Something Rhymes with Purple - Cackleberry

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Atten-SHUN! Lace up your boots and join Privates Dent and Brandreth as we take a linguistic yomp through the world of army slang. Wearing their canteen medals with pride, Gyles and Susie travel from Civvie Street to the mess, breaking bread with a sky pilot, a fetch, and a fobbit, before donning their crap hats, taking advantage of a desert lily and heading off to their doss bags feeling utterly chinstrapped. A Somethin' Else production Email Gyles and Susie via [e-mail] Susie's trio: Betwattled - confused or bewildered Hopper-arsed - having large buttocks Lobcock - a dull, sluggish person. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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With opening moves, you simply choose a 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. Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language presented by me, Susie Dent, and my Zoomed co-host, Giles. Morning, Giles. Good morning. Reporting for duty, sir. Madam, I'm not quite sure. What do they say? Because we're going to be in the army now. We're having a military episode.

We are. Do you know why? We have had so many people requesting this as a subject for our podcast, including David Turley, Brian LeBlanc, Lionel Jones, and many more. So yes, we're going to take a close look at the army. And I should just say, it's such a huge subject, the military, in terms of its impact upon language, that we are going to concentrate on the army for this podcast, but we are going to return and certainly cover submariners, the Navy, airmen and airwomen. So we will return. Do you have military connections in your family? Well, I imagine your grandparents will have served in the war.

Yes, they did. And my dad was in the RAF and he was an air traffic controller. And he served in Gibraltar, which is apparently a nightmare for landings and takeoffs. So I'm very proud of him from that point of view. It still is a nightmare for landings and takeoffs. So I'm very proud of him from that point of view. It still is a nightmare for landings. I mean, if you go there on holiday, you actually land over the main road. They close the road while the aeroplanes land. It's one of those places.

Oh, how amazing. How about you? I sense that you do. Well, my grandfather was in the Indian Army. So he was, as it were, a British person in the Indian Army. So he was, as it were, a British person in the Indian Army until 1947. And he came home to retire. My father was in the Army during the Second World War. I have a son who was in the Army.

I have a son-in-law who is in the Army and indeed now actually runs a military charity. But I had a fascinating experience when my son was at Sandhurst, where he did some officer training. And we went to the parade where they all, when they're graduating. And I was following the head of Sandhurst, the commanding officer, and the young female cadet officer who had won the Sword of Honour that year. And I was walking behind them. And the young woman who had won this Sword of Honour, she said to the commanding officer, what do I do with the Sword of Honour? He said, well, you enjoy looking at it today.

And then you give it to your parents, who will hang it in the spare bedroom. And you will never, ever refer to it again oh wow wasn't that interesting yeah it's quite a chilling moment so um you may meet a courageous young female soldier who doesn't tell you that she actually got the sword of honor from uh because it just isn't done so it's a whole world what i understood that's what i'll talk to you about what i understood in that that moment was that there is a kind of law, L-O-R-E, and language that people in the army speak. Yes, and it's nothing new either, because for centuries, the language of

the military has played a really important role. You know, I've talked before about Captain Francis Grose. Oh, yes. He wrote, as you know, the classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue, but he proudly named soldiers as one of the most classical authorities for slang. And I'll give you, again, my trio today are going to be some of the things that he mentioned in his dictionaries coming from that military slang. Basically, he set the way for recording, I suppose, the slang used in the army and the other armed forces. And then during the two world wars, military slang had a profound impact on the English language. And it always seems like a real irony that times of real destruction have such a kind of generative effect on language.

You know, it actually really catapults lots and lots of words into the English language. We know quite a lot of them, whether you're Charles Schacht or whether you conk out, whether you binge drink. So many of these actually come from the military and over the top. I mean, in fact, we must do at some point language of the First World War and the Second World War because it's such a huge topic. Well, let's join the army and let's start with the ranks. Let's start at the bottom. If you join the army, you're a private. That's the lowest rank, I think, isn't it? It is the lowest rank. And it's quite interesting, this. Private,

and this is no insult to all the privates out there who perform an incredibly important job, but it's actually a near synonym of the Greek idiotes, which became our idiot. And it referred not to somebody who was lacking in intelligence or was just a bit stupid, but to someone cut off from public office. So someone who was an unofficial individual, that's what idiot meant in Greek society. And privatus in Latin had a very similar idea. It was somebody who wasn't of high office. And so it was a private individual and the sort of rank sense went into the army, meaning someone of the lowest rank who hadn't yet acquired a higher office. You've confused me with this idiot, idiotes. What does idiotes got to do with anything?

