Something Rhymes with Purple - Camelopard

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

In this week’s wild episode, Susie & Gyles explore the hidden etymological meanings and origins behind the names from our animal kingdom. So join us as we take a linguistic safari around creatures from all over planet Earth! We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  1. Peregrinate: To travel or wander from place to place. 2. Sippet: A small piece of bread or toast, used to dip into soup or sauce or as a garnish. 3. Sciolist: A person who pretends to be knowledgeable and well informed. Gyles' poem this week was 'A Flea and a Fly in a Flue' by Ogden Nash A flea and a fly in a flue Were imprisoned, so what could they do? Said the fly, “let us flee!” “Let us fly!” said the flea. So they flew through a flaw in the flue. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is Giles Brandreth and I basically waxing lyrical on our favourite subject on earth, which is words and language. And Giles is sitting opposite me on my Zoom screen. Hi, Giles. Why are you saying it is Giles Brandreth and I waxing lyrical as opposed to it's Giles Brandreth and I waxing lyrical, as opposed to it's Charles Branworth and me waxing lyrical. I think either go, because me would be the more informal use,

and we do tend to hyper-correct, don't we, ourselves, and say, oh, he gave the invitation to my wife and I, when actually it should be me, because in that sense, you wouldn't say he gave it to I if you take the wife out. But in the sense of jars and i waxing lyrical we are the subject so i is absolutely fine there um but the more informal use would be me good just putting that straight but also just to add a third string to this the other thing that people do because they think it sounds more correct is they put myself in there

as he gave it to myself he gave it to my wife and myself. But again, always take the first bit out and see whether what you have left makes sense. So you wouldn't say he gave it to myself and you wouldn't say he gave it to I. So that's the easy solution. That's a very good rule. Please remember that. That's why people tune in to Something Rhymes with Purple,

our podcast all about words and language. I've had a wonderful weekend. What was your weekend like? My weekend was, it was fine, actually. I've been trying to go on long walks and I was thinking about writing something slightly different, of which more news are non, not yet. But I took myself on some rather long walks to Ponder,

which is one of my favourite pastimes. Now, you sent me a picture a glorious picture of i think was it you were looking out through a window i think maybe you're in a hotel room but i couldn't see that bit i could just see the beautiful view beyond i wasn't i was in a hotel bedroom and the view beyond was viking bay in broadstairs and the isle of thanet in kent in the south east of England and I went for a long weekend with my wife and my sister and my sister's husband and it was a trip down memory lane for my sister and me because when we were children in the 1950s our parents would take us for bucket and spade holidays to Broadstairs and I think we went to Broadstairs because my father, after the First

World War and in the 1920s, when he was quite a small boy, in fact, probably even during the First World War, amazing as this sounds, went to Broadstairs as well. And it's a very unspoilt beach. I think it may even be the longest, best stretch of sandy beach in the British Isles. It's certainly very beautiful. And you walking, you're doing what all the great writers have done through history. The great Heinrich Ibsen, great Norwegian playwright, he spent a year walking before he wrote any of his plays. He would spend a year literally walking the streets of Oslo and walking around Norway, the streets of Oslo and walking around Norway, thinking through first the plot and then the scenes and the lines of his plays before he sat down and wrote them. He spent a year doing that.

And Dickens, which is relevant to Broadstairs, Dickens would walk for hours on end. He could walk through the night thinking through the storylines and what he was going to write in his extraordinary novels. Yes, his stories are so complex as well. Just to go back to broad stairs, I've just checked the etymology of this. And apparently it was originally called Bradstow, but still it was derived from the broad stairs that are carved into the chalk cliff, you will know this, that led from the sands to the Shrine of St. Mary that was situated above the cliffs from the 12th century.

And that shrine and those stairs are relevant to my father's story because he, just after the First World War, was in one of the bays, not Viking Bay, but either Stone Bay or Joss Bay, where there are built into the cliff, there are some steps with a grill in front of them you couldn't go through it leading up to what was a monastery or nunnery above where the okay where this all was and when the tide came in and my father and grandfather were caught by the tide and carved their initials into the cliffside and you can still see their initials carved there literally 100 years or just over 100 years ago. Isn't that extraordinary? How amazing, yes.

