Something Rhymes with Purple - Botulus

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

*Cough cough*... This week Susie and Gyles explore the language of diseases. From Cholera to Mumps, and Malaria to Influenza, they have you covered. Also, we reveal the WINNERS of our 'To Dent' and 'To Brandreth' competition! We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Shackbaggerly: Disordered and unkempt. Komorebi (Japanese): The patterns cast by sunlight filtering through trees. Gruttling (old East Anglian dialect): A strange, inexplicable noise. Gyles' poem this week was 'Sick Room' by Billy Collins Every time Canaletto painted Venice he painted her from a different angle, sometimes from point of view he must have imagined, for there is no place in the city he could have stood and observed such scenes. How ingenious of him to visualise a dome or canal from any point in space. How passionate he was to delineate Venice from perspectives that required him to mount the air and levitate there with his floating brush. But I have been sick in this bed for over sixty hours, and I am not Canaletto, and this airless little room, with its broken ceiling fan and it monstrous wallpaper, is not Venice. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. If you're new to this podcast, we're very thrilled that you have joined us. We, in this case, is myself. My name is Giles Brandreth. I'm based in London, in England, in the UK. And my colleague, my podpanion, a word I think she invented, is the leading lexicographer, Susie Dent, who is based at her home in Oxford. Hello.

Is podpanion a word you've invented? Is that your word? Yes. We don't break bread together, though. Remember, that's the etymology of companion. It's somebody with whom you eat your bread. Go on. And your mate is somebody with whom you eat your meat as well. That is. The whole idea of friendship revolved around food. But we don't do enough of that. You and I don't.

But this is because you are so slim. I should be doing more of that because I'm now on yet another diet. Oh, no. You keep posting your amazing breakfast items. I love it. But this is the reason. Because I do this thing now called X that was called Twitter and Instagram. And I put up pictures of what I'm eating, simply because that's what people seem to like.

If I put up a picture of my face, I get no likes at all. But put up a picture of what I had last week or the other day, Omelette Arnold Bennett. Yes. Nobody, you got actually thoroughly just hauled over the coals for that one. Because everyone was saying, well, the least you could do is tell us who made it. Do you remember? Yeah. In your replies, but it was very clever. Well. Your tweet. Arnold Bennett, in my view, is one of the most underrated English writers, and he wrote some wonderful novels, of which my favourite is

The Old Wives' Tale. Around the beginning of the 20th century, up until the 1920s, he was one of the most successful British authors in the world. And he wrote a lot of books set around the Potteries. Have you read any of them? I haven't. This is terrible. No, we haven't really talked about him. I can't wait to hear how The Omelette comes in. Well, The Omelette comes in this way.

He was a very successful writer. He enjoyed, I mean, he came from the Potteries, but he ended up living in London. In fact, he ended up living in a block of flats where many years later my parents lived. Wow. Chiltern Court above Baker Street Tube Station. Amazing. A very interesting block of flats built in the 20th century. Many a distinguished writer lived in this block of flats. Outside, there are blocks galore. There's a block to Arnold Bennett. There's also a block to HG Wells. And in the flat next door to my parents lived Huey Green, television presenter. And Huey Green had a toy railway set, and he would allow my younger brother to go into his flat to look at his toy railway set. My younger brother wasn't allowed to touch it because Huey Green then in his 60s was playing with it himself. He didn't want any child playing

with it, but he did allow him to look at it. Anyway, Arnold Bennett used to go to the Savoy, the hotel in London, in the Strand. And the chef, I'm trying to remember which chef this would have been. I did once know. We can check it out. The chef there created for him this special omelette, which was named in his honour. And essentially, it is an omelette with extra haddock, well, smoked haddock, and lots of cream. Cream, cheese, omelette, and haddock. It is delicious. It's kind of like keggery, almost, but more eggy. Much more eggy, much more creamy. And this is the extraordinary thing. The date I went in there, I'm trying to remember what day it was. Anyway, it was a day the other day, and I saw this on the menu.

I was in a restaurant called The Coal Bear in Sloane Square in London, a very nice restaurant where they do a kind of all-day brunch there. That was it. It was like a brunch. And I saw this omelet on Benet. I thought, oh, I'll have that. Now, the extraordinary coincidence is this. I photographed it, and I'll have that. Now, the extraordinary coincidence is this. I photographed it and I sent it out.