Because idiot started the same way as private. It didn't have got to do with anything? Because idiot started the same way as private. It didn't have anything to do with intelligence and everything to do with your rank in society. So if you were an idiotes in Greek society, it simply meant you did not hold a public office. I see. So the lowest of the low in Greek society were the idiotes. And that's evolved into the common and garden idiot. Yes. Not originally the lowest of the low,

but yes, people who perhaps were seen as not being in the know and of any influence. And then hence, yeah, the idea of ignorance came later on. So that's a private. What have we got? We've got a lieutenant as well, haven't we? And I have to address the,

why is it left when it's spelled Liu? And the idea we think is that someone misread the U for an F because the characters looked very similar centuries ago. And that's why we pronounce it that way, even though we didn't change the spelling. And as you know... Americans say lieutenant, don't they? They say lieutenant.

And so they are closer to the etymology, which is lieu in French, place, and tenant, holding. So a lieutenant was somebody who was standing in, a placeholder for someone in higher office. Very good. What about corporal? Related to the French corps, meaning a body. So a member of the body. A member of the body, exactly. So you've got private, corporal, lieutenant.

You've got sergeant. Sergeant, oh yeah, lieutenant. Sergeant. Oh, yeah, sergeant. Yes. That came from old French this time, so it probably came over with the Normans, but its ultimate root is the Latin severe, meaning to serve. And its early use was of an attendant or a servant, and then it was transferred over into the military to mean a common soldier.

Soldier itself is quite interesting. Oh, yeah, soldier. Soldier goes back to the Romans solidus, which was a gold coin um because it cost money to raise an army of mercenaries and you know eventually they would have been paid in gold coin and infantry is a weird one that's linked to infant because it comes from a latin term it's always latin meaning non-speaking because maybe like children soldiers never talk back maybe. Maybe that's the idea. So again, it's the sort of lower rank, I suppose, the junior rank, if you're in the infantry. I think that's the idea there. Things like captain and major are more obvious, I suppose, the etymology there.

Yes, captain is related to capital, cabbage, but that's a different story. It all goes back to... Quick, I'm sorry. You can't just say it's a different story. Cabbage? It goes back to the Latin caput, meaning head head so capital letter is the sort of the head letter if you like a capital city is the head city and a captain is the head but also a cabbage because it looks like a head oh oh that's lovely i love that a major weird siblings major yes major minor is the idea of greatness very good general general um actually that's a really good one i'm not sure i know this one you think you go from the general to the

particular but why is it general are they generally in charge are they i'll have to ask the oed this one we ought to explain to newcomers to this uh podcast that suzy is the world's leading lexicographer in my, and she knows more about words than anybody else in the language. And everything she says comes from the top of her head, except when she doesn't know, or half knows when she goes and consults her complete Oxford English Dictionary, where she used to work. I think this will be to do with being a general officer covering a variety of things. So is the officer in charge of...

The whole army, I guess, isn't it? Here we go. 1548 is the first reference here. A military officer of high rank. The commander of the whole army. It says the word officially denotes an officer holding the rank next below that in the British Army of field marshal. Good grief. It's a really long entry here.

But what you need to know, 16th century, and the idea was it was general of the army. In other words, you were in charge of everything. And I think outside members of the royal family, to be a field marshal, you actually have to have served in the field. So we don't have as many field marshals as we used to have. At the end of the Second World War, there were lots of them because they'd been out there in the field serving. But today, you only become a field marshal if you have literally served in the field. I love that. And so it should be. What I did absorb in my little brief time of visiting people who were being trained for the army was they seem to talk a lot of slang. They do. They don't call each other, well, they may publicly say

private and sergeant and lieutenant, but they seem to have funny nicknames for different roles. Yes, they do. Shall I give you some of them? Please. I love them. So the club swinger is the PE trainer. Who's the physical trainer?

