Something Rhymes with Purple - Boycott

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

Top o’ the morning to you and happy St Patrick’s Day! This week we’re filling up our whiskey glasses and surrounding ourselves with words of Irish origin. Donning our finest trousers and brogues they’ll be Irish phrases galore as we boycott the banshees and really dig the vocabulary of the Emerald Isle. As always, Susie will furnish us with her fantastic trio of interesting or underused words and Gyles offers advice on how to stay young… A Somethin’ Else production. If you have a question for Gyles and Susie then please email us on [e-mail]. Susie’s Trio: Half-pace - a small landing between two half flights in a staircase Riparian - relating to or situated on the banks of a river Imbroglio - a confused or complicated situation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Something else. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple with me, Susie Dent, and my co-host, Giles Brandreuther. Happy St. Patrick's Day. If you're listening to

this on Tuesday the 17th of March, it is St. Patrick's Day, not just here, but all over the world. If you're listening at a later date, I hope you enjoyed St. Patrick's Day. And if you have eyes, maybe they're Irish eyes, and perhaps today they're smiling. Oh, Jazz, you know what? It's sort of a special day for us too. Is it? Because this is our 50th episode.

50 podcasts with you, Susie. Yeah, 50 not out. Well, that's lovely. So familiarity doesn't breed contempt. Well, we may be out after this because my Irish accent's coming up. Do we know who St Patrick was? He's the patron saint of Ireland. We celebrate his day all over the world.

In London, there is now a St Patrick's Day parade. I know to my cost because last year,. Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday, and it was a Sunday when I was hosting a wonderful event that took place at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London, where the great Dame Judi Dench came to the theatre to have a conversation with me and to perform in a show that has in fact since grown and developed, and in fact is about to open on the 20th of this month at the Bridge Theatre in London. It's a celebration of Dame Judi Dench, her life, her career. She is the most amazing phenomenon you can imagine. 85, you know, 85 is the new 45 as far as she's concerned. She's just wonderful. But last St. Patrick's Day, we were due to do this at the Theatre Royal, and Judi Dench arrived in London by car and found that West End had been closed off. So she couldn't get anywhere near the theatre. So from the car she was in, she texted me to say, they're dropping me off somewhere in Soho.

Can you meet me? Soho. Soho. So, Soho. I set off for Soho. That actually links to the etymology of Soho because it used to be a hunting cry. Oh. Yes.

As in Tally Ho. Yeah. Soho. Anyway, carry on. Wellymology of Soho because it used to be a hunting cry. Oh. Yes, there are hunting fields behind Soho. Yeah, Soho. Anyway, carry on. Well, that's interesting. We've already learned something. So in Soho, I found myself literally outside a strip club. As Judi Dench's car came along, I thought this is the most inappropriate place

to be meeting Judi Dench outside a strip club. Then I remembered she had actually been in a film about the Windmill Theatre. We never closed. Do you remember that Windmill Theatre where they did strip shows for many years? During the Second World War, they never closed and the artists never clothed.

Anyway, that's near where we stopped. So I thought, well, I suppose that's all right. But literally it was raining and then hailstones. So this lady, this great distinguished dame gets out of her car, aged 84. I'm there with a tattered umbrella saying, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. You're outside a strip club and hailstones are pouring. She says, oh, what fun.

And we then walked through Soho. Every other person stopped her for a selfie. She agreed to every selfie. She fell about laughing. She thought it was the most hilarious thing you could imagine. Isn't that the attitude every selfie. She fell about laughing. She thought it was the most hilarious thing you could imagine. Isn't that the attitude, Dav?

She is totally amazing. I lived in Soho for a very long time. I think it's one of the most wonderful places ever. And where did you live? I lived on Broadwick Street, on the corner of

Broadwick and Berwick Street. So I overlooked the market. And that really is very near where all these sort of sleazy places were. Well, yeah. I mean, maybe they aren't anymore. No, I mean, Soho's, well, it's always been an amazing place.

