Something Rhymes with Purple - Campus Martius

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

We have a very intense episode for you this week… Or rather we should say in-tents, because this week we are fixing the guy ropes and battening down the hatches as we Carry On with Camping! Whether you’re a camping champion, prefer glamping with champagne or love to cook yourself a mushroom omelette over your fire pit, we’ve got all you outdoorsy-types covered. Elsewhere Susie explains why you might find mosquitoes in your canapés and Gyles fills his noggin with knowledge of various noggins. We also check in with your Purple Post suggestions of what one might call a “livretarian”, a “freeder”, one who partakes in “Partonage” or a “bibliosocialite”. If you’d like to get in touch with Gyles and Susie then please do! At [e-mail]. Try 6 free issues of The Week magazine worth £23.94 today. Go to http://bit.ly/SomethingRhymeswithPurple and use your special code PURPLE to claim your 6 week free trial today. To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple A Somethin' Else production. Susie’s Trio: Gowl - to weep in anger or frustration Glad-warble - to sing joyfully Snirtle - to try to suppress your laughter (often without success) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play LEGO Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. It's a podcast where my friend Susie Dent and I meet once a week and we talk about words and language, particularly the origin of words, where they come from. and we talk about words and language, particularly the origin of words, where they come from.

And the other day on one of our shows, it was the one about video games, we called it Pocket Monster, I challenged Susie to unearth the origin of the word digs, meaning places where you stay. Actors talk about their digs. Students talk about their digs. And, well, I didn't really know what the origin was, but I have a friend, a very distinguished actor called Peter Bowles, and he told me that he had come across in the writings of James Boswell, the Scottish, the young Scottish writer and admirer of

Dr. Johnson, who indeed made Dr. Johnson famous by writing about Dr. Johnson, pioneer lexicographer, he had come across a character called Diggins who had a list of places where you could stay if you were an actor. It was known as Diggins's list. And he maintained that Diggs becomes, it's because Diggins had a list of places where you would say, have you seen Diggins's list? Well, what do you think, what do you make of that, Susie? I asked you if you could inquire further. Have you inquired further? What do you think is the origin of Diggs? I have, and I'm afraid to say that I haven't really budged from my etymological viewpoint which is that it's short for diggings which was an older word for the same idea and actually to be in digs usually was to live in a room with shared kind of facilities and as you say typically lodging for students

etc but diggings goes back to the 16th century, often associated with Australia, because digger, as in hello digger, actually does come from the idea of the gold fields of Australia. But actually, early instances of diggings and later digs are all American. And it does seem to go back to the gold fields where the first prospectors would come to an unpopulated area obviously and they had to make shift as best they could um quickly build the shelter um often dig them into the ground and eventually more accommodation was dug in together with you know taverns etc to cater for them so all the evidence points away from a mr diggings not saying diggins rather not saying he didn't exist but i suspect that one and one have been put together to make three in this instance but i have to say i do love peter bowles as you will remember because i

tweeted this i absolutely loved his story about in your book of theatrical anecdotes of his um preparation i think uh with albert finney the the absolutely brilliant albert finney for um was it it was macbeth wasn't it how he would play macbeth yes am i allowed to tell this story of course i've just found i've just found this extract that i i tweeted and it's absolutely brilliant so this is from peter bowles going completely off topic confidence is almost 80 of what is needed for star quality my teacher was albert finney one night in our room we were discussing what part we would most like to play. We both had the same ambition that when we left RADA and became

professional actors we would play Macbeth. Albert asked me how I would approach the part. I went on about Scottish history, the possibility of playing it with a Scottish accent, probably in a kilt and of course I would really study all the great scholars including Granville Barker. How would you approach it, Albert? I asked. I'd learn the fucking lines and walk on, said Albert. It's just so brilliant. That's why I love Peter Bowles. Honestly, anything he says usually goes, but in this case, I'm not sure it's completely right. Well, I will go around to his house, because he lives near me in Barnes in South West London, and I shall see if he can dig out his copy of James Boswell and see what actually was said. Because I think you may be right. This sounds like one of those stories that added to another story and made a, you know, as you say, one plus one makes three.

Well, there was another word I discovered the origin of this week without your assistance. I've been away filming. And what I've been filming is a television series to be shown in the UK, where I and a friend of mine, another actress, the great Dame Sheila Hancock, go on canal journeys together. And we were on a canal that leads to Liverpool Canal this week, and we passed a statue of a navvy. And these canals were built by people known as navvies. And I knew the word navvy. I knew that it meant a labourer or somebody who worked really hard, a navvy. I didn't know the origin. Do you? I mean, instantly? No, that's really interesting. I'm not sure I do know exactly the history of it.