And people came back, as you rightly say, saying, you know, who is Arnold Bennett? What was this omelette made? What's so special about it? I don't think you even said it was from Arnold Bennett. Oh, no, you're right. I think we had to guess. And people were like, the least you could do is give the chef some credit. You're right.

I said, I love his novels and I love his omelette too. Yeah. So I didn't reveal that it was Arnold Bennett who wasn't a chef. It was made for him by the chef of the Savoy. Yeah. And, uh, but, but this is the uncanny coincidence. I then later in the day, because people were saying Arnold Bennett, who was he, I thought I must better check his dates before I replied to these things online. And I looked him up on Wikipedia. And would you believe it? Arnold Bennett died at 10.30 in the morning on the same date that I was eating that omelette. So at the same time that I had ordered the omelette and was eating it, it was the literal anniversary of his death. That was a lovely commemoration. But I didn't know that

that was happening. I mean, that was just an extraordinary coincidence. We ought to do an episode on foods and menu items named after people. Oh, of course. Because I know we've done eponyms before, and obviously these are, but specifically food, because there are so many. Bellini and nacho and all sorts. That's a lovely idea so this meal that i'm talking about must have taken place because i've now checked him out again the 27th of march 1931 i wonder if he had an omelette that day and where is when the anniversary

of when he died he put on a bit of weight uh he was born in the 27th of may 1867 in hanley stoke-on-trent the other thing I know about his passing in 1931 is that there were still horse-drawn carriages in London at that time. And outside the block of flats, Chiltern Court, where he died, while he was dying in the days up to his death, they put straw down in the street to quieten the noise of the traffic. Right. Because this great man was so severely ill.

Oh, that's amazing. And he was only 63, you know, when he died. Well, illness is quite relevant to our subject today. It is, because that's what we're going to talk about. Oh, I ought to mention, actually, speaking of writers, if people are interested, we do have the Purple Plus Club, don't we? We've been doing an A to Z of people who are witty and wise. We might have done Arnold Bellington there and we didn't.

But anyway, if you ever want to join the Purple Plus Club, it's a little optional extra, fun new subscription episodes and ad-free listening. It's £2.99 a month. So you can find out more about becoming a subscriber by simply going to basically wherever you go, wherever our website is. Yeah, amazing. We're going to talk about disease.

We are going to talk about disease. Are they named after people on the whole? I think they are. Because I seem to remember. Yeah, no, they're not. There was a boy at school called Ehrlich, E-R-L-I-C-H. And I think we knew him as syphilis. The reason being that I think a professor, Ehrlich, think we knew him as syphilis. The reason being that I think Professor Ehrlich

had discovered a cure for syphilis, or maybe he discovered syphilis. So I like the way you've gone straight in for syphilis. I'm going to start with disease itself, if that's all right with you. Okay, please, please. I'll calm down now. Disease is one of those words which when you break it down, it makes perfect sense. But because we have changed the pronunciation, we don't quite see its origin as clearly as we might. And disease simply is dis-ease. You are ill at ease. You are troubled. It is a lack of ease because of your affliction. So that is where that comes from. And do you know what? They are, in fact, really interesting, particularly in terms of medical beliefs at the time that names of particular diseases were named and described. It tells us quite a lot about the history of medicine when you look at the lexicon of disease.

And I suppose we ought to start really with covid and the coronavirus which is the disease with which all of us have become too well acquainted well i'm sorry i'm just out there i hope we'd finished with covid but if you want to bring it up again how depressing but still yes it's all going to be slightly depressing but um interesting is covid a disease or is it i mean yes i think it's a disease yes an acute disease in humans caused by coronavirus. And obviously COVID-19 is the 19th form that has been identified. That's what I was querying, whether it was a disease or it was a virus. A virus is what gives you the disease.

Well, it is exactly, so it's both. So the corona bit is quite interesting. So the co-bit is short for corona. And that is a reference to the appearance of the virus, because when it's studied through an electron microscope, it looks a little bit like the solar corona, so the corona of the sun. So it is all about its appearance. And the corona of the sun is almost like an envelope around the sun and other stars. And you can usually see it only during a total solar eclipse. And it's like this irregular glow that surrounds the darkened disk of the moon. Who came up with the name COVID? Because it must be the most widespread neologism of our times. Well, although not quite a neologism because this was simply the next step, wasn't it, sadly? 1968.

