Well, a pap is a kind of celebrity photographer, a society photographer, I suppose they'd call themselves. So that goes back to the name of one such photographer

in Fellini's film La Dolce Vita. And he was called paparazzo. So paparazzi is actually the plural. It's a bit like Panini and Panino. It's the name of a character. There was a character called Paparazzo. Yes. And it is a surname in Italy, actually. And so there have been various theories as to why Fellini actually chose that name himself. So according to him, the great film director, he said it was taken from an opera, Libretto. And he said that the word suggested a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging, which I think is a brilliant, brilliant description of what a pap does. And there's also a name,

I think it's a story called By the Ionian Sea, which may have influenced it as well, because in the dialect of that book, it was a word for a clam. So maybe it was a metaphor for the kind of opening and closing of the camera lens. So lots of ingenious theories as to why Fellini chose it. But I love the idea of someone who's hovering and stinging, as I say. That seems to ring very true to me. You mentioned earlier how you loathed selfies. What is the origin of selfie? How long has that been around as a word? Yes. If I asked you, do you have any idea when you think it might

have come about, a selfie? Quite comparatively recently. Is it a 21st century word? It is. It was Oxford Dictionary's word of the year as well, I think in the last decade. But actually, the first reference we have of it is from an Australian forum post, which was 2002. And someone just writes, sorry about the focus, referring to a photograph. It was a selfie. Yeah, so actually a little bit earlier than you might think, but still, as you say, 21st century. And lots and lots of, you know, vocabulary have emerged, I suppose, with the rise of Instagram and other social media, which rely on pictures. So photobombing, do you ever photobombed? Oh, constantly. Well, sometimes inadvertently,

you know, you're walking past, you look, and then suddenly you find you're there. People often do photobomb. I mean, the idea of photobombing is simply appearing in somebody else's photograph. They're trying to take a selfie and there you are poking your face in. Yes, exactly. 2008, that one. Oh, quite recently. There's a Japanese word, isn't there, for out of focus that some people use. Boke. Boke. I'm not completely sure how to pronounce that, but yes. So that's new for me, but given that I'm not actually a photographer but i have heard

of that word yeah it's a kind of hazing uh it's an artistical visual effect so it's deliberate and it's a hazing in the out of focus areas of a photo you know it's an aesthetic tool well i i think i managed to do bouquet work um inadvertently all the time i'm not very good at it i must say other people take such a good selfie. They just hold the camera out, click, and then everybody's in it. When I hold it out, you mostly photograph my thumb. My face seems to be very much bigger than everybody else's, because I just can't get it right. I tell you what I find really depressing, and I remember the first time I witnessed this. So I was really lucky to go to, I was just a

spectator. So I was kind of in the outer, I was just a spectator. So I was kind of in the outer rows of the Pride of Britain Awards. I wasn't a kind of invited guest or anything. I was just part of the main audience. And all I could see all around me was people holding up their mobile phones. I couldn't actually see what was going on on the stage. Holding up their mobile phones, recording the entire ceremony, rather than actually living it themselves.

They were just recording it. I wonder if they were ever going to look back at this recording that they'd made. But they completely missed the moment because they were so intent on looking through the lens of their camera rather than on the phone, rather than actually, you know, what was unfolding in front of their eyes. I found that really depressing. When I was writing a book about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, one of the Queen's queries said to me,

who'd been with the Queen for many, many years, said the strangest thing that's happened over her time as Queen in the old days, whenever the Queen appeared, people would applaud. And now it's always silent because they can't applaud because they are taking pictures of the moment. So the queen has come to say hello and instead of saying hello to the queen they're looking at the queen yes quite bizarre you're right it is it's quite alienating i think um maybe that's because i'm just not a

massive fan of photos but i mean i love photos and i love the art of photography but i just don't understand the idea of living through an experience that's secondhand all the time second second hand remove it's really and also where where do we distort these photographs i mean i i'm guilty of this i'm i'm taking pictures all day long not just selfies i see something amusing you take pictures of your scrambled egg quite often i i do i liked i do that in my different breakfast it makes me laugh um I'm sitting there. Well, anyway, but the point is, what's going to happen? Where are these going?

