Something Rhymes with Purple - By and large

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

This week we’re all at sea… in a good way! We’re plumbing the depths of the ocean, nailing our colours to the mast and, by and large, dipping our toe into the etymological waters of nautical terminology. Who was Davey Jones? We all know she sold sea shells on the sea shore… but who was she? What do pot-washers have to do with Captain Nemo? All will be revealed if you’re willing to take a dip… Away from the water, Gyles tells us of his virtual tea party with Twiggy, Susie has three words to slip into casual conversation, and there’s a very topical 20-second poem to wash your hands to. A Somethin’ Else production. If you want to get in touch please do: [e-mail]. Susie’s Trio: Resistentialism - seemingly spiteful behaviour manifested by inanimate objects Spindrift - the salty spray blown from the crests of a wave Quiddling - to focus on the small tasks in order to delay doing the bigger tasks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm Giles Brandreth, speaking to you from southwest London, and my colleague and friend, the person in the world who knows more about words and language than any other human being, is on the line, I hope. Are you there, Susie? I am. Hello. Hello, everyone. How Are you there, Susie? I am. Hello. Hello, everyone. How are you today, Susie Dent? I'm okay.

The weather has turned a little bit, which depresses the soul a tiny bit. But apart from that, I'm absolutely fine. I've got to go and clean the house after, so this is a lovely distraction. Good. Well, I'm glad I'm an alternative to you. That's how glamorous my life gets.

Do you remember somebody called Quentin Crisp? He used to say he was a wonderful fellow and a film was made about him with John Hurt called The Naked Civil Servant. He was a life model and he was also a life enhancer. He spoke beautifully, wrote beautifully. And I remember having lunch with him once in New York and he never did any

housework at all. And he used to say, after three years, the dust just settles. So that's the joy. That's a brilliant philosophy. The only quote I remember from Quentin Cruz, and I'm not sure I'm going to remember it correctly, is about euphemisms. He said there, unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne. Something like that. Yeah, that was his definition of euphemism. Unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne are the great Quentin Crisp. Now, what has been your highlight of the week?

My highlight, I think, is going to be, boringly, the same as the last time I spoke to you, which is my daily cycle. So I'm back on my bike and I'm going to the places. I did a 100k bike ride with Rachel Riley a few years ago now, something called Ride the Night, which took us from Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace and back during the night. And, you know, the training for that was one of the nicest things I've ever done. It was really tough,

involved lots of hills, but I haven't been back on my bike for a long time. And that's what I've been doing. I've just been going to places where there seem to be very few people, lots of beautiful birdsong and fields aplenty, because I'm really lucky outside Oxford, there's obviously some beautiful countryside. So that's definitely been my daily highlight. How about you? Well, my treat of the week, and I know that you like a little bit of name dropping, so I'm chucking it in early this week. My treat of the week has been having tea with Twiggy. What?

You know who I mean by Twiggy, don't you? I do. I absolutely do. How did this come about? The brilliant, gorgeous model who, as it were, defined the 1960s and is not just still with us, but is now Dame Twiggy. Well, Twiggy and I know one another. And so we thought it would be fun to have tea together.

So we Zoomed one another and we both sat in our separate houses with our tea. She's rather grand. So she had Lapsang Suchong or some such. I had a, you know, Yorkshire brew in a builder's, but in a something rhymes with purple mug. But we also... I have. The bang there was me flashing my mug at

Susie because we Zoom so we can see each other while we're chatting to you. Anyway, we had tea. I had Victoria Sponge. She had Victoria Sponge. And we talked. And funny enough, we talked about name dropping. And I asked her, and I'm going to ask you the same question in a moment, who, I said, present company accepted, is the most charming

person you have ever met? When she was in a movie called The Boyfriend back in the early 1970s, she went to Hollywood and they said to her, who would you most like to meet in Hollywood? We'll see if we can fix it up for you. And she said, Fred Astaire. And the producer said, oh, Fred Astaire, come on. We meant, you know, Fred Astaire is Fred Astaire. He's now quite old. You know, he's very reclusive. I don't know if we can get you to Fred Astaire. Anyway, the long or the short of it is, she went to meet Fred Astaire. And they got on famously. And then they began going out. They went out for dinner. Twiggy went out with Fred Astaire and one night they went out for dinner and they got a bit sloshed and they ended up in Hollywood, Twiggy and Fred Astaire.