1968? Yes. So this is from Nature, the Nature Journal, 16thth of November 1968. And it says, in the opinion of the eight virologists, these viruses are members of a previously unrecognized group, which they suggest should be called the coronaviruses, to recall the characteristic appearance by which these viruses are identified by microscope. So yes, it's been around for a little while, obviously. And obviously, it includes lots of different outbreaks to SARS, if you remember that. MERS was another one. So this was the latest and deadly incarnation. Okay.

So shall I carry on with diseases? Carry on. But I'm afraid just jump in with syphilis, if you don't mind, since I've raised the expectations with the congregation, with the audience. And the reason that came particularly into my mind is because, as I mentioned, at my boarding school, now, 60 years ago, there was a boy called Ehrlich, E-H-R-L-I-C-H. called Ehrlich, E-H-R-L-I-C-H. And now having checked this, there was a distinguished scientist called Paul Ehrlich, who was a pioneer of chemotherapy and of cures by arsenic. He lived from 1854 to 1915. And according to Google, his chemotherapy research led to him formulating the arsenic compound salvosan, which was used in the treatment of syphilis during the first half of the 20th century until it was superseded by penicillin. And of course, being schoolchildren, we all thought it was funny to call this

perfectly pleasant young boy, who happened to be called Ehrlich, I don't think he was necessarily related to the great Paul Ehrlich. Syphilis. But he was known forever as Sif. I can't remember what his first name was. We just called him Sif. So is Syphilis anything to do with a Sisyphus myth? Where does Syphilis as a word come from?

No. It is all from the title of a Latin, well, it was the name really of a character in a Latin poem who also featured in its title, from the early 1500s. And it involves, he might have been a shepherd, I'm not sure, but he was the supposed first sufferer of this disease, which is contracted chiefly during sex, but also congenitally. So it can be contracted by the infection of a developing fetus, for example. But yes, what's interesting to me about syphilis is how every single nation tried to blame it on someone else. Yes.

So it was the French disease for the Italians. The Russians called it the Polish disease. The Polish called it the Polish disease. The Polish called it the German disease. I'm not sure. I think the Germans might have called it the Italian disease or Neapolitan bone ache was something that we decided on. And yes, so that syphilis is an eponym of sorts, as you said, because it's named after this character in the poem. I'm going to go on to mumps because we were lucky. Well, we weren't lucky enough because we weren't inoculated against mumps, were we? We tended to have it as children, whereas now, thankfully, there is a vaccine. Do you remember having mumps?

I do, and I think we were almost encouraged to have mumps when we had a certain stage to get it out of the system. Is mumps the one that is dangerous for pregnant women to come close to? Yes, rubella is particularly dangerous. So mumps involves the swelling of the parotid gland. So these are the salivary glands in the face. But I think it's most dangerous maybe for male adults who can become infertile from it, actually. So not particularly nice. Rubella was German measles.

And that was first identified by German doctors. I think when we were looking at one of our episodes, we were wondering why it was called German measles. And it is because it was not because it was prevalent in Germany, but because it was discovered by some German scientists. And that one is particularly dangerous for pregnant women. But just going back to mumps. Mumps it yes it is yeah and it um if you think of mumps you almost have to make a kind of well not if you think of it if you say it you have to make a sort of grimace and that is indeed where it came from to have a sort of miserable expression um and it was also used to mean a fit of melancholy or sullenness. And if you remember, there is the most brilliant word mumpsimus in English, which is not related.

Actually, that is from Latin and a mistake by a priest in the Latin communion prayer. But it's that kind of idea of a mumpsimus or somebody who is just sort of petulant and sullen. So that is where that name came from. And measles, since you've mentioned measles, it's another good word. These are good words. I mean, they're fun words, aren't they? They are good words, aren't they? Yes. So I don't actually remember measles, but I think I probably had that too before the MMR vaccine. That's the one that causes a red rash and a fever. that actually goes back to it's not very nice it goes back to a dutch word we think um marzel which meant a pustule so it's all about the spots um so yeah not not particularly but in fact measly when you talk about measly you know well that's a

measly helping if someone short changes you when they're giving you a plate of food. That actually first described a pig that was infected with measles. And from there, it came on to mean sort of small or malnourished in some way, and then ended up with the spots that we associate measles with today. I remember an old joke that said the two books you've got to take on an English family holiday. the two books you've got to take on an English family holiday. One is Rain by Somerset Maugham, and the other is The Diseases of Children, because it always goes wrong. I mean, chickenpox. Did you have chickenpox as a girl? I had chickenpox, yes. And we still don't vaccinate against chickenpox, although they do, as I understand it, in the US. And there's shingles, of course, as well. So chickenpox