Short for navigator? Yes, absolutely. That is completely correct. They were creating the navigation, the canals, which are known as navigations. So we were on a bit of, I think it was known as the Lee Navigation, part of the Leeds to Liverpool Canal. And it was abbreviated to NAVI. People who were navigators were known as NAVIs. They created the navigation. People who were navigators were known as navvies. They created the navigation. But it's interesting, over the years, it's become almost pejorative,

as though you're a sort of, well, they were, I think, rough, tough characters to build these things. But isn't it interesting? We take so many words for granted. I know, I was thinking about that too. I was thinking of clippings this week, because, you know, we kind of forget, and in fact, we might talk about

this in this episode we forget what van for example any any van on the road we forget what that's short for and what a history that word has has had i discovered this week that the word butch used in many many different ways um but with the sort of underpinning idea underpinned idea of masculinity that that's short for butcher's knife and actually a butcher's knife or a hunting knife was thought to be kind of you know tough and um sturdy and and quite masculine i had no idea i had no idea so if you've got a butch look it's because butcher's knife like hunter's knife implies something virile masculine potent well while we were going along the canals on the banks of the canal we saw some interesting things people on holiday either in holiday homes which we i want to talk about

or in tents and that made me think we talked about talking about camping. We did. It's a good theme to talk about, particularly in this lockdown world, because I read somewhere that last year, with the lockdown here in the UK, one of our retailers who sells camping equipment, I think it was John Lewis, they saw their camping equipment sales increase by 58% compared with the year before. So, I mean, that's amazing.

It is. And a lot of people were actually making tents indoors weren't they they were they were putting them up indoors and having sort of little secret getaways with their kids or not secret but just sort of that's rather fun isn't it yeah just trying to put the tent up at home at least you won't get rained on tent sales went up 34 sales of fire pits tripled yes I bought my parents a fire pit. Really? What's a fire pit? A fire pit is just something that you can light outside because, let's face it,

summer evenings in Britain aren't always the warmest and you can just burn fuel in there and keep yourselves warm. So this episode is Carry On Camping, which is the title of a very popular British movie of many years ago in the Carry On series, where the Carry On cast went out camping. Now, can we begin with the word camping? Is that a British word? Do they do camping all over the English-speaking world? What is the origin of camping? Well, it comes from a very illustrious family, I would say, camping, because it is linked to champions.

It is linked to a university campus. It's linked to champignons, which are mushrooms in French, and it's linked to champagne because it all goes back to campus, which was an open field in Roman times. The campus Marcius famously where the Roman soldiers would practice and prepare for battle. So the idea of a kind and prepare for battle so the idea of a kind of open space gave us the university campus um it gave us champignon because champignon mushrooms grow in open spaces it gave us champion because of those battle strategies and preparations that the roman soldiers do and it gave us champagne because again you know champagne is a sort of large open area of French countryside.

And the idea of a camp then in the camping sense that we're talking about today is that you are basically setting up a place to do whatever you want to do. So it goes from the idea of going to an open field, a level space and setting up. What was that, the Roman, the Latin that you mentioned rather than a campus, what? Campus, Martius, Martius, M-A-R-T-t-i-u-s as in mars the god of war and marshal and everything to things that were military so the campus martius is the origin of this so that everything everything flows from that but this is making me think when i next go camping in my fire pit i'm going to be cooking a mushroom omelette and washing it down with champagne. That would be appropriate, wouldn't it? It would be totally appropriate. So a variation of that is the word glamping.

Yeah. Glamping is simply glamorous camping. So that's taking rugs, probably beds, duvets, you name it, with you. How are you with camping? I don't know whether I see you as the camping type. I'm not very good at camping. I've done it in my time. I like the idea of it. I'm amused by the idea of a tent and climbing inside it. But to be honest, I need softness underneath me.

You know, you lie down on the ground and you find you're on a slight slope and the head is going down. No, it's's not for me and the guy ropes and putting it well we're going to talk about why they're called guy ropes and why a tent's called a tent are you a camper i mean have you been camping uh i would never have said that i was a camper because you know me just i'm always cold i'm very very sensitive to cold which is very annoying um so that's for me it's like my biggest dread is being cold and wet and not being able to do anything about it but of course you can take your hot water bottle you can go and fill it from the communal area in your campsite i actually

went camping during lockdown uh when we were allowed to go camping and um and it was brilliant i really really loved it despite the fact that we were right on the edge of a main road. It wasn't so good, but it was fun. It's the communal areas that get me down. When the children were small, we did do a few holidays that involved camping. We, the grown-ups, were in a caravan and the kids were under canvas.