It's becoming a little bit gentrified, which is not to everyone's taste. I remember my mum being a little bit worried when I moved in there because of the associations with Soho. But actually, I felt safer than I probably ever felt anywhere. I'm right in thinking there are still a lot of strip clubs there. I mean, I feel there are. But there's fantastic places, Raymond's Review Bar. Yeah, but that was a sort of strip club. It probably was now, but now it's more kind of drag.

It's great. They have great shows there. Because, as you know, I know everybody, I first went to Raymond's Review Bar with Paul Raymond. He was an unusual person. His was the first Rolls-Royce I'd ever sat in. He offered me a lift. We did a radio program and I met him. This is the 1970s. And he offered me a lift in his Rolls Royce. This was around the time that Richard Branson gave you the two-finger salute from his Rolls?

No. No. Okay. I just remember that story. That came many years later. But this, he ran a lot of strip clubs and he had sort of magazines with naked people in them. And he owned, his fortune was made by owning a lot of property in Soho. But what you're telling us is that Soho has changed. There may still be strip clubs there. Yeah, possibly, yeah. But there's everything there.

There's wonderful restaurants. There's a lovely church there. Yes. Soho Square has got two beautiful churches, an old French church and a remarkable Catholic church, I think. It's just beautiful around there. I should know. Well, never mind that. We're moving out of Soho. We're moving to the Emerald Isle of Ireland. We are. Irish Isles are smiling. Do you have Irish relatives? I don't. I'm often asked if I do because I have blue eyes and dark hair.

But as far as I know, I don't. And you're wearing green today. And I'm wearing green in honour of St. Patrick's Day. I mean, one of my best, most memorable holidays was going to the west coast of Ireland in Connemara, the sort of wild landscape of Connemara. It's just like a lunar landscape. It's absolutely beautiful. I love Dublin.

I haven't travelled enough. I need to travel some more. You do. I love all of Ireland. I love Northern Ireland, Belfast.. I need to travel some more. You do. I love all of Ireland. I love Northern Ireland, Belfast. Oh, Belfast is beautiful. Absolutely. I went there for the first time last year.

If you go to Belfast and you've not been before, do go to the old Belfast City Library. It's one of the oldest and most interesting libraries I've ever been to. I go to Dublin a lot because I'm president of the Oscar Wilde Society. And Oscar Wilde, of course, was born and brought up in Dublin. And I go down to Cork. My wife's family comes from Cork. And most of her great aunties have now passed away. She had a lot of great aunties who were nuns. So they don't have descendants. So the family has rather disappeared. But Ireland has contributed to our language. Some of the greatest writers from the British Isles, I mentioned Oscar Wilde, some of the wittiest writers, some of the most brilliant writers. You think of James Joyce,

who was Irish. Samuel Beckett, who went to live in France and wrote in French, but he, of course, was Irish. Went, incidentally, Samuel Beckate, to the same school as Oscar Wilde. They were both Irish, came from Protestant families. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, perhaps one of the five wittiest playwrights ever to emerge from the British Isles, came from Ireland. So it's given us language and literature. Has it given us individual words, phrases? Yes, it has. I mean, most of us will know the sort of most obvious ones like banshee or shamrock. They have their origins in Irish.

What is a banshee? A supernatural being supposed, this is from the OEDs, this is historical dictionary, supernatural being supposed by the peasantry of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands to wail under the windows of the house where one of the inmates is about to die. Certain families of rank were reputed to have a special family spirit of this kind. Is that like Will of the Wisp? What else is it? If you see it, you're likely to die. A harbinger of death. The various sprites and mischievous... I don't know. Somebody sneezing, wheezing, and getting very hot on the underground. So the oldest borrowing, we think, from Irish into English is the word mind.

So we get the word mind from the Irish. Oh, forgive me. I'm so sorry. These are words that were Irish. There's an Irish language. Maybe we should actually start with the Irish language. OK. So banshee is an Irish language word.