So, yeah. So Broadstairs is marvellous. Dickens spent a lot of time in Broadstairs. He went there regularly on holiday. He lived in so many places in Broadstairs. There is now a house in Broadstairs that you can see that has on a plaque outside saying, Charles Dickens did not live here. It's almost the only property in Broadstairs

where he didn't stay. The hotel I stayed in, he lived there for a while. He completed Nicholas Nickleby, I think, in that particular hotel. I haven't read Nicholas Nickleby. Should I? Oh, it's marvellous. Okay.

Oh, it's a great story. And it's quite a charming film made in the 1940s of it as well. But you must, you will enjoy Nicholas Nickleby. Go to Broadstairs. It's a great story. And it's quite a charming film made in the 1940s of it as well. But you must, you will enjoy Nicholas Nickleby. Go to Broadstairs. Yes, I must. Wherever you are in the world, come to Britain and go to Broadstairs. And if you're in the UK, who needs to fly to a different country

when you can come down south and visit Broadstairs? Well, when I was a child, one of the main features of Broadstairs, the beach, part of the Bucket of Spades and the Punch and Judy, and at the Pavilion on the Sand, Cecil Barker and his trio playing in the afternoon, there were donkeys. Donkeys walked up and down and you could ride on them. And I think the first animal I rode on before I rode a horse or an elephant or a camel, and I've ridden all three. The first animal I rode on was a donkey on Broadstairs Beach. What is the origin of the word donkey? So donkey is, you know, I'm always always banging on about how we like to name animals after ourselves. So we always choose

a name and just think, oh, that will do for an animal. So donkey is actually a bit of a riff on Duncan, believe it or not. And the Dunn bit is appropriate because Dunn, of course, is a brownie colour. So that fits as well. Duncan as in the name, the Scottish name? Yes, yes. Goodness. But again, as I say, it's got that colour sort of, you know, implication within it as well.

So I always feel so sorry for the donkeys in the heat, I have to say, standing there. But you know me, I just... Yes, I don't think they... I want all animals to be free and happy. Me too. And I don't think, in fact, there weren't any donkeys on the beach or broadstairs when I was there this last weekend. Oh, this time. So I think maybe that has now stopped.

Good. But, I mean, I love a donkey. What's the difference between a donkey and a mule? They're somehow related, aren't they? Oh, dear. Yes, you've got me now. So the mule is an offspring, it's a hybrid, isn't it? Yes, I think it is.

Of, is it a male ass with a mare, a female horse? I think you may be right. It's a bit personal, which is why I've never explored it before, but you can look it up and tell us, a mule. And also, why is a mule also a kind of slipper, it's sometimes called a mule, isn't it? A form of shoe. Yes, why is a mule also a kind of slipper is sometimes called a mule, isn't it? A form of shoe. Yes, so that's different. So that goes back to Muleus, which in Latin was a slipper.

So that's very different. But the animal, the mule, oh gosh, it's got a long, complicated history, but we don't know exactly where it comes from. No, it's fine. It has lots of relatives in other languages, but we're not completely sure why it was called a mule. Lots of relatives in other languages, but we're not completely sure why it was called a mule. And yes, it is a hybrid of a male ass with a female horse, whereas a donkey is an ass itself, isn't it? Well, absolutely. I do remember when I was a schoolboy being taught the Siamese national anthem. You had to repeat, oh, what an ass I am. Oh, what an ass I am.