The fang farrier. What's that? What do you think that would be? The dentist. Yes, very good. The fang farrier. I love it. The fang farrier. The Fang Farrier. What's that? What do you think that would be? The dentist. Yes, very good. The Fang Farrier. I love it. The Sky Pilot.

The Sky... Psychiatrist. No, like that one. It's the chaplain. Oh, bless. Yes. The Sky Pilot. Who is it?

Where it takes you around the heavens. The Padre. Oh, I love it. The chaplain, the Padre. Yes. Yeah, it's nice, that one. People of my father's generation, my father was in the army during the war, whenever he saw a clergyman, he always said,

oh, good morning, Padre. Even if it was somebody who never served in the armed forces. I like that. If he would meet the Archbishop of Canterbury, he'd say, good morning, Padre. I like that. And Padre, of course, comes from the French or the Latin Padre, meaning father.

Father, exactly. Modplod is a nickname for an officer in the Ministry of Defence Police. A grunt is an infantryman. Is that because what they do is they march around, they grunt? Yes, they grunt, exactly. To the left, march. I should just say that inevitably in certain regiments, et cetera, I'm sure they have different slang terms to these, but these are the ones that I picked up when I was writing my book about tribal language. So apologies if I've missed out the ones that any member of the forces listening to us has used. A sneaky beaky is a member of the special forces. Scab lifter. You can probably guess what this one is.

Some kind of a doctor? Yeah, a medic. A scab lifter. I don't know what this one is. Some kind of a doctor? Yeah, a medic. A scab lifter. I don't know. A fobbit. I like this one. No idea. A fobbit is a service member who never crosses the perimeter of the forward operating base or the fob.

Oh, the forward operating base. They're like a hobbit. They never go out. Basically, they never leave. They never leave the camp. I like that one. But does that mean also they never see action? Yes.

They're sort of safely in the compound. Yes. While other people are being sent off to risk life and limb. Exactly. What about a fetch? A fetch? F-E-T-C-H? No, no idea.

Dog handler. Oh, I love it. Fetch, fetch. That's quite cute. A full screw is a full corporal. A terp is an interpreter. Forgive me for interrupting. A full screw is a...

Full corporal. So a screw would be a lance corporal. A screw, I think you're absolutely right, would be a lance corporal. You see, why is a lance corporal? What's a lance got to do with it? This shows you how old these terms are. A lance corporal must go back to the times when think when they were people who held lances yeah absolutely and i think you had to perform certain things in order again to be a lance corporal lance corporal is first recorded

in francis gross's dictionary that i mentioned and it meant broken lance so ital Italian etymologists suggest that the primary sense was one whose lance has often been shivered in warfare, one who has seen much service. So if you have a broken lance, you have really seen some action. Isn't that lovely? I'm discovering things all the way here. Love it. Well, this, can I say, is the joy of Something Rhymes with Purple. We just get into the world of words and keep digging and find the most extraordinary things. Oh, and Tommy. We should mention Tommy, shouldn't we as well? Well, Tommy's famous. Yes.

But why are they called Tommies? It was simply, you know how in English we love choosing generic names for things. So as I've often said, Magpie comes from Margaret. We've got the Red Robin, Robin Redbreast. Tommy is short for Tommy Atkins, and Tommy Atkins was essentially the generic name for a soldier. If you were a young officer, especially one from a privileged background, and actually we've got an email about this, you were a Rupert, because Rupert was seen as the typical name yeah typical oh hello hello yes exactly i'm captain rupert exactly good to see you where's bono tommy atkins and i have a feeling tommy atkins was a character in a song from the first world war but i don't know which came first the song or the name tommy atkins how old is tommy atkins um Atkins? Tommy Atkins looks like 18th century.