It's not just a word in English used in Ireland that we've adopted. No. Explain to us about the Irish language. So Banshee is an Irish language word. It's not just a word in English used in Ireland that we've adopted. Explain to us about the Irish language. So these came over to us from the Irish language, and some of them are very unlikely. And you will know some of them, but I'm guessing that you may not know that they come from... Can I ask you something first of all? You may not know the answer to this. Was there an Irish language spoken in Ireland before they spoke English? So yes, words like Banshee or Shamrock, they have their origins in Irish. And Irish was the Celtic language also known as Gaelic. Okay, so that's still spoken in parts of Ireland known as the Gaeltach. But most recognisable Irish words that you will find in English have obvious

connections to Ireland. But there are some that I think will surprise you. And I'm going to start with one because it's very close to your heart, being a minister from this party of old, Tory. Yes. Tory is a really roundabout story that leads from Ireland to the nickname of, I guess, now the party in government, the Tory party. Because it's apparently, now you can tell me how to spell this with your ancestry. It's because I get, I have to say, big disclaimer here, I often get lovely emails, but teasing emails from countdown viewers saying your Irish is appalling. And it is because I don't know how to pronounce these words properly, having never properly

studied the Irish language, which is a big omission on my part. So it's apparently a respelling of the Irish Toraid, which is T-O-R-A-I-D-H-E. And they were bandits. So they were Irish bandits originally. You're not going to like where this is going. And the word was picked up and used for outlaws as far afield as, I mean, India even and Scotland. So a Toreid was an outlaw. It was somebody who existed outside the confines of the law. And then during something called the exclusion crisis of the 17th century, those who wanted to disinherit the Catholic heir to the British throne who were Whigs or exclusionists used Tory as a disparaging nickname for their

opponents. And then as so often, a word that's used against a particular group of people then gets picked up by that group of people and embraced and then switched and repurposed. And then they decided to use it of themselves. It's a bit like the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. They both, they both, they began as insults towards each other. And they thought, oh, I like that. Well, I never knew that.

So Tory is actually an Irish word. I know one that I think is extraordinary. See, if you know this already, I think I'm right in saying that clock, as in the clock that tells you the time, is originally an Irish word. I think it can be traced through Dutch, French, medieval Latin, right the way back to the Celtic word clagan or clacker, both meaning bell. Do you think that's possible? Yes, it's definitely all to do with bells. So a cloche hat looks like a bell. Cloche

and clock are siblings and clocks, of course, had bells attached. Cloak also because cloaks were bell-shaped. So lots of unlikely siblings from Cloak. And it definitely does go back to a bell. And if it comes from Irish, then that's brilliant. Here's a much more modern one that I thought was American but turns out to be Irish. Dig. Not as in, you know, digging up, digging your grave,

but as in, I dig this, I get this, I understand this, to dig something. I appreciate, I understand, you know. It's widely accepted now as having come from the Irish language. I thought it was just like an American slang expression, specifically from the Irish verb twig, T-U-I-G, meaning to understand. Yes, yes, yes. Did you know that?

I have heard that, twig. Yes, I have definitely heard that. And very often for linguists, there are what we call cognates. So that means a sort of sister or brother or, you know, some member of the same family that you will then get in other languages. And it's quite tricky to determine exactly, you know, from centuries ago, which came first and, you know, which was the kind of the Ur ancestor of everything. Quite often it goes back to the ancient language known as Proto-Indo-European. And then, you know, that's quite, you just say, oh, it goes back

to that ancient language. Something came to mind. Oh yes, the dick. This is going completely off point, but we quite like our little ramblings on this podcast. But digs,

as in accommodation, do you know where that comes from? Oh. That's not Irish. Diggings, where you dig yourself in to sleep at night. And do you know where you dig yourself in to sleep the night. And do you know where they originated?

No. During the California Gold Rush, where people, prospectors, fled to California, obviously, to try and be part of this massive discovery. They didn't flee, they rushed. Well, they rushed, exactly. And basically, towns, entire towns, had to be dug up around the mines to cater for the miners, to give them entertainment, food, accommodation, etc. And it's from those diggings that we get the idea of. It's a bit old-fashioned now. It's Carnaby Street, ring to it, doesn't it, the digs?