Oh, what an ass I am. That's how we had to sing the Siamese national anthem. Anyway, you had to look up mule, but I bet you, you know camel, you knew donkey, you knew, do you know camel? I've written on a camel. So we're talking, we're talking animals today, aren't we? Which is absolutely one of my favourite subjects. So yeah, let's dive into it. So a camel, that comes from a Greek word, camelos, but that itself probably came from an Arabic word or even a Hebrew one. And originally in Old English, it was called an olfend, O-L-F-E-N-D, which sounded a bit too much like elephant. And so people often got the two animals confused. And of course, that's understandable because we weren't familiar

with either of them. These were really exotic creatures that of course weren't native to our country so their names became a bit of a kind of random exercise and this is further confused by the fact that an old name for a giraffe you and I had to talk about giraffes on the program Gogglebox the other day a giraffe was called a camel lapard which is basically a hybrid of a camel and a leopard, because people thought a giraffe's spotted skin looked like that of a leopard. So all of these names were quite fluid for quite a long time until they settled on their respective animals. I remember that a two-humped camel is a Bactrian camel. And I remember that because Bactrian is a word beginning with B,

and if you turn B on its side, it looks like two humps. So that's how I remember that a two-humped camel is a Bactrian camel. Do you know what a Bactrian camel, what is a single-humped camel called? That's a dromedary, no, I think. You see, there you are. So D for dromedary has just one hump. B for Bactrian has just one hump b for battery and has two humps that's hotel the difference okay so i'm just looking up geometry and it just says it's an arabian camel especially one of a light and swift breed trained for riding or racing so i don't think that is a single humped camel i'm gonna have to look well let's keep you on keep you on your toes forgive me for giving you this extra work. No, single-humped camel.

A single-humped camel. Oh, it does say a geometry. Yes, a geometry. We're right. One-humped camel. And a two-humped camel is a Bactrian one. You're right. And Bactrian, I guess, means from Bactria,

which is an ancient Central Asian country. Very good. There you go. I mentioned the animals I've ridden on, and one of the other ones was an elephant. Have you ridden on elephants? No, I wouldn't really want to ride on an elephant now, but in my less caring days, possibly I would have done. Oh, yes. Somebody who has no caring, no feeling.

No, you do now. I know you are a huge animal lover because I've only seen the way you talk about your cat. I am a huge animal lover. And when I was a child, you would go to London Zoo in Regent's Park and you could ride on an elephant and you could ride on a camel

and I rode on a donkey and I rode on a horse. How do we know that horses like being ridden on, but we assume that donkeys and camels and elephants don't? I agree. They probably don't. But etymologically, elephant has had quite a ride, if you'll forgive the pun, because surprisingly, it didn't come to us from an African or an Indian language, but it came from Greek ultimately. And elephas meant both ivory and elephant.

And you'll find it in the work of Homer, the epic poet. And it first appeared in English, elephant, in the 14th century. But before that, people called them oliphants. And that does sound like the olfend, if you remember, I just mentioned that meant a camel. So we only had really vague notions of these exotic animals. But yeah, that's an elephant. But they are beautiful creatures, aren't they, elephants? Well, there are so many animals. Give us some of your favourites in the etymologies. Well, you'll remember that I love penguin, which we've talked about many a time on Purple,

because a penguin is one of only two frequently used Welsh words that you'll find in the dictionary, and you'd never think that a penguin would be Welsh, together with corgi, believe it or not. Corgi means dwarf animal, because they're quite little. And penguin, we think, goes back to the Welsh pen gwyn, meaning a white head. So sailors and fishermen first gave the name penguin to the great orc, which the penguin looks a lot like because the great orc and penguins, they're both large, they don't fly, they've got black and white plumage, they can live in freezing waters.

And so British sailors may have mistaken penguins for great orcs or simply thought, well, we've got a term for the great orc, it looks a little bit like that, so we'll use the word penguin. And of course, the great orcs, sadly, they were hunted to extinction, which is like Dodo's, very sad. And the last was killed off Iceland in the mid 19th century. But yeah, white head. We might have called this podcast, Nothing Rhymes With Penguin,

because I don't think anything does, does it? Nothing Rhymes With Penguin. No. There you are. Well, if people think they can come up with something that does rhyme with penguin, you can always communicate with us. Let us know. We've got a new email address.