And Fred Astaire, by then, maybe in his seventies, danced down the street for Twiggy. He did a tap dance just for Twiggy. I love it. I love it when they do that. Did you see, there was something on Twitter a while ago, and it was Dick Van Dyke in a restaurant with his family. Oh. And they suddenly burst into the song from Mary, well, no, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

They sang Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And it was just, oh, it just gave me goosebumps. It was amazing. It was magical. And he meant it to be magical for everyone else. It was such a kind of benevol me goosebumps. It was amazing. And he meant it to be magical for everyone else. It was such a kind of benevolent thing. It was lovely. Well, of course, the treat of the week,

speaking of old people doing remarkable things, has been Captain Tom. Oh, Tom Moore. Oh, what a bloke. What a bloke. I mean, actually very impressive. But there is also a lady, you know, of 90. She's doing Everest, isn't she?

Well, not quite Everest. Not quite Everest. She's doing Everest, isn't she? Well, not quite Everest. Not quite Everest. She's doing the highest peak in the highlands. And she's got to, I think, climb up and down the stairs 283 times. Amazing. So maybe I should do, I don't know what I could do. Muswell Hill. Climbing up and down.

You wouldn't be allowed out for that long. It's got to be somewhere in the house. No, no, I meant inside the house. You see the height of Muswell Hill. I would do Muswell Hill. Ah, I see. But yeah, maybe, or maybe you could do some burpees. There's someone else who's doing burpees for some ridiculous length of time. I have to say 10 burpees and I'm just out. Do you know what a burpee is? What are burpees? I'm not going to show you now. I'll show you after the podcast.

Promises, promises. And I'm not going to let you go. You can think about it. Who is the most charming person, prison company accepted, you never encounter okay well most recently it would be samuel west the actor he heads up um or runs this beautiful charity or lovely charity called hearts for the art which basically secures funding for communities who have um initiated their own local arts projects, from redecorating a horrible, grisly subway to doing fantastic projects for people who have just come out of prison or people who have mental health issues, etc. Absolutely lovely. Anyway, he's totally charming.

In countdown terms, Jerry Springer. Do you remember Jerry Springer? I do, I do. He arrived in the studio with three or four bodyguards. You know, he was at the height of his fame. And it was a real coup for us to get him on the show. Not only was he just full of the most amazing anecdotes, incredibly witty, but just so charming. Genuinely charming in a really sort of, you know, he just had a lot of integrity.

So that was a real surprise for me. Life is full of surprises. Now, look, we've got to have a theme for what we tried to do. If you're new to this podcast, it's not just me and Susie rabbiting on, name dropping, gossiping about our past. We also explore the world of words. We love language. Language is power. We need words to communicate, particularly now that we can't hug one another. We've got to be able to communicate and words is the way we do it. And, well, we're grounded. Some of us feel all at sea. And all at sea, I thought of that phrase, I thought maybe this could be our theme.

Yeah. Being all at sea. I mean, all at sea is a phrase I suppose means that we are lost, like being at sea. I mean, all at sea is a phrase, I suppose, means that we are lost, like being at sea. Oh, gosh. Honestly, if we want to talk about nautical idioms and nautical vocabulary, we could genuinely be here for 24 hours, at least because English is awash, if you excuse the pun,

with idioms and expressions from the high seas. So we'll only be able to even, you know, you wouldn't scratch the surface of the ocean. Should we not be saying dip a toe into the ocean rather than scratching the surface? This podcast is going to be full of the most horrible mixed metaphors, but yes, let's do that because it's a brilliant subject. Can we begin with the oceans? How many oceans are there and what are they called and why? Let's start with the word ocean because that's quite interesting. It came from the ancient Greeks and Okeanos for them meant great river. I mean, it may even be older than the ancient Greeks, but they believed in an earth that was disc shaped and they saw the ocean