I want to talk about whisky galore. Oh, whisky, yes. First of all, explain to me why whisky in Scottish is without an E and and whiskey in Irish is with an E. Have I got it the right way around? Yeah, I think, to be honest, they're just variants of each other. You'll find those variants throughout the world when they're talking about whiskey. Just because there was no standard orthography until the 18th century. Well, yes.

I mean, and dialect, et cetera, plays a role too. Though Irish whiskey is always with an E and Scots whiskey is always without an E. Are you a whiskey aficionado? No. I don't drink alcohol, never did. But I said whiskey galore because that was a wonderful film based on a wonderful novel by Compton Mackenzie. Galore is directly taken from a gay...

That's Irish, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, a gay phrase. Go lear, spelt G-O, new word, L-E-O-R, which translates as till plenty, galore, plenty. Nice, I like that. What about trousers? We've talked before about all the euphemisms for trousers, haven't we? Do you remember? Inexpressibles? Remember this? Well, that was in Victorian times when the word trousers could not be used. And they came up with all these amazing euphemisms, rammy houses, sit-upons, inexpressibles. But trousers itself is a borrowing of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic,

now again, accent, pronunciation, apologies, trubhas, I think, T-R-I-U-B-H-A-S. Our listeners will be laughing their heads off at that. But please let me know how you should pronounce it but yes t-r-i-u-b-h-a-s and what did they what did that word mean and it meant a single leg at that point which is why we talk about a pair of trousers because it was originally a single leg that was attached by kind of breeches type garment at the top um so it's two single legs that you would attach to a sort of girdle. Men too. So yeah, that's trousers for you.

Slob is another one. Slob? Yes. That seems to come from the Irish slab, which actually first meant mud, but then developed the kind of sense of a lazy, slovenly person. We're all slobs sometimes. But yeah, I like galore. That's nice.

And puss as well, because pussie galore is what I immediately thought of when you said Galore, because I'm listening to Martin Jarvis' and Roz Eyre's fantastic dramatisations of the James Bond novels. Oh, they're marvellous, aren't they? They are amazing. You know that Martin Jarvis told me that one of the things that they have to do with these, they've taken, I think they've done a lot of them, the Ian Fleming novels, and they have the young Stevens plays. Toby. Toby Stevens plays James Bond.

Yes. And it is wonderful. And Martin Jarvis, I think, does the adaptations himself from the novels. Yes. And they have to really work on the political correctness now because these novels written in the 1950s are full of sexism and occasional casual racism but because you have to keep words names like pussy galore i mean there's still a fair amount of sexism in there i have to say but with our modern hats on we kind of judge them in

different ways i suppose go go into puss but puss yes not the synonym for cat or the term for parts of your body but it comes from the irish puss p-u-s and it traveled very quickly to the u.s so we actually owe well actually do we use that for a face anymore yes look at the puss on you look at the puss on her oh yes people do say that be careful with that last one okay well we have sour puss and gamma pusses yeah absolutely yes shut your gob is that irish gob, apparently gob is Irish. I mean, the English adopted gob, it's one of our expressions for the word mouth, isn't it?

But apparently it comes from the Gaelic word for beak, as in a bird's beak. And it's got the same meaning in Scottish Gaelic. I think Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are related in some way, aren't they? Yes, they absolutely are. It's fascinating this. I'm just looking here to see which other Irish loanwords came into English. Because, of course, during the apex of kind of Irish imports was during the 19th century, I think,

which was mass emigration and Irish immigrants streamed to the UK and to North America. And they took, of course, their vocabularies with them, which is how things then spread around the world. I think I've discovered the oldest expression, now in the English language, to come from Gaelic originally, beyond the pale. Oh, yes. It's used, obviously, to describe people's outrageous behaviour. And I believe it originated in Ireland way back in the 14th century because the pale was the area of Ireland under heavy British control even then.

And people living in areas outside of this were considered wild and outlandish. They were beyond the pale. Yes. Is that an urban myth or is that? Well, no. Pale actually existed before the Irish pale, but it was probably the Irish pale that kind of popularised the expression. But yes, it's linked to palisade and palisade.