It's simply purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Give me some more animal words. Well, never look a rhino in the eyes, I would say. And it's the look of the rhinoceros that gives it its name, but not its eyes. It's from rhino meaning nose. And the ceros bit, the rhinoceros is from the greek keras meaning horn and the very first reference to a rhinoceros it's a kind of unicorn that it's describing essentially but yes you'll find that keras in keratin which is the substance from which

horn is made as well so yeah so i like that one, nose horn. I love squirrel. Squirrel famously, incredibly hard for speakers of other languages or some other languages to pronounce, especially I think for German, squirrel is quite a tricky one. But I love this because it's travelled a long way from the original Greek, which was skiros, and that meant shadow tail. And it's just, if you picture the squirrel, it's holding its long bushy tail over its back a bit like a sunshade. Isn't that gorgeous? Oh, it's a charming idea. Yeah, I really like squirrel. Have you ever swum with dolphins? Again, I'm not sure if that's recommended now, probably, but dolphin is a nice one. No, I've never swum with dolphins. I've seen others do it. I've been to dolphins in places like California and Florida.

Yeah, gorgeous. So this goes back through French and Latin again to Greek word dolphin. And dolphin finally ousted dolphin in English as well. But in another guise, it entered English in French form as Dauphin, the oldest son of the King of France. Yes, explain that to me. I've never understood that. Famously, I mean, the play by Bernard Shaw about St. Joan, the Dauphin, or the Dauphin, as they sometimes pronounce it, is a central character. What is the connection between this?

It's a mammal, isn't it, the dolphin that swims in the sea? Yeah, I think it's the things like the dauphin of France and potato dauphinois, which I love. Both are from an area of southeast France called the dauphiné. And I think it's because either the kings, because the future Charles V in the 14th century acquired the title of the dauphiné. And when he became king, he ceded it to his eldest son and that established the pattern.

And I think it's because either they or this area of France had a dolphin as their emblem. Ah, it's to do with the symbol. Yes. So it's named after the look of the dolphin. Yes. Yes. I went to a school, my first boarding school, we had a dolphin on our badge. Oh, did you?

It's a lovely, yeah. Oh, was there any metaphorical significance there? I don't think so. The school actually now is a bilingual school where they teach French and English. But it wasn't then. And I don't know if they've kept the dolphin as their symbol. It's a beautiful creature, isn't it?

Oh, just absolutely gorgeous. So I'm also going to give you the aardvark. Oh, please do. So that's an earth pig, which is really nice. I'm assuming it's sort of, I don't know why I associate it with South Africa, the aardvark, which means it's probably Dutch or something. It is South African Dutch, absolutely right. Yeah, so aardvarks are lovely.

I mean, they're also called ant bears, aren't they? Or giant anteaters. I mean, they're also called ant bears, aren't they? Or giant anteaters. I mean, they go by several names. In the days when there were publications like the Yellow Pages, where things were listed alphabetically, people of all sorts called their companies, you know, aardvark accountancy, aardvark plumbing, aardvark laundry. So they were right at the top of the alphabet because it was a double A.

That's maybe where the AA, our trusty vehicle. The Automobile Association. Yes, the Automobile Association. Maybe that's why they went for that as well. Okay, so we have an obvious one like octopus. That's eight feet from Greek again. We have ferret. Now, ferret is nice because it goes back to the Latin for a thief

because ferrets are known for stealing birds' eggs. So that's probably how they got their name. Now, porcupine is a really odd one, because we think this goes back to a Latin word, two words, porcus spinosus, meaning a prickly pig. But it's appeared in many, many different forms. And Shakespeare knew it as a porpentine. And he uses that in Hamlet, for example, and it's used also as the name of an it as a porpentine. And he uses that in Hamlet,

for example, and it's used also as the name of an inn, a porpentine. So a porcupine is just an odd one, really. We have a narwhal, again, gorgeous creatures, but based on slightly sort of dark etymology, because it goes back to a Viking word this time, nar, meaning a corpse, etymology because it goes back to a Viking word this time, nar, meaning a corpse, because the colour of a narwhal is corpse-like, apparently. And similarly, slightly sinister, is a lemur. Again, beautiful. That's from the Latin lemuris, who are the spirits of the dead. This is L-E-M-U-R rather than L-E-M-A. Yes. Yes, sorry, L-E-M-U-R, lemur. Lemur's the capital of some South American country, isn't it?