is quite interesting because that is a riff on smallpox. But the chicken bit, it just indicates something that it's a little bit smaller or milder because chickenpox is milder, certainly, than smallpox. And so they thought, oh, well, chicken is sort of, you know, you associate chicken with kind of cowardice, don't you? Or sort of lack of strength. And that is why it was applied to chicken pox. I assumed it was the effect on your skin. Because with the pox, you know, picture a bald chicken or chicken that's been plucked. Picture the flesh of the chicken, those little lumps on it.

That's why I thought it was called chicken pox. No, that's where we get goosebumps from. So, you know, when the flesh looks like that of a plucked chicken or bird, goose. The word pox is universally used. Yes. In Shakespeare, when they refer to the pox, it's usually to a sexually transmitted disease, isn't it? Yes. So pox goes back to the word pock, P-O-C-K.

We still talk about pock marks, don't we? But ultimately, that again means pustule. So it's all a bit grim when it comes to the spots. Also, there's diphtheria, which is pretty grim. But that one is quite interesting because it's gone by many, many different names. Syrian ulcer, malignant croup, and beloined sore throat, weirdly. So it's named, actually, from the Greek for leather, weirdly, because it's named for the tough membrane that forms in the patient's throat, believe it or not. And it's been described, diphther theorya in medical reports and hippocrates as well you know we're talking millennia ago um it was described then so it's been around for a

very very long time and this greek origin explains why the spelling is not what you would expect yeah i would spell it d-i-p-t-h-e-r-i-a but but actually it's D-I-P-H and then Theria. That's because of the Greek? Yes, that's because of the Greek. And Hippocrates was a Greek physician, of course. And he's regarded pretty much as the father of modern medicine, really. And we call doctors take the Hippocratic oath because it's really from his body of ancient Greek medical writings. Diphthong and diphtheria, are they related? It means twice, D-I, die, twice, and thongos, meaning voice or sound. So no, I don't think they are. I'm just going to double check for diphtheria. No, it's simply from that idea of

skin or hide. So there's none of that two prefix in there. But speaking of throats, do you remember that there is one adjective, or at least one adjective in English, which actually began with an affliction of the throat? Give me a clue, see if I remember. It's tricky. It's a tricky one, but it's nothing that you would ever associate with medicine. It's a synonym for something that's a bit cheap and shoddy. Tordry. Tordry?

Yes. Do you remember the origin of Tordry? Yes, Tordry. Audrey. Well, you're absolutely right. Oh. Because Tordry, it's quite a long story this but saint audrey was the patron saint of ely and essentially she became terminally ill with a throat tumor and she thought it was because in her youth before

she became religious she had won lots and lots of showy extravagant jewellery, including necklaces. And she saw this as retribution for her vanity. And in her name, St. Audrey Laces, because she became the patron saint of Ely, and she established a religious order, etc. They would sell St. Audrey Laces at markets to commemorate her. And these became so sort of cheap and shoddy over time. They became not saint audrey laces but tawdry laces and tawdry then shifted into english to mean as i say cheap and up to you know pretty poor quality um but it all started with this thing have you ever been to ely on one

of your book tours i haven't the wonderful bookshop they have there called toppings they have they have toppings up in edinburgh and they have them in Bath and several places. But anyway, they've got a lovely branch in Ely and they do their events in Ely Cathedral, which is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world. So it's in East Anglia, not that far from Cambridge. Go there. If people are listening around the world, when you're next in the UK, go to Ely Cathedral. Definitely. Well, can I give you a few more diseases? Please.

Not a sentence I say every day. Okay, so cholera takes us back to the theory of the humours, the bodily humours, which you will remember, that was the driving force of medicine for centuries. And according to the theory of the humors is that the body contained four substances, four principal substances, and they were called humors, blood, bile, black bile, and phlegm. And if you had too much of any one of those, your body was slightly out of balance, but it formulated your disposition. It formed your character. So if you were sanguine, you had too much blood. You had too much blood, essentially. If you were phlegmatic, you had an overabundance of phlegm. If you were melancholy, you had too much black bile because

mela means black in Greek and collie is the bile bit. And that bile also gave us cholera. And that goes back to the Greek word for bile. And it was originally an umbrella description for any infection that led to vomiting and diarrhea and all sorts, but was thought to be the body's way of getting rid of bile, according to this theory. So that's cholera, which is still a danger today. And then during the pandemic, when you and I were staring at each other on screens and giving each other company during the lost months, do you remember me talking about quarantine, how I found that weirdly reassuring? Yes. Now, why do I associate this with the Venice in some way?