So it's meant to stick, a palum in Latin, a stick. So these were the boundaries, really, as you say, beyond which the heathens, which of course comes from people who lived on the heath, the peasants, they were over there where everything had gone to the dogs. That's another expression that kind of, you know, that came from that axis of people who are urbane and live in urban environments and those who are peasants and live beyond. Gone to the dogs, they mean they live with the wild dogs? They live with the wild dogs, yes. So things were thrown to the dogs, the such as, yes,

the wildness, the kind of the feral people who kind of lived beyond there with the canine inhabitants. Oh, so many more words to celebrate here on St. Patrick's Day. Boycott, brogues. But we had to take a break first. Should we have some whiskey? A wee dram of whiskey? I'm not a whiskey fan. No, nor am I.

But if we did, it would be with an E. Okay. Irish whiskey for us today. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers Internet. Visit Rogers.com for details. We got you. Rogers.

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This is our St Patrick's Day celebration of language, particularly language that has an Irish origin. You'll be relieved to know that neither Susie nor I are attempting to do it in our Irish accents. I used to know when I was an MP the Reverend Ian Paisley, who was a much milder and more delightful person in the flesh. And sometimes he appeared when you saw him on television. And when I was with him, I used to sort of develop a sort of Irish accent. So I began, you talk with Dr. Paisley and you become all a bit like that. But I know that one should not do that sort of thing now. So I avoid it, like the plague.

People talk about Paisleyites. People sometimes actually had such reservations about Dr Paisley, they would boycott him. Boycott is a word, Irish in origin, isn't it? What is the origin of boycott? Yes, it is. So this is an eponym and it goes back to Charles Cunningham Boycott who worked as a land agent for a landowner in County Mayo, essentially. So this

is looking back to the middle, towards the middle of the 19th century. There was a group of activists called the Irish National Land League. And they quite understandably, in response to evictions from the state, all sorts of kind of measures to reduce money and to increase rents. So the landowner was trying to impose quite hefty hikes on rents from the people who worked from him. The Irish National Land League just basically encouraged the workers to withdraw their labour

and begin this campaign of ostracism, essentially, towards Boycott, who was representing the landowner. And it included, I mean, it was fairly drastic. So it included shops so that Boycott and his family couldn't actually get any food. I think he had to send his wife and daughters away because, you know, things became incredibly hard. But the word really was propelled into the mainstream by a letter that Boycott wrote to the Times. And he essentially talked about his predicament and the Times saw it as a kind of victimization of a peer of the realm or a servant of the peer of the realm. And so there were two very, very kind of extreme views coexisting here. And you can actually see the sides of both of them, really.

You know, one who was really suffering, and you can see his family suffering because he couldn't get anything done. He couldn't find any food. And the others, because literally they were living on the breadline. So it's really tricky. But that was what gave us the word boycott today. And it's amazing. It's endured for, you know, almost two centuries now.

Names are interesting. A lot of Irish people have names beginning with M-A-C, we've got today and it's amazing it's endured for you know almost two centuries now names are interesting a lot of irish people have names beginning with mac as in oh there was a wonderful actor who i knew called michael mclearmor that wasn't his real name at all he didn't come from ireland he invented himself as a great irish phenomenon oh is that michael more for us and he he called himself michael michael spelt in a funny way, and MacLeomore. But Mac is a prefix meaning, does it mean son of or grandson of? Yes, it's patronymic, isn't it? I think it means son of Mac.

And O means grandson of, as in O'Grady, O'Brien. Yeah, yeah. O'Halloran. Yeah, but not O'Murphy. No. No, there's Murphy and there's Kelly, isn't there? Quite popular surnames. One talks about an accent as a brogue.