Peru. Good. Yes. No, spelt differently. And the lemurs in Latin were the spirits of the dead. And we think that the lima, the animal, was so-called because of its nocturnal habits, but also they do look quite spooky, I think.

Good. So these are all wonderful. And it's just, I don't know. I mean, we could do a whole episode, if we haven't already, on, you know, expressions involving animals, because quite often they are our first port of reference when we want to describe somebody's habits or looks, whether they're asinine, aquiline, anserine,

which means goose-like, and so on. But so many expressions as well, and fables too. Before we take the break, just remind me, you've told me before, but explain to me why the plural of octopus is octopodes and not octopi. Oh, it's because, and most people now will forget this, it's only pedants that worry about this, because the plural is octopuses, really, in English. Oh, really? Well, yeah, I mean, most people have ditched the Greek. It's because it comes from Greek and not Latin.

And some people still talk about octopodes, but I think that's reserved for the real sticklers. Otherwise, we just say octopuses. Well, one of the phrases that comes to mind in terms of animals and people is somebody, you describe somebody as having a chameleon-like nature. Maybe after the break, you can give me the origin of chameleon. How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in?

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archive of more than 370 episodes. Listen to Getting Curious wherever you get your podcasts. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. And Susie Dent and I have got purple cheeks today because we're chameleon-like. That's a chameleon is supposed to be an animal that takes on the hue of, to protect itself,

the coloring of things that are nearby. So it goes more green if it's hidden in the bushes, more yellow if it's in the wheat field. Is that the idea of a chameleon? I think it is, isn't it? It is, but strangely its origin has nothing to do with that ability to transform itself because a lion and a giraffe are involved in the history of the chameleon's name. So it comes from the Greek meaning on the ground and lion. So a chameleon was a ground lion, but it was often spelled C-A-M-E-L-I-O-N, which somehow got then mixed up with camel and also a camelopard, which as we

established was an old word for a giraffe. So honestly, these were all over the shop, these names. And so in the 14th and 15th centuries for a while, a chameleon was an old word for a giraffe. So honestly, these were all over the shop, these names. And so in the 14th and 15th centuries, for a while, a chameleon was also a name for the giraffe. This is confused.com. But we have for many, many centuries described someone as a chameleon if they are slightly fickle or constantly changing their opinions.

Very good. Well, you know so much. And what you don't know, you managed to research for us. And that's why so many people get in touch with us. Purple people from around the world communicate with us by writing to us on email, purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Something rhymes is just one word, dot com. And I know we've had lots of letters this week. What's the first that falls under your hand? So this is one from Finland, which is fantastic. This is from Laurie, who says, what do you think about incomplete idioms? For example,

the early bird catches the worm ends with, but the second mouse gets the cheese, or great minds think alike ends with, but fools rarely differ. There seem to be loads more of them, says Laurie. Are these truly the original idioms or have they been invented later? And I can only imagine, I don't know if Laurie's a native English speaker or Finnish, but for non-native speakers of English, some of our idioms, and it's the case with every language, isn't it, but they must be so perplexing. Totally. What's the answer with this one? So the answer is, in most cases, they are actually later add-ons.

And it makes them no less inventive and colourful because of it. But take early bird. So the early bird catches the worm. That dates from at least the 17th century. And it means, of course, that whoever does something first will have the best chance of succeeding. But the person who does something first also encounters the first problems and can't learn from others' mistakes. So the second mouse gets the cheese means the first

mouse has probably got caught in the mousetrap, and then the cheese is readily available for the second one. But it's a kind of anti-proverb, I suppose, that has only been recorded in print since the 1990s. And we don't completely know who invented it. So very clever. But it's the same. Can I interrupt you there? Yes. Just to boast about a family member, because I know, quite rightly, you are an animal lover. And you mentioning there the mousetrap and the poor mouse caught on it has seemed alarming to me, just the image of it. And it's reminding me that we've occasionally talked about in earlier episodes, my forebear, my great, great, great grandfather, Dr. Benjamin Brandreth, who invented Brandreth's pills. Among his descendants acquired other companies,

and one of them was a company called the Have a Heart Animal Trap Company. And they created animal traps. That were benign. That were benign. And they could catch everything from a mouse to an elephant without hurting the creature. So you could then capture it and then return it to the wild. I love this. I love this idea.