Well done, yeah. Absolutely. It does go back to the Venice for 40. And it was the 40 days that any ships arriving at the port of Venice were obligated or obliged to stay at anchor. Because if it was carrying an infectious disease, it would have worked its way out by then. the time of the Black Death, essentially, which swept across Europe in the 14th century. And the reason I found it reassuring is that, you know, we were really suffering, all of us, some obviously far worse than others. But there was some reassurance to be had in that, you know, people had gone through this before, and those who were lucky enough to come out the other side had done so. So sometimes I think looking at the history of these times, there is some solace to be had that, you know, these trials have beset us before, if that makes any sense. Some diseases also can disappear. We can actually conquer some.

I don't think, no, we've conquered malaria totally. Have we touched on that one? No, we haven't, sadly. Malaria is really interesting. um malaria is really interesting when i say that it looks back to beliefs um and sometimes superstitions about bodily illness and health um malaria goes back to the italian for bad air because it was used to describe the unpleasant air that came from the marshland surrounding rome and it was that sort of marshy terrain that was believed to cause the disease we now call malaria. And of course, we now know that it's the mosquitoes that

were breeding in these marshy terrains that caused the disease. It wasn't the air, but that was what they believed at the time. And Horace Walpole, the politician and statesman who gave us the word serendipity, of course, he wrote in 1740 of a horrid thing called the malaria that comes to room every summer and kills one. So yeah, that one is very old and sadly, no, not conquered. And in some areas, we have done vast amounts or made vast amount of progress in getting rid of some diseases. Tuberculosis, for example, although still present, that was huge for a while, pulmonary tuberculosis. And that goes back to a Latin tubercle, which was a lesion in the lungs that was characteristic of tuberculosis.

You can give us just one more before we take our break. Okay. Which one should I give you? What about botulism? Oh, well, it's always made me slightly laugh, but it's a slightly sardonic laugh that botulism is linked to botellus, meaning sausages, because botellus, or even in Latin, botulus, meant a sausage. And that was the first identified source of the disease botulism. And I think it came from imperfectly preserved sausages or the meat that was the cause of the disease botulism and i think it came from imperfectly preserved sausages or other meat that was the cause of the disease and botulism that botellus is also behind the word pudding weirdly and of course puddings were primarily savory once upon a time including

you know a bit like black puddings that were sort of wrapped up in intestines and contained meat etc so they're all linked pudding and botulism and sausage. It's not very funny. I don't know why I have a side on it. I suppose maybe since I became a vegetarian, but that's not very nice. So I'm going to move on. Move on. Before we move on to the break, can I check something with you? Yes. You said there that serendipity, which became the name of Con and which then became Sri Lanka, was coined by Horace Walpole.

Yeah. And you said Horace Walpole, the politician. And I'm always confused because I think there are two Horace Walpoles. Oh, okay. One who was a famous writer and an art historian, man of letters and all that. And politician. Who was a famous writer. Yeah.

And an art historian, man of letters and all that. And there was another one who was, I think, the politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that sort of thing. And you're telling me that it was the politician one who came up with serendipity, not the writer one. Well, I think he was a writer and a writer and a statesman, wasn't he? So he essentially had read a very, very old fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendipity, which was a fairy tale written about Sri Lanka. And the three princes were always making discoveries either by accident or chance that they weren't exactly looking for, but that helped them along their way. So he decided that serendipity would be a really lovely word based on serendipity for this occurrence of events by chance that were happy accidents and happy chances.

So I don't know if we're talking about one and the same, but I think he was a writer and a statesman. Well, I think the man you're talking about was. I'm just really wondering who the other Horace Walpole is. i've invented the other yeah i don't know i'm not sure um okay i think i mean this was in i think he wrote a letter in the 1750s and that was when right yeah that's the time of this one was also but walpole he was the son of robert walpole is that what you're thinking of no i'm thinking your man your man is Horace Walpole, who I think is a sort of later novelist.