as a single great river that ran around the whole of this giant landmass. And it was only much later that distinctions came to be made between the different bodies of water. Naming them was, it wasn't arbitrary, it was a really big symbolic thing, but it was kind of informed by lots of different impulses, if you like, whether they were cultural or even personal in one case. So yeah, do you want me to run you through this? Yeah, please. Can we start with the Atlantic? Atlantic, yes. That was named after the Atlas mountain range in northern Africa. And of course, they in turn were named after the Titan who supported the heavens that you

will still see on the frontispiece of old atlases. I don't know if modern ones have them. I don't think they do. So Atlas was a character in Greek mythology? Greek mythology. And he held up the heavens. So you would find on the flyleaf of old atlases, my school atlas included a picture of him held up the heavens. So you would find on the flyleaf of old atlases, my school atlas included a picture of him holding up.

And he is a virtually naked person wearing a little loincloth, who has got his arms in the air and he's supporting the globe. Yes, remember I went to a convent, so, you know, a little went a long way. So that's the Atlantic. The Indian Ocean is obviously just based on its topography

and India itself is named for the Indus River. What else have we got? Pacific. Pacific is lovely. I love this one. Have you heard of the Magellan Straits? I have. Yeah. Well, they were named after an explorer called Ferdinand Magellan. Yeah. And apparently not all his sailors were. Well, in around 1520, he was searching for a route through to the Spice Islands, because of course the Spice Islands were the source of all these wonderful exotic treasures that were being imported back to Europe. And he was to kind of found what became known as the Straits of Magellan, where he and his

fleet, they experienced really unpredictable winds and currents. It wasn't easy. And then they passed into the open waters of, I think it was known at the time as the Sea of the South. But he was really struck by its serenity, really. And so it led him to name it Mar Pacifico, the Tranquil Sea. So Pacific is linked to pacifist it means peaceful lovely what about the arctic arctic okay this was named after the great bear the ursa major

the greek word for bear is octos and octicos meant northern or literally of the great bear. And so the Antarctic Ocean is the not bear, if you prefer. And that is why teddy bear enthusiasts are called octophiles. Octophiles, exactly. Octo means bear. And ant, what is the ant in Antarctic? Opposite. So antipathy, antipodes, all of that means the opposite.

So the Antarctic is opposite north or opposite bear. Makes sense? Yeah, I get it. Good. What about ant and deck? Does that have anything to do with them? Ant stands opposite deck, of course. Very good.

Mediterranean, that's the other one. Mediterranean means sea in the middle of the earth. Oh, Mediterranean. Yes. And do we know what the difference between a sea and an ocean is because the mediterranean is a sea isn't it not an ocean yeah that's really good point i'm going to look this up because i don't have a ready answer for that so i'm looking the oxford dictionary now and see it says the expanse of salt water that covers most of the earth's surface and surrounds its land masses um and ocean hear me tapping away a very large expanse of sea in particular each of the main areas into which

the sea is divided geographically well so all the water is sea but specifically there are oceans to designate where they are and some some parts of that are not as big as oceans are called seas. We got you there. It's a specific designation, yes. Now, I suppose it's because until 100 or 20 years ago, people could only get around the world by boat, that there are so many references to the water in our language. Honestly, it's staggering. Whole books have been written about this.

So, I mean, honestly, there's what old have you got? You've got on one's beams and tied you over that really naff thing that people say to you when you lose your boyfriend oh there are plenty more fish in the sea by and large a clean bill of health but if you mean hold on by and large why is that a nautical expression okay you will realize at this point that i'm not a sailor but i'll try and explain it as much as i understand it. So if the wind is blowing sideways on a ship, it was said to be on the beam, and the beam was the side of the ship at its widest point.

So if a ship is on its beam's end... Sorry, that was my radiator creaking. So if a ship is on its beam's end... I thought it was one of your burpees. It's the tilted position of a ship before it capsizes, essentially. So it was on the beam if the wind was blowing to the side. If the wind was blowing from any point nearer the stern, the ship was said to be sailing large. And that is similar to the idea of a criminal being at large.

It's something being kind of unrestricted because ships sailing large are able to keep their direction of travel in quite a wide arc. When a ship was able to make progress into the wind, it was said to be sailing by the wind. So by having the sense of towards. And there's also the expression full and by, if it's really closely pointed into the wind. So by and large, essentially a ship could sail either large or it could sail by the wind, but never both at the same time. So by and large meant all possible points of sailing, all possible circumstances. That's where it came from. And if the ship was stopped dead in the water because the wind was pressing the sails back against the mast, then it was taken aback.