He's got an Irish brogue, a strong Irish brogue. Also, of course, brogues are shoes. And I think brogue is a word of Irish origin because the perforations in brogues, well, brogue, the Irish word, perforations, allowed for drainage of rain and bog water. And they were generally worn for everyday use rather than on special occasions. Those were your brogues. And so the brogue, the fashion shoes that are brogues, comes directly from the Irish word for shoe, brogue. Yes. And if you've got a distinct brogue,

distinct accent, then we think that comes from the typical patter of people who wore brogues. You know, if you say, oh, he's got a distinct Irish brogue. Yes. Yes. We think that that sense of brogue

is linked to the shoe sense of brogue because the wearers of those shoes were the ones who delivered the patter. If you are Irish and listening to this and think, God, these people are talking a lot of cobblers. Which I think they are today. Please feel free to get in touch and tell us that or put any queries our way

and we'll do our best to do some research and give you the answers. You can communicate with us, purple at somethingelse.com. Have we had any? I have just decided as I get older, I've decided that when I don't know the answer to something, there's no point in waffling. Although probably listeners will say, should I have been waffling? But I have to say, this is not a subject that I know masses about. And I'm so embarrassed by that fact that I'm actually going to go and prep a lot about this for maybe for the next season of Countdown, because I think it's a fascinating subject.

Or indeed for our podcast a year from now, on St Patrick's Day next year. I'll bring the gen. If we survive that long. I will. Chloe Dabuzi has written to us. Dear Susie, dear Giles, first let me tell you how much I enjoy your podcast,

being a logophile myself. This morning, 4am, I couldn't sleep and thought of a word game to play. I don't know if Giles has mentioned it yet. Apologies if you have. I was trying to come up with words with the most number of the same letter in it going alphabetically.

Oh, I love the idea of this game. A abracadabra. Yeah, magic. Has that been a magic spell for a long time? Yes, centuries. And it was always portrayed in a kind of triangular shape. So it's A and then Abba, and then it would always kind of go like that. And it became a sort of talisman that you would wear to ward off evil. Abracadabra. People of my generation,

hissy-wizzy, let's get busy. That was our magic phrase. B, can you think of a word with more than one B in it? Oh, yes. B. Bubble. Bubble. She's come up with baobab. Oh, a tree. What's baobab?

It's a tree. Oh, is it? A baobab tree. I like her one for C. Cockroach. Oh, that's good. That's good. Would cockroaches be even more? No.

Doddled for D. Mm-hmm. Oh, this is wonderful. Oh, I love, she's got four E's in her next word. A word with four E's in it. This is so good. Wee-wee. Wee-wee.

Actually, she does this at four in the morning. I have to say, if I got down to that, I'd be needing to get up at four in the morning. I like kerfuffle for the next one. Oh, kerfuffle. That's quite good. Riffraff. Yes. Is not a bad one.

Anyway, it's a fun game to play. And if you do suffer from insomnia and wake at four in the morning, you can listen to one to one of these podcasts or you can play a game like that. Thank you very much, Chloe, who got in touch from France. Oh, fantastic. I've got something from Eleanor. I'm not sure where Eleanor comes from, but she's a long-time listener. First-time caller, she says. One of her favourite phrases is to get the raw end of the stick

or the more common version, she believes, is to get the wrong end of the stick. Do we know where this comes from? Well, there is a story, isn't there? Do you know this about in Roman times that basically in public urinals and public loos which incidentally used to have the most filthy graffiti um on their walls but anyway there would be a sponge essentially at the end of a stick with which you would wipe your wear with all

and so the story goes if you actually picked up the wrong end, then yeah, you'd get stuff all over your hands. Not very nice. Definitely need to hand you off for that one. So that's one story, which I think is very unlikely, but it is quite colourful. I think the idea is simply that, yes, if you get the muddy end of the stick or worse, of any stick that you might pick up on a country lane, then you picked up the wrong one. I think it's a very simple metaphor, but you might prefer the Roman version. Somebody called Jerry has written to ask about who or whom, when we should use the word who, when you should use the word whom. He, Jerry, believes that you use who when you are referring to the subject of a clause and whom when you are referring to the object. Is that correct?