And I've always got the two confused. It could be because I've invented the second one. I don't know, I've not heard of the other one. Horace Walpole, I'm just looking him up now. So who wrote The Castle of Otranto? Maybe it's the original Horace Walpole. Yes, yes. Well, I think I it's the original Horace Walpole. Yes. Yes. Well, I think I've invented this second Horace Walpole.

But if anybody out there knows of another Horace Walpole, or in fact, if there is a Horace Walpole out there who is alive and well and currently writing wonderful books that we ought to be reading, do get in touch with us. We have a very easy email address to remember. So easy that I'm going to invite you, Susie, to tell us what it is. We will make sure that we give you the correct. And if anybody knows about the other Horace Walpole, do let us know. Let's take a break while we calm down.

Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars like Ed O'Neill. I had friends in organized crime. Sofia Vergara. Why do you want to be comfortable? Julie Bowen. I used to be the crier. And Aubrey Anderson-Emmons. I was so down bad for them at one Miranda when I was like eight.

You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Miranda when I was like eight. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder? That took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime!

Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. With the best celebrity guests. And hot takes galore. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel.

Well, welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple. mind back to Giles's birthday episode the other week, we asked you, the purple people, to come up, if you could, with definitions for to brander us and to dent. And we didn't quite expect the volume of emails that we got, but we were extremely appreciative of them. And we can, I mean, Giles and I read them. We weren't necessarily flattered by them, but we were appreciative of them. I think you discarded the unflattering ones, if I remember rightly. But we did read all of them. And actually, to be fair,

we did say to our wonderful producer, Naya, that actually, could we not read them all out? But there were too many. So we can now announce our runners-up and our winners. Giles, do you want to do the Brandreth ones? Well, I want to explain, first of all, that we chose, we asked you to give us verbs, definitions for verbs, because, of course, a dent has a real definition, doesn't it? A dent is a noun,

and it means, well, it means a sort of indentation, doesn't it? Use the word again. And also, it might be short for tooth, I don't know. There is a brandreth as well, isn't there? And there is a brandreth, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary rather unpleasantly as a substructure of piles. I think it's like a sort of trivet. It can be made a sort of three-sided thing that can be made of piles of stone or iron. Anyway, that's a brandreth. But we asked for definitions. And let me give you the runners-up. You're right. I did discard a few only because they were a bit samey. That's your story. That is my story. And also I wanted to get a little

bit of variety. So the runners up, do you know, I should have chosen the winner for you and you should have chosen the winner for me. Oh, that's very true. I would have kept in all the ones that you didn't like and you could have done the same for me. Right, that's very true. I would have kept in all the ones that you didn't like. Yeah. And you could have done the same for me. Right, carry on. I didn't dislike any of them. Okay. I just felt some were predictable. Okay, not insulting?

Not insulting. To be talked about, you know, is a good thing. Oh, I thought there was a good Oscar Wilde-ism coming out of that. There is a good Oscar Wilde-ism coming out of that, which will come to me. But my mind is now so full of Horace Wolf Hallf's role that I can't think about Wilde. Tracy Lewis, congratulations, you're a runner-up, to Brandreth, is to work and talk enthusiastically. On my school report from the 60s, it said, Tracy works hard and talks hard too. Cheek. Nowadays, it would say, Tracy likes to Brandreth, which I thought was

quite clever. Yes. Jonathan offers us to brandreth to go without one's breakfast bran flakes. I felt that was ingenious. Lorraine Estura-Spierson from Pinole in California, to talk to every single person at a party or event so you can name drop in conversation at future parties or events. That's the first interpretation of it. And the other one is to have a wide net of interpersonal connections that embodies the feeling behind the world is getting smaller. You know, I met so-and-so in such-and-such place years ago. Wow, you sure know how to brandreth. I think it's quite clever.

And the winner in my book comes from jake martin in kentucky to brandreth to elucidate with loquacious alacrity yeah because i think that sums up that sums it up it's concise. It's compelling. It's convincing. Nice. It's very nice. Exactly. It is very nice. Well, as are mine, to be fair. So I've probably been a bit selective as well. But thank you to all the,

every submission. I didn't get so many for To Dent, actually. I think we were inundated with brandreths, but not so many dents, but the ones I did get, I thoroughly enjoyed. So runners up, Colin Kikini. To dent is to reveal a pleasing personality whilst teaching or explaining. That's lovely of you, Colin.