And the upside was that at the holiday camp, this was in France, there was a very nice restaurant. Well, I called it a restaurant. It was more of a canteen, but the food was that at the holiday camp, this was in France, there was a very nice restaurant. Well, I called it a restaurant. It was more of a canteen. But the food was very good. The downside were the communal showers and the shared lavatories. Yes, I know what you mean.

They were never pleasant. They were the traditional. It was not that many years ago, but it was the traditional French style. You know, I mean, literally a hole in the ground and rather sinister sort of foot pads on which you were supposed to stand. No, no, no, no. Thank you very, very much.

I know what you mean. In those lieux des ans that you have on the French motorway and then you go and find a hole. Yeah. So give us some of those. I'm with you on that. Tell us about some of the words.

What about basics? We start with a tent. Okay. Tent, again, Latin. So the Romans gave us so much of our camping vocabulary tenter was something um stretched out so um this was something stretched over a framework and do you remember me telling you about the beautiful image that lies behind pavilion uh pavilion goes back to the french papillon a butterfly because a pavilion which is a much

grander tent let's face it looks like the wings of a butterfly stretched over a framework so i love that um but yes tent came to us from the latin vaguely um linked i think to the tenter that gave us tenter hooks it's very interesting i'm seeing a lot of people saying on tender hooks now or hearing them say on tender hooks it's definitely on tenter hooks and tenter was basically a framework on which you would dry wool and cloth and it would be stretched very very tightly attached by hooks on these frames so i think there is an ancient relationship there but um in its basic level it it goes back to Latin. Very good. What about the caravan I was in? What's the origin of that?

Yeah, so I was talking about vans earlier. So if you see, you know, white van on the street, it actually has a very exotic past, because it goes back to a Persian word caravan, which was a kind of group of people that were travelling over vast areas in order to get to their destination. So it was a whole sort of procession, really, before it was then applied to individual vehicles. Like a caravan of camels, I can picture it crossing the desert. So it wasn't one vehicle at all originally. It was a group of people and animals. It was a group of people travelling,

particularly, I think, in North Africa and Asia. of people and animals there's a group of people traveling um particularly i think in north africa um and asia and then from there as i say it was applied to a specific vehicle in this case probably a horse-drawn wagon and then i think it slipped into railway usage where it was a third class carriage um interestingly uh and then of course became the the caravans that people go on holiday with now, or the vans that you will find everywhere. Have I seen you since I was last in Yorkshire? I'm not sure you're everywhere, here, there and everywhere.

I'm here, there and everywhere. Earlier this week, I think I was in Yorkshire. No, a week ago, I was in Bridlington, which is one of my favourite parts of Yorkshire. I love Bridlington. I love the east riding and on the coast there. It's magnificent. And I was saying, you know, we know that Yorkshire is God's own country. And the fellow I was with said to me, you know, the East Riding is the only part of Yorkshire to be mentioned in the Bible. I said, really? He said, yes, it's mentioned. I said, I'm sure it isn't East Riding, can't it?

He said, yes, it's all about the caravan. This sure it isn't. East Riding, can't it? He said, yes, it's all about the caravan. This is what links to this. I said, the caravan? East Riding? Yes, he said. The caravan of three wise men came from the east, riding their camels. Get it? East Riding.

I get it. I get it. Well, actually, do you remember where riding does come from on the Yorkshire sense? I think I do, because is it a third? Is it come from threading? Meaning, because that people say there's an East riding, there's a North riding and there's a West riding. Why isn't there a South riding? Because there are only three of them. Yes, it's from the Vikings. Absolutely. So it's from Old Norse and it meant the third part and it was thrithing in in old english and then the th was lost because we were putting est or east or west or north in front of it so it kind of got slightly swallowed but yeah that's

where that comes from so we have our tent and we have next to it our caravan we know about that the tent is put up with guy ropes was guy a character an individual no well guy as in hey guys um i always find this extraordinary but that goes back to guy forks guido forks believe it or not um so yes it was began with guy forks then it moved to the effigy of guy forks so a figure um and then should we explain to international people who guy forks was oh yes absolutely uh do you want to do it or shall I do it? You do it. OK, so Guy Fawkes famously was involved in something called the Gunpowder Plot, which was on the 5th of November, 1605.