So that's where we get that from. You're really plumbing the depths of this one. Is that a nautical expression? It is. Yes, it's all to do with sounding depths with a piece of lead. So plum in this sense, we kept more or less the pronunciation of the B. I guess it's still plum. Oh, it's plum as in plum line with a B on the end, not as in plum pudding. Exactly. And it's linked to the plumber. It all goes back to the Roman's word for a lead pipe,

plumbum. And someone who swings the lead, you know, there to test the depths of the water, if they're a shirker, they might just not do it particularly well or even just dip the lead in and not really take any soundings. So they were shirking their duty. They were swinging the lead. While we're on board a ship, what about nailing your colours to the mast? Oh, I love this one because there's such a lovely story behind it. to the mast? Oh, I love this one because there's such a lovely story behind it. During the French Revolutionary Wars, this was in the late 18th century, there was a battle called the Battle

of Camperdown, which pitched the British against the Dutch and ended in a decisive victory for the British. The British had definitely nailed their colours to the mast. In other words, their flags of victory were swinging or blowing in the wind from their mast. And the colours are the nautical battle colours. But if all of a ship's masts were broken as a result of targeting by the enemy, the captain had to surrender. But if he decided to fight on, he would hoist his battle colours on the remnants of the rigging. he would hoist his battle colours on the remnants of the rigging. But this particular incident, I think, is the one that sealed the phrase in the imagination, because it was the Venerable. The Venerable was a flagship of the British commander during that one encounter. He was called Adam Duncan. And at the start of the battle, the Venerable's mast was struck and its flag was brought down. But determined that this shouldn't be interpreted as a sign of surrender, one of the ship's sailors called Jack Crawford shinned up the mast,

which was pretty perilous given that it would be knocked. And he nailed the flag back, the standard back, so the rest of the British fleet could see it and understood the signal was to fight on. And it was to prove crucial. He came back, I think it was from Sunderland. He came back, he was hailed a hero, darling of the people, celebrated in ballads and pamphlets, and he got an accolade from the king. And that sort of became the enduring reputation of the British Navy. So it was a really important nailing of the colours to the mast. And as I say, I think that's what really propelled the phrase into common parlance. And that's, I believe, how Peter Duncan got his gig on Blue Peter, because he turned up and said, I'm a descendant of this man. You're called Blue Peter. I think I need a job. I forgot about the Blue Peter. That's a particular flag, isn't it?

It is. Well, I hope it is. When I was a schoolboy, they made silly jokes about what a blue Peter was. Something to do with the cold. But anyway, it is a flag, doesn't it? What does it mean? It means something cheerful. Yeah, because if you look at the badges, they're much sought after badges. There's a blue flag, isn't there, with a white square in the centre. And I think the blue Peter is the ship that's about, it's raised by a ship about to leave port. You're going to ask me why it's called Peter and I don't know. I'm going to look it up now. It can mean a man's penis, as you so rightly say, a prison cell or a safe or trunk.

Okay. Oh, I think it's from a card game. Oh no, it's bridge. Oh, who knows what came first, the bridge or the flag? I don't actually know why it was called Peter. I'm going to have to look into this one, Giles. Well, the good news is that we have listeners and they can get in touch with us. If you know, we don't, I claim to know nothing. Susie doesn't claim,

make any claims, but she does know a great deal, but she doesn't always know everything at a moment's notice because she's doing all this off the top of her head. So if you think you've got the answer, do tweet or email us at purple at something else.com. That's something without a G, Or email us at purple at something else dot com. That's something without a G. Purple at something else dot com. Tell us why a Peter is called a Peter, particularly in relation to Blue Peter, the flag. Bottoms up.

I'm going to drink to that. We'll have a break in a moment. But before we do, bottoms up. Is that an article expression? Possibly. So obviously you're raising the bottom of your glass higher than your lips in draining it. And a bottomer in the 19th century was a draft in which the cup was drained to the bottom. In German, they would say that somebody had Garaus getrunken. And Garaus, meaning to the very last drop, gave us corrals.