As in the best educators don't merely teach, they dent in every lesson. This is lovely. You clearly just chose the ones that butted you up, didn't you? Probably. So Joseph Imholz from buffalo in your city to dent is to be unnecessarily demure regarding one's knowledge and accomplishment so i hope that doesn't mean sort of humble bragging um but no but can i say i think it's extremely good i think that's very perceptive because you are quite unnecessarily demure because your knowledge, your accomplishments are extraordinary

and you always back away. Blush, turn to one side. Okay, move swiftly on. I don't know if I blush. Okay. All right. I'm not sure you'll like this one. From Che in Chester, to puncture pompous, problematic people and parties dryly through delightfully droll dictionary definitions. I think it's brilliant. I think it's brilliant. And also, it's a bit of a tongue twister. It is very clever, full of alliteration. But in fact, the good thing about you is you're a very sweet person. And at parties, you don't puncture the pompous or the problematic. You endure them. You sort of stand there nodding quietly. Let's face it, I don't go to many parties. I think that's probably it.

But when you do, you're a model of courtesy and charm. And that's what you are. So it's not appropriate. But actually, it works quite well with the word dent. Because, you know, to dent is implying to punctuate. Exactly. Who has been your winner? Okay, so my winner comes from Tracy Lewis.

To dent is to dive into a nearby dictionary, which I love. So she says, I am reading Thomas Hardy at the moment and he's very wordy, so I need a dictionary by my side. Now when I come across a word I do not know, I will have to dent. I love that. That's lovely. Yeah, so that's my absolute favourite. But we did love them all, even the ones that suggested over-loquaciousness, but we're very grateful for them. And I think the winning prizes, if this isn't too immodest of us, are actually copies of our books, aren't they? Yeah. We can't sell them, so we're giving them away. Not true. We can sell them. We've been very lucky, both of us. We've had recent bestsellers and a copy, I hope signed,

of each of our bestsellers will go to each of our winners. Thank you very much for taking part in the competition. Thank you so much. It was fun for us. Now, who has been writing to us? And remind me, where do they write to, in fact, to be serious? What is the address people write to? The address is purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Very good.

Purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Yeah, great. So we have a voice note, actually, from Tom Murphy to kick us off. Hi, Susie and Giles. Hope you're both well. I'm a big fan of the show, which gets me through some very difficult moments at the gym sometimes. Anyway, a notion dropped into my head the other day. I'm guessing there must be some kind of etymological connection between the words influenza and influence, but I can't imagine

what it might be. Can you shed any light on this? Thanks in advance and all best wishes, Tom Murphy from Penge in South East London. Very, very good question and an appropriate one for today and the subject. And you're totally right, Tom. And I have to take you back to 1743 when in Italy, there was an outbreak of a really severe respiratory ailment. And the English minister to Tuscany, bear with me, Giles, it's another Horace, but it's the Horace man. He wrote of Rome that everybody is ill of the influenza and many die. And the epidemic spread throughout Europe. And in English, influenza became the general term for

this infection. And of course, influenza was shortened to the more familiar flu, actually in the mid 1800s. So that's been around for a while. But Tom's right, Italian influenza does mean influence. And in turn, that looks back to a Latin word, fluere, meaning to flow. So it was an inflow, really, of a disease, which also meant an outbreak, if you like. And influence itself originally had the general sense of an influx, a flowing matter. And in astrology, the influence was the flowing in of ethereal fluid that was thought to affect human destiny. So the idea of flow, for good good or ill is very much behind both influenza

and influence. And obviously, if you have influence over something, you have power that is kind of flowing from you or from something onto a subject. So again, Italy, like malaria, and very much bound up in the beliefs of the time that something was flowing in, perhaps in the air, and they didn't quite understand what it was. That's a very good question. Thank you for that. Very good question. And the second one, which we also have a voice note for,

and we love voice notes because we actually get to obviously hear you, is from Aaron. So I think he's got a poem for us. He has. And it's for you. And he writes, as I know, the podcast entertains audio greetings. I've taken the liberty of recording grunts for breakfast in an audio format attached to this email. And I think it's amusing. Anyway, he sends us best wishes and looks forward to a long