I mean, in the old days, my grandparents kept photo albums and they carefully, you know, once a year they would cut them out or put them in the album and it was a record of their lives. Now we're taking dozens of photographs every day. I know.

And again, I find that it's funny. I've got one child whose childhood is chronicled absolutely in tons of photo albums. So she can actually physically sit down with those and look through them in the traditional way. And another child who has grown up entirely in the digital age, so all the photographs of her are on my computer. And it's not the same. It's not the same sitting at a computer screen and just looking at them, I think. So, yeah, I'm sounding very, well, not anachronistic, but very just old-fashioned. You're sounding old, Susie Dent.

Nostalgic. I'm sounding old. That's what I meant. I'm sounding old. But yeah, there's things that I don't like about it. Well, look, that's us in the world of photography. Let's flashbang one. One's very comfortable. One's very uncomfortable. Yes, exactly. Maybe we should put out a picture of the pair of photography. Let's flashbang one. One's very comfortable. One's very uncomfortable. Yes, exactly. Maybe we should put out a picture of the pair of us. You see, you look quite normal now. Oh, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to take a photograph. Now, look, see, you don't, I shouldn't have done it without, oh, look, she's looking charming. There we are. I'm in my coat. Let me take my coat off. I will try. I'm sitting here in my coat to keep warm.

Well, I'll try and take my one now. Look, she's hiding behind her mug now, everybody. I'll put these pictures out on the day we put this out. Okay. Let's take a quick break. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me.

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Welcome back to Something R with purple uh with me susie den and giles brandreth who has been extolling the joys really of being photographed whereas i have pretty much been hiding below the desk and that's where we are on photos but we are united in our response to your correspondence because we absolutely love it. We love hearing from you genuinely. We do read absolutely everything, even if we can't answer every single one, much as we would love to. But we do have a great voice note. We've been getting voice notes in, which actually mean the world to us because we actually get to hear you. And we've had one come in from Lindsay Baumeister. They have great, great names, our purple people, Giles. Do you think they make them up just to make sure that we notice them? Probably do.

Baumeister. Master of building. Is that what it means? Baumeister? Yes, Baumeister. An architect or something. Anyway, Lindsay, let's hear from you. Hi. I play in an awesome online quiz where we choose from six emojis to select our clues. I've always said emojis as the plural, but on one of the quizzes, our American host said six emoji. Thank you, Lindsay Baumeister. Thank you, Lindsay. Where do you stand on emojis?

Oh, I think they're great fun. I like an emoji. Okay. You never sent me one. I would swear if I looked through our correspondence, you never sent me an emoji. But this is because my wife has told me to be very circumspect when I send communications, such as she says, don't do all the people you've never met before, Giles, are sending you emails with kisses on. She says, don't, just don't. Don't respond in kind. So I am quite cautious, which is interesting, isn't it?

Is this to avoid litigation? Well, yes. Particularly if you actually haven't met the person, you don't know the person, you don't know how it'll be received. So my wife's advice to me is on the side of discretion, Giles. And also, I might inadvertently think, oh, well, let me send that person an aubergine. advice to me is uh on the side of discretion giles and also things can be you know i might inadvertently think oh well let me send that person an aubergine it's rather an amusing looking vegetable and the next thing you know uh you're up in court we have a lovely makeup assistant countdown whose name i will not give out here but she was on a certain dating site

and was having a really lovely conversation with this guy who sounded really nice and he was was just, they were just talking about what they were doing. And she said she was cooking and then sent five aubergine emojis without having a clue of their secondary import. So we all had a nice laugh at her expense with her, I have to say. Well, what is the origin of the word emoji and what is the plural? Yeah, sorry, Lindsay, we got carried away there. Well, it emerged in the 1990s and it's from Japanese, as you would have guessed, and where E is a picture and emoji means a letter or a character. So is there an S at the end of it? Well, some house styles, and when I talk about house styles, these are the kind of editorial policies of certain publishing houses, several newspapers, et cetera. And certainly in the US, they take