That's just by the by. Anyway, there is another theory that, you know, there were these press gangs in the 18th and 19th centuries who would coerce people into joining the Navy. Rumour has it that the English press gangs would coerce drinkers in pubs in London's dockside. And the men who accepted the King's shilling were obviously sometimes quite drunk. And so they would join up. Or one of the dishonest techniques of the press gangers was to drop a shilling into the pipe pot of an unsuspecting man. And once the shilling was discovered, once the drinker had drunk to the last, the press gangers said this was proof he'd signed up and then would drag him to the ship. And the story goes that once drinkers got wise to the scam, this is when tankards with transparent bases were introduced. And so customers would lift up the glass, bottoms up, to check for any illicit shillings before they began to drink.

There's a lovely story. Not much evidence for it, but I like it anyway. I love the stories. Gosh. Now, look, there'll be the devil to pay if we don't go for a break in a moment. Oh, devil to pay. Is that a nautical expression too? Nice one.

It is. Yes, it absolutely is. Let's come back to that one in a minute. Okay. Devil to pay. We're going to one. It is. Yes, it absolutely is. Let's come back to that one in a minute. Okay. Devil to pay. We're going to take a quick break. Meanwhile, bottoms up. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

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question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Are you ever minding your own business and start to wonder is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch real? How do the Northern Lights happen? Why is weed not legal yet? I'm Jonathan Van Ness. And every week on Getting Curious, I sit down for a gorgeous conversation

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All whilst having some good wholesome fun. In a nutshell, I took a pair of scissors and I went into my husband's wardrobe. Now this comes from a shirt that I bought him that I know he doesn't like. So I'm testing him by... This is brilliant yeah by finding out when he discovers

amazing that the shirt has got a big patch out of the back of it wow and which area of the shirt is this taken from bottom right

okay listen now in Apple Podcasts Spotify and all good podcast apps here we are again. This is Giles Brandreth with Susie Dent. And, well, devil to pay.

What's the origin of that expression? The devil to pay. You know, it's kind of serious trouble, isn't it, to be expected and often said to have a nautical origin, as you suspected, Giles, because the seam near a ship's keel, I hope I'm getting this terminology right, was sometimes known as the devil. And to pay something, to sail a ship is to seal the keel with pitch or tar. So the idea is that to pay the devil was a really risky operation because of its position. As I say, it was really, really difficult to reach and you might end up

falling in. So that's why the devil to pay came to mean something that was perilous or where you could anticipate danger or trouble. More likely, I have to say, me being the party pooper again, is that the phrase was simply a pact made with Satan, you know, like that of Faust and the payment to be made in the end. I mean, the devil appears everywhere in English, as you know. So I think that's more like the origin, but some say it did begin on the seas. An expression that I was very familiar with as a child because I was very interested in pirates, skull and crossbones, that sort of thing. Captain Hook was a heroic figure in my world. I loved Treasure Island. I had the whole costume.

But Davy Jones's Locker. What does that mean? Where does it come from? Yeah, you might know more about this one than me because I know, I looked this one up actually, and I know that the earliest reference is 1726. Daniel Defoe, and he wrote the four years voyages of Captain George Roberts. and Davy Jones's locker is is the bottom of the sea or the resting place of sailors drowned at sea and there are so

many theories Giles as to who Davy Jones was at the time and none of them have been proven at all a sailor called Davy Jones or that Davy Jones was again the devil, the sailor's devil, or sometimes the evil god of the sea. There's a Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End. He's the captain of the ghost ship. It's doomed to sail the oceans forever because it can't make port in the rough waters. But honestly, who knows? It's such a lovely story, but I don't think we've really nailed it yet. My mother-in-law came from Swansea. She claimed to know the captain of a ship who was based in Swansea, who was called Davy Jones. And poor man, he actually

had a locker on his ship and it was genuinely Davy Jones's locker, which was a bit grim. Have you ever been on board a working ship or on a sub? I think the idea of being on a submarine fills me with absolute horror. I'm so in awe of people who can stay there for months. It's remarkable. It's terrifying. I have been making films for one show. I've been onto these things, but quite safely, only for the day, for a few hours, just going down inside the submarine when it's up on sea level is terrifying enough. I do not know how they do it. Heroic figures.