I think I'm really hoping that there are pest control services that do exactly the same out there. That's gorgeous. So just to answer Laurie's question, I think in most cases, these are added on later. But as I say, that doesn't make them any less effective. Great minds, the idea was expressed from pretty early on, but it's first recorded in the 1800s. Great minds think alike. But fools rarely differ.

I think, as far as I can tell, again, was added on later, but it's a nice embellishment of it. So, I mean, proverbs evolve just like language itself. So, who knows? These may become the standard ones. And some of the variations are improvements on the original. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones is a well-known proverb, but I prefer the version, people who live in glass houses should undress in the basement. Well, there you go. That's a very good one. There's another one here.

This comes from Jess in Texas. I love the way we are listened to around the world. Me too. Hi, Susie and Giles. I have an animal-based idiom question. Silly goose. Where does that come from? Argy silly?

I would describe them as aggressive. I was also talking with a friend the other day and mentioned someone was being a copycat. Where does the phrase come from? And why a cat, except for the alliteration? Surely a monkey is the more imitative animal. Does it maybe not have to do with the animal at all? See you later, alligator, says Jess in Texas. Love it. Brilliant question. Well, I'll start with a copycat and

Jess herself. They themselves say that actually, you know, there's alliteration there and that's the main purpose of copycat. But worth saying that cat has been used generically either as a term for a man in jazz circles particularly in the 1930s and 40s or as a term of contempt for someone who's quite spiteful who scratches like a cat or who is a back biter so the copy cat has an element of somebody who nicks somebody else's work and perhaps they're so spite, but certainly not with good intent. So I think that one, we can just say the sound is good and that generic meaning of a cat helped as well. A silly goose. So Samuel Johnson, in his dictionary in 1755, describes a goose as a large waterfowl, proverbially noted, I know not why, for foolishness. So it's possible that geese have long

been perceived as being foolish because they waddle quite clumsily on land, beautiful on the water, but they do have a bit of a sort of, you know, plodding gait. The aggression, Jess mentioned the aggressiveness of it, well, it kind of hisses dramatically, doesn't it? So perhaps it was then used for somebody who was easily baited and so, you know, a bit foolish because of it. Some say a goose represented a vain person in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Not sure whether that's true. And also traditionally in fables and fairy tales, geese are quite unwise quite often. So all of those have probably helped to cement the idea. But to be honest, it may also have just been, oh, you're a silly goose.

You know, quite often we love to ascribe great meaning to these things, but it may just have been the invention of a moment. And pinching somebody in the bottom is to goose them. Yes. I imagine because the beak of a goose sometimes would do that. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't want to be goosed. goose sometimes would do that. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't want to be goosed. Geese also, they do waddle, but they can, I've got geese near where I live in southwest London on the pond, and they are beautiful. But they do sometimes wander in, seem to be wandering in every sort of direction. That's true. Maybe they just don't seem to have much purpose in life. But yeah,

I mean, I quite like geese, but I wouldn't particularly go near one. I wouldn't eat one again. People do eat them, you know, at Christmas. I know. Well, that's actually where we think we get gossamer from. Gossamer, one of the most beautiful words in English, I think, for that sort of filmy, cobweb-like thread that you find floating in the air and over the ground in autumn. And we think gossamer is actually from an old English word, goose summer,

because in September, this was pretty much the time that geese were eaten around St. Martin's summer, as it was called. So, yeah, strange origin, but yes, they definitely were eaten and enjoyed. Very good. You really know so much. I really do. My head is just full of random facts. Well, also, it's full of three fascinating words that you'd like to share with us.