So, you know, we're going back a long way. And I found out who emailed us about this. This was Johnny Nowak. I'm not sure if it's Nowak or Nowak. Sorry, Johnny, if I've mispronounced it. But he wanted to know about Rupert's and Tommy's. But yeah, obviously, talking of nicknames, I mean, each soldier will have an individual nickname, a riff on their own name.

So Tomo or Ginge or Smudger. I came across Leatherman and Leatherman was a joking nickname because his colleagues or her colleagues found them a complete tool. Oh, goodness. Del Monte is someone who always says yes. I'm the man from. The man from Del Monte. The man from Del Monte always says yes. Oh, goodness. Del Monte is someone who always says yes. I'm the man from. The man from Del Monte. The man from Del Monte always says yes. Oh, I see.

Remember? I do remember. That's an ad from the sort of 1980s or 70s. Yes. So somebody who's the man from Del Monte, somebody who's a yes man. Yes man, even if the task is really unappealing. We all need a man from Del Monte.

And I'd mentioned this one to Lawrence, our lovely producer, and we laughed at this one. Have a guess at what a thrombo might be. If you were called a thrombo in the army. Short for thrombosis? Yes. A slow moving clot. Oh, no.

Always a real thrombo. Some of these, it's interesting. Some of these phrases are very much not politically correct. Of course. And are quite unkind, but they still persist. I mean, there's a kind of license, is there, given within the military. You can use these terms. Outsiders would no doubt not understand them or protest against them.

Yeah, absolutely. But I think, I hope that a lot of these are teasing nicknames. Playful. Yes, I hope so. Fundamentally not unkind. Wings is another one, a soldier who's always flapping. I love it. Here comes Wings, the soldier who's always flapping.

Oh, how tremendous. I mean, some of these are quite applicable in modern civilian life, I would say. I think I'm right in saying that the first of the Carry On films was called Carry On Sergeant, and it was all about military life it was made in the 1950s only you know 10 years after the end of the first second world war and military life was very much part and parcel of everybody's i only just missed out on having to do military service okay you know people did you did you do any of that kind of practice stuff at school because you went to quite a posh school oh no the school i went to was indeed a independent boarding school but it had a kind of uh it was

called bedales it had a kind of yeah cnd was we went on cnd marches christian socialists that was the sort of ethos of that pacifism was everywhere we let the other poor buggers fight the wars for us so that we could live in peace anyway that was that was the idea. But no, but the rest of my family have made up for my general all-round cowardice. Are there words, as it were, unkind words in the army for a mentioned cowardice for people who don't quite come up to snar for? That's a really good question. I don't know, maybe we can ask the purple people that because I, yeah, I don't think I heard of that. I mean, as I say, I think I would imagine that most of the nicknames that I've said are, as you say, playful and affectionate. I didn't actually hear any searing insults, but I'm sure they exist. And obviously there's rivalry between the forces. So

that's probably where you'll find the most kind of excoriating stuff. We are two people, you and I, from Civvy Street. Yeah, we are. What is the origin of Civvy Street? Civvy Street is simply, yes, the civilian street. Why it became a street, I don't know. Tap, tap, tap, tap. See what the OED tells us. 1915, the first mention of a civvy suit. 1943, simply when I get back to civvy suit, 1943. Simply, when I get back to Civvy Street, I'll never moan about my job again.

So, yeah, I think fairly transparently, services flying for civilian life, get back to Civvy Street. Give me some of the words that are in daily use by military people. I think life in the forces is obviously very regimented, but it also, it operates at extremes, doesn't it? With preparation and waiting, hurry up and waiting, as they would put it, at one end and full conflict at the other. So, you know, you've got grope, which is the ground operational exercise. You've got a stagging on if you're on guard duty. Yomping. Yomping is marching with a really heavy load. And gravel bashing was one time I picked up for basically marching around a parade square. Chin strap is a nice one as well. Chin strap is when you're utterly exhausted and possibly holding on by the chin strap of your helmet. Any idea what a desert lily would be i hate to think tell me it's it's a urinal made