Some of them have actually given really useful tips for isolation and how it feels. I think a couple have come out and said, you know, this is what we do on board of sub. Submarines gave us the expression to pipe down. Pipe down, time for sleep now, because it was said to be the instruction given to the submarine crew to, you know, to bunk down. It would be delivered down via the pipe. The nightmare of this lockdown is, I know, because I have got children who've all got children. The nightmare of this thing is having children at home, particularly small children, in a confined space. So when you're saying piped down to them, you can then maybe try to make them feel that something,

people have done this before, tell them about the people on the submarine. Yeah. Now, just going off the seas for a bit, it is really, really difficult. And actually just explaining why getting dressed in the morning is actually important, you know, rather than hang around in your PJs all day, because it can go out for an hour. But otherwise, for them, there just doesn't seem that much point in actually getting up and doing all the normal things like brushing your teeth. But actually, it's really important. So that's the thing I'm finding hard. Speaking of people not getting dressed, somebody sent me an email enclosing

a painting, a famous painting by Botticelli of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And they're naked, then the Garden of Eden. And he asked me this, why did Botticelli paint Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with tummy buttons? They've got belly buttons. That's a really, really good thought. It's the deep question, isn't it? they're the first people in the garden of eden they wouldn't have had to bury buttons that's excellent point there you are excellent point now look oh i've got a good one can i tell you one of my favorite origins it's not a phrase that i think anyone would use these days um and you might hear it on an old western from the 50s or

60s but son of a gun oh yes remember that oh son of but son of a gun. Remember that? Oh, son of a gun. Son of a gun. Yes. Well, believe it or not, that didn't originate with cowboys, but rather from the high seas, the oceans again, because sometimes when women were permitted on board a ship, sometimes local brothels might oblige or, you know partners and wives would come on babies might have been conceived in surprising places including beneath the gunwale or the gunwale the gunwale so it is said that if the baby was illegitimate which of course horribly was quite a big thing in those days it was a son of a gun in other words, who knows who the sailor was.

So they called this poor child a son of a gun. How amazing, like being born the wrong side of the blanket. Yes. Isn't it awful the way we used to judge people like that? Anyway. Yeah, not so long ago either. I know. I'll tell you one of my favourites. Yes.ells Seashells on the Seashore. Very good. I'm sleeping very badly at the moment. I'm waking between four and six. I'm waking. And last night it was a particularly bad one. And knowing we were going to be chatting today and knowing that we picked the sea as our theme,

I remembered this tongue twister from yesteryear, looked it up. It turns out it's based on a song by someone called Teddy Sullivan, believed to be about a real seashell seller, a lady called Mary Anning, who lived at the turn of the 19th century, 1799 to 1847. Anyway, she sold seashells on the seashore. So I tried doing this 10 times to get myself to sleep. So I was lying in bed going, she sells seashells on the sea. Anyway, the point is I woke my wife up. She said, are you getting it? I said, what? She said, you keep sneezing, snuffling. I said, I'm not sneezing and snuffling. I'm trying to say, she sells seashells on the seashore. And the seashore.

And so the pair of us were sitting there at four in the morning, mouthing at one another, she sells, she sells on the seashore. Anyway, eventually she said, shut up. And now she should have said. She sells seashells on the seashore. Shut up. Yeah, pipe down. Pipe down.

Pipe down. It's a good, it's a really good one and near impossible tongue twister. I like that one. She was quite a big fossil collector, Mary Anning, wasn't she? I think she made some quite important fossil finds. So she was collecting seashells on the seashore. She was. Hence her being a figure in popular song. Exactly.

I think that's right. Did you, when you were a child, read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? No. Did you, when you were a child, read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? No. Did you? Yeah. I come from a generation where we mentioned Daniel Defoe earlier on. Yeah. And I read, I tried to read Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe in the original.