quite a hard stand on this. So they come out definitely in favor of emojis. So they are in favor of giving a word, even if it is a loan word from another language, an English plural. And so they put the S on. And so the New York Times followed suit. And I think even Emojipedia online, which is where you will find explanations of all your favourite emojis, they also put the S on. And emojis does kind of sound right, given that it's become quite naturalised in English now. However, if you want to remain true to the Japanese, you should stick with just emoji, because in Japanese, they definitely would not put the S on. So as I say, English usually makes plurals using English plural rules rather than the rules of the

loan language, but not always. And it's a very complicated issue. I say emoji, but I think most dictionaries would give you the option of either. Oh, you say either rather than, and you say either rather than either. Let's call the whole of either. Oh, you say either rather than, and you say either rather than either. Let's call the whole thing off. I think we've been here before. But yes, the Oxford dictionary, for example, says the plural same, emoji or emojis. So you can take your pick.

Okay. Booby trap. This is going to be a fun one. Dear Susie and Giles, my son, Ed, eight, is very keen on pranks and often says booby traps for his older brother, Harry, 11. He asked this morning,anks and often says booby traps for his older brother Harry, 11. He asked this morning, why are they called booby traps? And I didn't have an answer. They both listened

to the podcast with me in the car, so thought you might know instead. Do you? Is it linked with the bird, for example, the red-footed booby? Or maybe the nickname for the mammary gland? booby? Or maybe the nickname for the mammary gland? Thanks. Graham. Ed and Harry. Oh, love that. Tell us all about the booby bird. Well, it is linked to the booby bird. So thanks to Graham and Ed and Harry. This is an absolutely brilliant question. So booby has been a nickname for a stupid person for quite a long time. Early 17th century, it began to emerge. So we're talking the 1600s here, and it probably goes back to the Spanish bobo, and ultimately the Latin bulbus, B-A-L-B-U-S, which meant stammering. So somebody who wasn't considered to be particularly clever, so slightly unkind right from the start. But a booby bird was a large tropical seabird. So it

was of the gannet family and it had brown, black or white plumage, really brightly coloured feet. But it was well known for being slightly foolish. So here's a quote from 1634 and it is a travel journal from a sailor. One of the sailors, espying a bird fitly called a booby he mounted to the top mast and took her so unfortunately captured the bird the foolish quality of which bird is to sit still not valuing danger in other words the booby bird could easily be taken and i guess eaten by sailors on board a ship because they were not observant enough to be aware of the danger around them. And it's probably from that, the idea of someone who basically is a little bit clueless, including the poor booby bird,

that we get the idea of a booby prize and of a booby trap. And a booby trap meaning someone who, a trap for someone who will walk straight into it without being particularly careful. Very good. Thank you very much for being in touch with us. If you have a query, a question, a point you want to make, it's simply purple at somethingelse.com. Many people tune in because they want to improve their vocabulary and you couldn't have a vocabulary that is greater or better informed than that of Susie Dent. Each week she gives us three words that she finds intriguing and that we'll enjoy. What's your trio this week? Yes. Intriguing definitely has the emphasis here because I'm not sure that

any of my trio are going to be suitable for everyday use or useful, but I like them anyway. Clipsome. So to be clipsome is quite an old label for meaning fit to be embraced. So if somebody is clipsome, you just want to give them a hug. I think that's lovely. Not a clip around the ears, but a clasp. Clipsome. Clipsome. And the next one is old dialect for a somersault. So what some of us would call a roly-poly, forward roll,

or an old Cumberland dialect, popping noddles. A popping noddle, because your noddle was your head, and your popping noddle is you're noddle was your head and your poppy noddle is you're kind of popping your head over in a somersault. I just quite like that, a poppy noddle. And finally, this just takes me in my imagination to beautiful Venice, a barcarolle, B-A-R-C-A-R-O-L-E. A barcarolle is the song of a gondolier. Not going to be particularly useful for any of us, as I say, in daily living, but I love it anyway. Oh, and Venice. I haven't been to Venice for years.