from a tin can basically oh my god desert lily yes what are you doing you're watering the desert lily exactly buckshee buckshee is means free doesn't it i got that buckshee it didn't cost me anything yes but actually in the army the army, it can be kit or equipment that's kind of off the record and so traded away from the quartermaster's official storeroom. And it's an alteration of Bakshish, you know, money. Yes, from North Africa. Yes. Picked up probably during the Second World War. Yes. When people were stationed in North Africa. Yes, exactly. But it can also be a small sum of money given as a tip or a bribe. But yes, buck cheese now is pretty much for free of charge, but that's slightly different meaning in the army. A scratcher is a place to sleep while you're out

in the field, possibly in a maggot, which was a term for a sleeping bag. Also a doss bag. Doss is a nice one, actually. If you're kind of a DOSer or DOSing out, you are looking back to Latin as well, because it comes from the Dorsum in Latin, meaning a back. So you're lying on your back. Let's take a quick break. And then I want to hear about some of these military terms that have not been kept in the world of the army, but have come out into our world. Yes. Join us in Zivi Street. Good. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you.

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And that's really sad because... It is, it is. And I've also been on the receiving end of it so many times. Sometimes to really tragic levels for me where I've really not felt able to cope with it. Yeah. Zoe Sugg and Nadia Hussain. I think the thing with women, firstly, is that women sometimes don't always like to see other women succeed. I think that's right.

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of that. And I think that's why just it's really hard sometimes because in the last four years, I've changed so much. Listen now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all good podcast apps. We're in the army now. This is Giles Brandreth and Susie Dent. We're talking words, the origin of words. That's what this podcast, Something Rides With Purple, is all about.

And this is our military episode. They eat, they drink, they must do. An army marches on its stomach, said Napoleon, somebody like that. Anyway, scoffing. Scoffing, scran. I'm not sure if scran actually started off in the army. Did scoffing start off in the army? No, I don't think either of those did.

They were very much part of dialect. But, you know, inevitably then they creep into the sort of military slang and then get popularised and then come back out again. It's all one big circle. But mess is quite a nice one because the word mess is used for the groups within an army unit or ship's company as well who eat together. And it seems a bit of an odd choice, doesn't it? Mess, the office's mess as well.

The idea, first of all, built on the original meaning of a portion of food. And in Scotland, shopping is still called messages. You know, I'm going for my messages. Didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, yeah oh yeah yeah um for my messages going to buy things at the shop yeah amazing oh yeah lots of our scottish purple people will know that one but the idea of a kind of unappetizing concoction of different foods emerged in around the 1800s and so if you're in the military you might draw your own conclusion from that. But I think the idea was simply that you would gather together in the army unit to eat

anything that came your way, really. And it might well be a mess, given the nicknames that they have, because the longstanding terms for their food are things like MRE officially stands for meals ready to eat but known apparently by others as meals refused by everyone I think they're also called the three lies which is they aren't meals they aren't ready and they definitely aren't edible oh my god um you've got well a wet is um is a term for a cup of tea quite often, as well as NATO standard. NATO standard means your kind of your standard cup of tea, really. One of my favourite discoveries from an old dialect dictionary was the word cackle fart. Cackle fart.

A cackle fart was an old slang term for an egg. Oh, that's funny. I can see it now. I can see the origin of that, a cackle fart. But in the army army they call them cackleberries which is also pretty brilliant a slop jockey is the chef um your canteen medals are your food stains on uniform oh i like it my canteen medals canteen medals you've got battery acid for coffee you've got army strawberries for prunes.

I mean, honestly, anything that they can play around with, they will. And I love it because it's just got so much colour. So, you know, what you're eating will never just be called by its plain, straight name. It will always have something. They'll always riff on it in some rude way. And you'll find that throughout the different forces as well. You'll find different terms within. That's the nature of slang, isn't it?