And I read a lot of Jules Verne, believe it or not, some of it in the original because I went to a French school, the French Lycée. Okay. believe it or not, some of it in the original, because I went to a French school, the French Lycée. And I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which is, of course, about the adventures of Captain Nemo. And that's where the phrase 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea comes from. But it's a nice little add-on here, because Jules Verne was inspired to write the novel after seeing a model of the French submarine Plongeur at an exhibition. It was the first submarine in the world to be powered mechanically. Plongeur, which means in

French? It means, well, a plunger, literally. It's plunging into the ocean, I guess. So it's a sibling of plunge, plonge, plonger, plunge. And this links us nicely to the first of our letters this week, because people get in touch with us by Twitter or by email, and it's easy to do. You find us purple at somethingelse.com. And William Marler from Worcester emailed a couple of weeks ago to inquire about why George Orwell refers to himself in Down and Out in Paris and London as a plongeur, meaning a pot washer.

Oh, yes, it's a washer-upper. Because I guess you plunge your... It's faire la plonge in French, is to wash up. Because I guess you are plunging your dishes and your hands into soapy water. You certainly are. And there are some fascinating pictures, indeed, old footage of Paris restaurants from the 20s and 30s, where you see them doing this and they have sudsy basins of water. And then they take the stuff from the sudsy and then they plunge it

into the next door one, which is clean water. That's how they rinse it. It's an amazing job. We had a wonderful plongeur when I was working in a restaurant who literally all night would have his hands in soapy water. And as you know, I don't have many phobias, but one of them is wrinkly fingers

from holding your hands underwater. And boy, were his fingers, they were so wrinkly, I couldn't better look at them, I'm afraid. But what a job. What a job. What an interesting phobia. Wrinkly finger phobia. And there's no name for it. I think I've told you, I call it prunidigitophobia because I've no idea what else to call it. But please, listeners, would you contact us urgently? Purple at somethingelse.com. We need a name for Susie.

This is going to go viral. Susie Dent is a phobia for wrinkly fingers. You can't spend very long in the bath then. You just jump in, jump out. As the years go by, be wary because your hands, in the fullness of time, will become a little bit wrinkly. It's just the water thing. It's the water thing. It's the fact that water does it.

You don't have an aversion to old people with crinkly skin. Oh, no, not at all. I was waxing eloquent the other day about the daffodils in our garden to my wife. And I came in doing Wordsworth's poem, you know. The Sea of Golden Daffodils, a host of golden daffodils. And she said, never mind your daffodils, here's your marigolds. And she threw the gloves at me and said, get on with it. And you became a plongeur.

I became a plongeur. Now, we had lots, lots of letters this week. Have you got some? I've got some. Yes. So I have one which is quite topical from Suzanne Bays. What is the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic with regards to the meanings of the beginning of each word?

And I can also think of an academic. Are there any other demics? I said, thank you, Suzanne, for that. Well, the pandemic-demic means an epidemic that affects the world. So the pan there means all around. So a panorama is one that goes all around you. A panthropy, which is one of my favourite words, a panthropy means an aversion to everyone and to all company. So it's basically all encompassing Pan in that sense. Link that please to Peter Pan. We had Peter earlier as a euphemism for a penis and as in Blue Peter, the children's programme. Peter Pan, the character.

Flies around the world. Oh, that's it. That's where I think J.M. Barrie got it. Yeah. Peter Pan. That's always been my assumption. Peter Pan. Now, someone has picked me up on something that I say and question me. And please do always question me because I am very fallible and I do get things wrong. I said someone on Twitter picked me up on this, but also Ruth Carter has written in and said, I would like to thank you for your wonderful podcast and also

to you for your poem and jumper of the day. And they say, I use riffing a lot, a riff on this, a riff on that. Could you let me know the origin of it? And is it connected to a guitar riff? So I am using it in a much broader sense than the guitar riff, because the guitar riff is a sort of refrain in a song, isn't it? Or a kind of introduction as well. So it's a short, repeated phrase that you will find particularly in jazz. There are wider, broader uses of the term when it can mean a repeated phrase or an improvisation or a variation on a theme or a subject. So when I use riff, I mean that it's a variation on that theme, that it's a riff on another word that perhaps came earlier.