and pleasurable continuation of Something Rises Purple. So Aaron, let's hear your poem Grunts for Breakfast. I often have grunts for breakfast and maybe the occasional groan sometimes a gasp will creep in especially when grumbling alone I served a dish of grousing and grudgingly gathered my spoon growled at the fruit bowl

before me and griped at the shape of the prune I think any person who's kind of joined the podcast at this moment in time is going to be thinking, what on earth? But that is extremely clever. And the fact that Aaron also produced a soundscape for us was brilliant as a backdrop to that. Feel free to send us your inquiries and your soundscapes. It's purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. So share your thoughts, ask your questions, and Susie will do her best to give you the truth. And I will simply cheer from the sidelines,

as I'm going to do as you share your trio of interesting words with us this week. Yes. Well, it's the holidays at the moment over here in Newcastle. It used to be holidays. It's the school holidays. And I think many of us are feeling a little bit shack-baggerly, but happily so. Shack-baggerly means disordered and unkempt. So it's when you stay a little bit too long in your dressing gown or you've still got bed hair at 11 o'clock in the morning. It's just a bit shack-baggerly. And I just think it's such an expressive word. I love that one. I hate staying in my dressing gown too long. I know. Yeah, I don't like it because I just feel unprepared for the day.

And I've never seen you with your hair not nicely combed. No, trust me. I can definitely be disheveled as well as shoveled. Right. My second word is from Japanese. And this one was inspired by a beautiful film that I saw. And I don't have very long to talk to you about it, but it's called Perfect Days. And it's a Wim Wenders film. And it is about a toilet cleaner in Tokyo who just sees the beauty of life, despite the fact that he is dealing in sort of grime. He is looking up and particularly looking up at the trees and the sunlight that is filtering through the trees onto the ground below. And it's a very distinct Japanese phenomenon, this idea of looking up and looking at this wonderful manifestation of beautiful nature. up and looking at this wonderful manifestation of beautiful nature and it's called komorebi k-o-m-o-r-e-b-i and it is the pattern of the sunlight on particularly on a forest floor but just cast by the leaves of a tree this just it's just gorgeous so anyway i do recommend that word sort of echoes our pricity in a way it does beautiful it's. It's a pattern on the floor, particularly made, but it doesn't have to be on the floor, just a pattern.

Oh, it's just patterns cast by sunlight filtering through trees. So, yes, it is gorgeous. Anyway, I also recommend that film. And from old East Anglian dialect, something which is not nearly so beautiful, but very useful, gruttling, G-R-U-T-T-L-I-N-G. And gruttling is a strange, inexplicable noise. So it's a noise that you might hear at night or you might hear in a new house or an old house.

You just can't quite explain. It's a gruttling. A gruttling or a gruttling. Gruttling. Gruttling. Oh, I like all three good words. I must note them down or I won't remember them. Oh, what about a poem for us? I've got a poem. We've been in the sick room this week, haven't we? We have. Talking about disease. We've also made a brief sojourn in Venice, talking about the origins of the word quarantine.

And I've come across a poem that's actually called Sick Room, in which Venice features. It's a poem by a contemporary American poet, Billy Collins, who is hugely popular in America. Some people regard him as, you know, the great popular poet of modern America. And this certainly is a beautifully observed poem called The Sick Room, because that's what it said. Every time Canaletto painted Venice, he painted her from a different angle, sometimes from points of view he must have imagined, for there is no place in the city he could have stood to observe such scenes. How ingenious of him to visualize a dome or canal from any point in space. How passionate he was to delineate Venice from perspectives

that required him to mount the air and levitate there with his floating brush. But I have been sick in this bed for over sixty hours, and I am not Canaletto, and this airless little room, with its broken ceiling fan and its monstrous wallpaper is not Venice. It's amusing. It's clever, isn't it? It is very clever. Because it makes you think about the genius of Canaletto and then it brings it right back to home. And I imagine Billy Collins literally wrote it, was inspired to write it when he was in the sick room and had been there for 60 hours. For over 60 hours. Yeah, indeed.

Well, thank you for that. And thank you to all of you for your company. As I often say, we never take it for granted. Please do consider the Purple Plus Club if you fancy listening ad-free. And of course, please follow us and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

Yes, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Deo with additional production from Jennifer Mystery, Matthias Tolisole and Olly Wilson. And my old school friend, Syphilis Ehrlich, if you're listening, I know it's a bit late. It's 60 years late. But I'd like to apologise on behalf of the whole of our class.