Of course. It's a language for almost a closed society. Yeah. What about words that have slipped out from the military into City Street, words that we all use? Well, I was thinking about yomping, actually, because we used to talk about yomping to school. We mentioned yomp earlier, but the most famous yomp, because we don't actually know where the term comes from,

was in Falklands. And then it really came into prominence during 1982 and it was used by the royal marines then may have something to do with yump which is apparently terminology of rally driving which is to leave the ground while taking a crest at great speed but that's just you know that hasn't been confirmed but I think that's more or less slipped into the mainstream. And there are, you know, there are lots of others from further back. So if you think about going doolally, if we talked about that on the podcast before. I don't remember. Going doolally. In fact, your grandfather would have known this one probably, because it looks

back to a military sanatorium called the Deolali in India. And it was here that soldiers would await their ship home. And it only came, I think ships only came between the months of May and November to avoid the wet season. You know, soldiers just would literally just wait there and wait and wait and wait. Quite often they had venereal diseases. Well, I'm sure this didn't apply to your grandfather, but they weren't very well. They went a bit stir crazy and they were said to go diolali tap and tap was the Urdu for a fever. So they had

camp fever in other words. And so diolali eventually became dulali in army slang and then slipped into the mainstream. yeah that is fascinating it is isn't it just one word like that doolally which we still use all the time we do i must say one of the interesting things about military life is that i think people now talk about the what we all recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder it obviously has existed for hundreds of years yeah but in the olden days people didn't know about it or it was not recognized. I mentioned my son-in-law was in the army. If anyone's interested in PTSD in action, my son-in-law is called Mark Evans.

And he wrote a book, an account of his time in Afghanistan called Code Black. And the effect of PTSD on officers actually fighting in Afghanistan called Code Black and the effect of PTSD on officers actually fighting in Afghanistan. It is a, it's a rattling good read. Anyway, it's called Code Black. It's just, I mean, I can't even begin to imagine how that will stay with you. And basically we need, we need to appreciate it more, don't we? Good for him for writing about it. And other terms that came from the military originally into daily life, the alarm, you know, the alarm of your alarm clock began as alla arme in Italian, which was a military call to soldiers

to prepare for attack. Alla arme, as in the French? Alla arme, yeah. I think to prepare for attack is quite a good metaphor for the kind of body's reaction to the, you know, that horrible sound that you hear in the morning. The buzz from the bedside table. So the alarm clock, it's really a call to action. A call to action. And alert comes from the Italian allaerte, to the watchtower. That's, this is why I love this programme. Dullale, alert, alarm, go on. Any more?

Foo fighters. Foo fighter? Tell, alarm, go on. Any more? Foo Fighters. Foo Fighter? Tell me, what's a Foo Fighter? A Foo Fighter is a UFO, and it goes back to a sighting in 1944 from a night fighter squadron mission in the US. And essentially, the radar operator saw a fireball that seemed to closely follow an Allied aircraft, and he was trying to describe this thing. And in

his pocket, he had a comic. It was a cartoon strip called Smokey Stover. And there was a firefighting hero in this who would always go around with this catchphrase, where there's foo, there's fire. And the cartoon strip illustrator had apparently seen the word foo on the bottom of a jade figurine in San Francisco's Chinatown. So he just played around with foo all the time. And foo fighter then became a sort of placeholder for various things. Anyway, when this radar operator apparently wanted to describe this UFO, he pulled the comic out of his pocket and said it was one of them fucking foo fighters. And then it just stuck in the public imagination. Not yours, obviously, Giles.

But then have you heard of the hugely successful rock band, the Foo Fighters? No, I'm not in touch with contemporary things at all. We'll move on from that one. Looking back to ancient military times. Oh, my goodness. That's more my scene. So many from that. So an ovation was a ceremony that was the entering of Rome by a general who'd won a victory, but a victory not as important as a triumph.

So a triumph and an ovation were the two kinds of Roman victories. A triumph was a victory over an enemy of the state and big chariots, which would carry the victorious commander into the stadium, I guess. And an ovation was a slightly less elaborate honour. So there was no chariot involved, but the person could walk or ride a horse. How intriguing. Is that the origin of the word triumph as well as the word ovation? Yes, absolutely. What about a Pyrrhic victory?

That dates from the same sort of period, doesn't it? Yes, Pyrrhic victory as well. Do you know the story of Pyrrhus? Not really. It was to do with a bigyrrhic, doesn't it? Yes, Pyrrhic victory as well. Do you know the story of Pyrrhus? Not really. It was to do with a big battle, basically, in which there was a victory, but at such expense, at such loss of life, that it really wasn't won at all.