Yes, pretty much, actually. So the person to whom I lent my book. And to is the preposition and whom is the object of that preposition. So yes, that is broadly correct. I've got a book called... People don't tend to stick to it these days. That's the trouble. I've got a tip from a book called Grammar Girls' Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. And it's to use the word him as a test. If you could answer the question with him,

it needs to be whom. Do you get it? Well, because you wouldn't say the person to him I lent my book. Or I guess they're not... No, if it's him. If the answer is him, I lent it to him. Oh, I see the answer. Oh, yes, okay.

That's quite a clever way of doing it. That's quite neat, yeah. You know, my son, Bennett, he's written a children's story, because he's got some young children, in which there's a very sophisticated grammarian who is the owl in the story, whose cry is, to wit, to whom? That's brilliant.

Oh, I love that. Oh, Susie, we can't go we can't leave st patrick's day without three of your words your trio and they don't need to be irish no okay um no they're probably not going to be irish actually which is a bit of an omission no but we're inclusive we're inclusive but it would be great to hear our listeners favorite irish words wouldn't it so please do send them in and we'd love to hear them well this is just something i never knew there was a word for this but i have discovered there is a half pace what a half pace is now what is a half a half pace is a landing but not any old landing it's a small landing at the top of a set of stairs where you have to turn and take another flight of stairs up so it's not it's not a landing

that you would kind of you know dither or linger on a half pace i really like that yes that's your half pace my next one is uh well i thought because you know things around us aren't absolutely fantastic at the moment the world is not in the best place is it it? I thought I'd give you some of my favourite words just to indulge in a little bit. Riparian. I like riparian. Riparian means by the bank of a stream where you might gongoozle and find tranquillity. Oh, speaking of gongoozle,

that's the word in our mug. Yes. We have a mug. We should have mentioned this the other day when we were doing our special program about branding yes we have a something rhymes with purple mug yes and it's got on the it's got all our branding on the outside but inside it's got the word gongoozle with the definition when you finished your tea it tells you what a what a gongoozle is and how do they get hold of it

purple.backstreetmerch.com i think that's it purple.backstreetmerch.com. I think that's it. Purple.backstreetmerch.com. Sounds like some place in Soho, doesn't it? Get to backstreetmerch.com. Anyway, so that was your second word. That was my second. My last one is, you know, as I say, we find ourselves in a slightly sticky situation

in the world at the moment, but this is a nice way of putting it. It's an imbroglio, just because it sounds beautiful. And is that how you pronounce it? It's spelt imbroglio, isn't it? It is. But is that not it. It's an imbroglio, just because it sounds beautiful. And is that how you pronounce it? It's spelt imbroglio, isn't it? It is. But is that not correct? It's a complicated situation.

Imbroglio. It's Italian. Imbroglio. Yes. I-M-B-R-O-G-L-I-O. And what does it mean? It means, it can mean a sort of fisticuff type situation, but generally just a complicated, knotty situation.

The world is in an imbroglio. Yes. The world is in a imbroglio. Yes. The world is in a terrible state of chasis. That's a line from the great Sean O'Casey. Oh, okay. A wonderful Irish playwright. My quotation of the week is from another great Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, who lived into his 90s, was a remarkable man. He was photographed up a tree, still pruning the tree in his 90s. In fact, I think he fell off the ladder,

which caused his death. But by then, he had written all those amazing plays. Really? Is that how he died? Yeah, as a result of... Oh, wow. Yeah, in his 90s. Nice way to go. Good man.

A vegetarian. Proof that you can live into your 90s, even as a vegetarian. And he also... Sometimes people say to me, Charles, what are those playing around with Susie on a weekly, by just chatting about words? And I say, actually, we like to be, you know, childlike now and again.

Not childish, necessarily. Well, I can be a bit childish. She's never childish. But it's a good thing to play. And this is a line, my quote of the week is from George Bernard Shaw. We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. Yeah, absolutely. That's it for this week.

Join us again next Tuesday or at any time. If you enjoyed it, give us a nice review. Recommend us to a friend. If you've got a question you want to get in touch, purple at somethingelse.com. Something rhymes with purple. That's us. It's a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett

with additional production from Paul Smith. We love him. Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker and Gully. That was my line. Shut your gob.