Yes. And what are the three words you've chosen for this week? Well, speaking of creatures and animals, I like the word to peregrinate. Peregrinate is to wander from place to place, perhaps like a silly goose. That's P-E-R-I-G-R-I-N-A-T-E. And it looks back to a word that actually gave us pilgrim in English, peregrin in French. And we also have the pilgrim

or peregrine falcon too, one that migrates. So peregrinate is to wander from place to place. I quite like that one. And it's not that unusual a word in the sense that peregrinations, people talk about going on their peregrinations, meaning their random walkings.

Yes? Absolutely. So that's the whole idea of wandering and migrating. I discovered the word sippet the other day, S-I-P-P-E-T, which is a small piece of bread that you dunk into your soup. I'm amazed you say you discovered the word the other day. I've known that word since I was a little boy. I have not known it.

So do you call your bread sippet? My mother loved sippits. And she, if she made a soup, she always, her sippits usually were squares of bread that had been fried. Fried or toasted. Like fruit ice cream. Usually fried. Little squares of bread.

She would cut them up into little squares and then fry them and then pop them into the soup. It just gave a little crunch and lift to otherwise dull soup. So, oh, yes, I can hear her saying, oh, where are the sippets? We must have sippets with the soup. We must have, where are the sippets? I love that. Okay, well.

And they're called sippets, I suppose, because you're sipping your soup with a sippet in it. Yeah, exactly. Sippet. But it's E-T at the end rather than I-T. I love that. Yeah, we sippet. Lovely.

Lovely. And the third word is from a Latin verb meaning to know that also gave us science, conscience, various things. And it's a sciolist, S-C-I-O-L-I-S-T. Quite a useful insult. It means one who pretends to know everything. A sciolist. We've all met one of those. We have all met one of those uh i pretend to know nothing likewise well yeah and you do know a lot including poetry so can you share i do know poetry i'm going to give you a little poem and i try with these poems to choose them while we're recording this yes so you're not listening to me i can see you delving away into your books you're multi

you say something that makes me think oh oh, and because we're talking about animals, I thought, well, let's do something by Ogden Nash. Yeah. Because Ogden Nash wrote so many American poet, a great American poet, and he published many poems about animals. In fact, there's a little collection, I think, called Ogden Nash's Zoo.

But he had a complete poetical menagerie. Lovely. And then you came up with the word sippit just then. And that made me think, called Ogden Nash's Zoo. But he had a complete poetical menagerie. And then you came up with the word sippet just then. And that made me think, oh, it's rather an amusing tongue twister, a sippet in the soup.

Sister Susie sipped her sippet of soup. And I thought, is there an Ogden Nash poem about animals that is also a bit of a tongue twister? And that made me think

of A Flea and a Fly by Ogden Nash. A flea and a fly of a tongue twister. And that made me think of A Flea and a Fly by Ogden Nash. A flea and a fly in a flue were imprisoned. So what could they do? Said the fly, let us flee. Let us fly, said the flea. So they flew through a flaw in the flue. That's brilliant.

It is clever, isn't it? Yes. Remind us what a flue is, F-L-U-E. A flue is something which lets your fireplace breathe, essentially. So it's something through which the smoke and the waste gases, you know, are sort of breathed away. It's a duct, isn't it, really? It was originally meant the mouthpiece of a hunting horn, but we don't quite know where it comes from, ultimately. Lovely. Well, I love that. The flea and the fly and the flu. And they flew through a flaw in the flu.

It's fantastic. I love a tongue twister. Keeps us on our toes. And I love you because your mind is amazing and you keep us on our linguistic toes. But that's it for this week, isn't it? It is. And thank you so much for following us.

Please continue to do so. You can also find us on social media, of course, at Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook or at Something Rhymes With on Instagram. And there is also the Purple Plus Club where you can listen ad free and get some bonus episodes on words and language and just, yeah, other random stuff. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Dio and Naomi Oiku with additional production from Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, Teddy... Oh, he's bound to have flown through a flaw in the flu.

That's where he's gone. No, he's not here. Yes, it's Gertie Gully. The Peregrinator par excellence.