So it was actually won to be avoided at all costs, even though it was classed as a win. Parting shot is another one. So the Parthians have a role in this one. So we talk about a parting shot. It might be some kind of fantastically witty remarks that you deliver as you're walking off. But Parthia was an ancient kingdom in what is now Iran. And the Parthians were well known for their tactics in battle, whereby they would pretend to be riding away, and actually would then look back and fire an arrow, thereby surprising the

enemy. So it was originally a Parthian shot, not a parting shot. Well, look, I think we've had our parting shot. That's fascinating. We'll come back to military and we'll come back to Navy, Air Force, et cetera, in a few weeks' time. But we've got to get in some listeners' questions. We've got so many listeners' questions. Could we devote next week to them i think yes please we have let's just do one quickie quickie now i feel like we haven't even started on the army i feel like we've probably missed so much out well we have we can come back to these things this is an ongoing conversation suzy and people can contribute to it if you are in the military in particularly if you are in america and you've won a purple heart you can tell us now why why is it called a Purple Heart?

We are purple at somethingelse.com. Purple at somethingelse.com. No G in the something. Let's just do one question this week. Okay. Somebody inquired on Twitter. We're both on Twitter. You can communicate with us there.

What is the origin of Pratt? I felt it was a bit personal. They simply sent me a tweet saying, Charles, what is the origin of Pratt? I found it was a bit personal. They simply sent me a tweet saying, Charles, what is the origin of Pratt? Susie's bound to know. Charming. I do know. Origin is unknown, in fact, but the very first meaning of Pratt was a single buttock. So it then encompassed both buttocks and a Prfall, a comedy pratfall is a fall on your buttocks. But it's basically the same as saying, calling someone an arse. Well, that's riveting.

Thank you. So now you know, friend on Twitter, that's the origin of prat. It's a single buttock. Yes. And we only had time for a single question. That's because next week we're going to devote the whole of Something Rhymes with the Bible to a range of queries from you. A trio of words from you, Susie Dent, now, that you love and feel would like to share. Right. Okay. Well, I mentioned Francis Grose, his dictionary, the Vulgar Tongue,

and his celebration of military slang. So I'm going to give you three of the ones that he mentioned in his dictionary. One of them slightly rude. So if any kids are listening, they may want to block their ears or pay massive attention depending on their parents' point of view. Betwattled. Betwattled means confused or bewildered. We may have had that one before, but it's so useful in daily life. I am feeling completely betwattled. If we've had it before, it's because you were betwattled. Yes, always. Totally betwattled. If we've had it before, it's because you were betrattled. Yes, always. Totally betrattled. I love it.

Talking of buttocks and prats, if you have particularly large ones, I mean, we've had a word before for particularly beautiful ones, which is calipagian. This is, if you've got particularly large buttocks, according to Francis Grace, you are hopper-arsed. Don't ask me why. A hopper-arsed. How wonderful. You can't say that of people now, of course. You can't accuse someone of a hopper arsed how wonderful you can't say that to people now of course you can't accuse someone of being hopper arsed or maybe it's a compliment because apparently a huge back side is very much de rigueur in certain parts of town and i think i'm all for it um and finally this is one where yes kids kids turn away now if you want to call somebody dull

lethargic and just really good for nothing, particularly if they're a man, you can call them a lobcock. And a lobcock, in Francis Gross's dictionary, simply means a relaxed penis, and by extension, someone who's not really much cock. Children, you can tune in again now, because this is Giles with a limerick.

There was a young lady named Rose who had a big wart on her nose. When she had it removed, her appearance improved, but her glasses slipped down to her toes. This is Something Rhymes with Pebble. We try to have something for everybody. And we hope you will join us next time

when we'll be dealing with your questions and queries. Thank you, Susie, for giving us all the military intelligence that you have. Oh, well, thank you. There's so much more. And we can't wait to hear more from the Purple people, who will have more expertise, I think, than we will in this one. But Something Runs with Purple is a Something Else production.

It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker and Jay Beale. And apparently, golly, he's gone AWOL.