It is, it's such a beautiful city. Could it be the world's most beautiful city? It's just amazing. My daughter went with her family to Venice at Easter, which was a fantastic thing to do. went with her family to Venice at Easter, which was a fantastic thing to do. And at Easter, my son and his wife and some friends got together for a poetry reading evening. And this is a fun thing to do. Have you ever done such a thing? No, I haven't. Some people find reading poetry tough. They think, you know, it's not something they've done since school. But actually the way to do it, I think, if you want to reintroduce yourself to

the world of poetry, it's a fun idea to get two or three friends together, some supper, a bottle of wine, and each come along and read a poem and then talk about it. And it's quite a good way of actually discovering, do you understand the poem? Do other people understand the poem? Is it important if you understand the poem or not?

The fun of poetry. So I recommend that. It's a book club for poetry. or not? The fun of poetry. So I recommend that. It's a book club, but for poetry. It's a poetry club. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly that. It's not as heavy in terms of work as a book club.

Yes, that's true. You just turn up with a poem to read and it's over. And it can be a funny poem, serious poem, silly poem. Anyway, our son, Bennett, and his wife, who's an actress, Kasia Engler, they and a couple of friends of theirs who are actors who've been with the Royal Shakespeare Company most recently, they came and they read the poem by Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, which I've actually heard it read once before. The actor Michael Pennington did a performance of it, and somebody played the lute while he read it, and puppets acted out the story of Venus and Adonis. The point is, it was fascinating, really enjoyable and interesting and accessible. And what I discovered from my son, which I didn't know, is that this poem was the best-selling poem of the Elizabethan Age.

Indeed, the best-selling book of the Elizabethan Age. 10, the best selling book of the Elizabethan age. 10,000 copies sold. Isn't that amazing? People in Elizabethan times went out, of course, there wasn't so much to do, and they bought copies of this and read it to one another. People wanted to have a copy of Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare. Is that nice? That's beautiful. Yeah, right. Looking forward to this. You'll be pleased to know I'm not going to read it to you because it would take one hour and 22 minutes,

which is the length of time it took them to read it to us. So they got through the bottle of wine and the bits of pizza while they were reading. I'm going to read you a sonnet by Shakespeare, a well-known sonnet,

Sonnet 116. The reason is Shakespeare is in the air because we've just passed his anniversary. Shakespeare, we know, died on the 23rd of April, 1616, and we think he was born around the 23rd of April, 1564. So here is a poem that he wrote as a young man, sonnet, it's 116 in his sequence. Let me not, to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments.

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Oh, yeah. It's just breathtaking, isn't it? It's good stuff. It's such a short life, just you reminding us of his birth and death dates, you know, just how much he achieved in those, what, 52 years? I know, 52 years, extraordinary. And I think for us, Calvert, he wasn't writing at all.

Maybe he was just counting the money and trying to get back into Anne Hathaway's good books. That's what you've got to do, chaps, at the end of the life. Try to make it up to the wife if you can. I'm just throwing in a bit of philosophy at the end of the show. Is that it? Is that all we've got time for? Oh, if people like poetry, I ought to mention that we have this special thing. Purple Plus Club is the special thing,

which will give you some bonus episodes on words and language. And you can find out all about it in the regular programme description. So, yes, we'd love it if you could join us for those. And we are really grateful that you joined us for this. So thank you so much for your company and please do get in touch keep getting in touch because we love hearing from you purple at something else.com something rhymes with purple as always is a something else production it was produced by lawrence bassett and harriet wells with additional production from chris skinner jen mystery jay beal Teddy Riley, and the invisible man himself.

I haven't seen him for a while, Charles. No, but he's Gibson when you do. It's Gully.