Hi, Susie and Giles. Love the show. Joy to listen to. Thanks so much. We love that. Thank you. I'm 69 now. And when I was a boy, if my sister's petticoat was showing beneath their skirt or dress, my mum or my grandma, both from the East End of London, would say, Charlie's dead as a signal they needed to adjust their clothing. No one wears petticoats anymore, but I wonder what the origin of this expression is. Did it have wider usage than just my family? Best wishes, Kerry O'Connell. Well, Kerry O'Connell, it did, because in our family, at my school, with the girls, petticoats were showing. Other girls would say, Charlie's dead. What is the origin? I'd love to be able to tell everybody because it's one of our most baffling phrases. We have absolutely no idea. It's a little bit like

another fantastic dialect saying, which is, it's a bit black over Bill's mother, if the clouds are dark and it's looking a bit rainy. But there is one theory that it refers to King Charles II, who was a bit of a ladies' man. And when he died, women flashed their petticoats. To be honest, I think it's unlikely. I really don't know. One of those ones that I probably began in kids' playgrounds and no one knows the answer. Well, do you know the answer to this? We've got time for just one more. Okay. Roger Bentley, Dear Both, great podcast. What is the origin of the lovely word

impeachment? Impeachment. Does it have anything to do with fruit? It's a peach of a question, Roger. No, unless you're talking about the peach icon, which is an emoji, which people use for the bottom, don't they? Anyway, I could go on to some kind of presidential analogy there, but I'm not going to.

Impeachment comes from the French empêchement, and empêché meant to prevent. So if you impeach someone, you prevent them from staying in their job, if only that were true. Empêcher, we understand it. Good. Susie, it's time for your trio, the three words. Every week, if you're new to this, every week Susie expands our vocabulary by introducing us to three words that are in her vocabulary that we may not know. What have you got for us this week? Okay, I have three. I've changed one in the last few minutes because I quite like to choose ones that are fairly, not just topical, but actually are pertinent to me at any one moment in time. And this one is resistentialism.

I'm having one of those days where inanimate objects seem to have it in for me. So I was putting washing in the washing machine earlier and I've got a high shelf where all the bottles of washing liquids and fabric conditioner, et cetera, like one of them just toppled for no reason at all and fell on my head. And then a sofa walked into me as well as I was about to clean. So, resistentialism, which is, as I say, it's a riff, I'm going to use that word, on existentialism, and it's when inanimate objects have it in for you. Okay, so that's my first. The second one, because we're talking about the sea, it's one of the most beautiful words in the language, in my view, and it's spindrift. And spindrift is the salty tang of the sea when it's been whipped up by the wind.

Isn't that beautiful? Spindrift. I love it. How's that spelled? It's the tiny drops of ocean. So it's spin and then drift. All one word. Put together.

Yes. Great. And I tweeted this one a little while ago. I probably have mentioned it before because it's something I do an awful lot. Quiddling. So quiddling is a dialect term for attending to very trivial matters as a way of avoiding the important ones. Don't we all do that?

I'm afraid we do. Oh, quiddling. I like those. Those are three very good words. afraid we do. Oh, quiddling. I like those. Those are three very good words. You are a bit of a quiddler. You've given us your three words. I'm going to give you my quotation this week. It's a short poem.

And you are on Twitter and Instagram. I'm on Twitter and Instagram too. And every day during the lockdown, I think, I don't know, I've done about 30 now, I appear in a different novelty jumper from my wardrobe, from the golden era of quality knitwear from the 70s and 80s, and I perform a little poem. And I've come across a fellow called Mark Graham. I'm nicknaming him the lockdown laureate because he's writing lovely poems about this experience. And here's

one I came across from Mark this week. My beds have all been seeded and weeded where it's needed. My gardening has exceeded all the most ambitious plans. So the virus has succeeded where my diary once impeded. Can't stop. The dough needs kneaded. Then I've got to check the flans. That's brilliant. Isn't that neat? I like that a lot, yes. Very, very neat and very true. That's our lot. Do keep in touch. We're purple at somethingelse.com.

Please give us a nice review. Spread the word. Just keep in touch. Please do. Something Wise with Purple. Thank you for listening to us. It's a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett.

Additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker, and Gully, whose beard is now sweeping the floor. Oh, he's a bit of a quiddler too. Well, aren't we all?