I'd say that's the date, yeah. OK, and we commemorate that. Oh, and basically, sorry, he wanted to, my history is going to get very sketchy here, but he wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament with a number of conspirators. And he was discovered and he was hanged eventually for his part in the plot. And every 5th of November,

we have in Britain what is called Bonfire Night. And we let out fireworks, we light bonfires, etc. And we used to burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes himself, didn't we? Yes. So from this effigy came the idea of a sort of generic human being, if you like, which is why today it can mean you guys can be multi-gendered. It doesn't have to just be male. But it began with Guy Fawkes. It began with Guy Fawkes, which is really exciting, isn Fawkes Guy Fawkes is the original guy how amazing I know but the guy rope on a tent is completely unconnected that probably is linked either to a guide which we think is probably more

likely or to a German word I think which is um means kind of almost like sort of braille. So again, it's the idea of sort of being tethered in some way or having sort of kind of ropes attached, I suppose. So I'm not talking about braille as in Louis Braille, but braille as in the small ropes that you'll find on a ship. I've never heard of that word. I've heard of braille as in capital B, R- w e that special way of in writing you can read if you are visually impaired yes but this is another word patterns of raised dots isn't it yeah yeah this is braille with one l not an eponym um it goes back to the latin i think for girdles so it's the idea of kind of attached being attached to a structure or holding something in place so that's where guy guy ropes

come from they're always the bane of my life whenever i try and set up a tent i like the pop-up ones best oh so do i yes they're much easier i went to the doctor once you know to complain that one moment i felt i was a wigwam and the next moment i felt i was a teepee and the doctor said to me yeah you're too tense i'm sorry i i like a juvenile joke um do you have you are a mummy do you have a mummy sleeping bag no i haven't i have a um very generic but very warm sleeping bag and i get so cold but the mummy sleeping bag i can only imagine is because it looks like there's a mummy uh sort of lying encased embalmed within it when you're actually lying within. Oh, I thought it was a sort of cosy thing to make you feel warm and cosy.

Oh, that's a nice idea. So you were wrapped up with your mummy. That's a nice idea. But no, I think it actually, the shape as well makes it look like it's a sort of outline of a mummy's tomb, which is a bit strange. Obviously, a sleeping bag is simply a bag in which you sleep. So that's quite straightforward. What about a rucksack?ucksack is from german so written in german is your back

and the zuck is your bag so it's a bag for your back simply um yeah which is is very simple can we do canopy by the way oh yes i love going back to the beautiful canopy of trees above you or the canopy that's provided by your tent do you remember i think I told you this one because it's linked to the canapes that you might have at a posh drinks party so it goes back to the greek conops meaning a mosquito so it was originally a mosquito net and then applied to all sorts of kind of coverings and the canapé goes back to the idea that there is often a bed below the mosquito net and canapés look like little beds or little sofas with little ingredients put on top. Gosh. Isn't that strange, isn't it?

I love it. While we're on those structures, give me the origin of gazebo because I know it has a curious etymology. gazebo because I know it has a curious etymology. Whenever we coin a new word, there's quite a temptation to make it sound like Latin or Greek because it gives it an air of authority. So that's why in medical circles, for example, because of the great history of classical vocabulary informing medicine or describing medicine, whenever there's a new word coined, people tend to give it a Latin or Greek name. And with gazebo, it was a bit more humorous, I think, because it was modelled on the pattern of lavabo, which is somewhere where you go to wash. So it used the A-B-O suffix in

Latin. And it simply means, I shall gaze. So lavabo is I shall wash and gazebo should really be gazebo is I shall gaze. So it's the idea of I shall look at this in wonder because it's such a beautiful thing. And you know, have you heard of a belvedere? I've heard of that word, but I feel a belvedere, you're outside your stately home and it's a kind of lawn on which you stand looking out over the estate the belvedere it's a beautiful it's a bit like a folly almost isn't it it's a summer house oh but it's a building sorry i thought it was a green space it can be a gallery as well it's usually at rooftop level and you have a really fantastic view the reason i mention it is that goes back to um the idea of a beautiful bell vedere meaning to see so this is beautiful to look at and i think

that's the idea of a gazebo is that i shall gaze either out from the gazebo or at this beautiful structure itself in a moment we're going to have some snacks i hope a little something around the campfire but should we take a break first? Okay, I'll go get marshmallows. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom.

Well, I didn't want to be comfortable. Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Wherever you're going,

you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout?

Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. This is Giles Brandreth and Susie Dent. We're carrying on camping this week. The words,

the language, that when we go out and live under canvas. Actually, what's the origin of canvas? Because are tents always made of canvas? Probably not anymore, but they used to be in the old days. Yeah, yeah. Canvas goes back to a Latin word meaning hemp, actually. So it's the idea of what it was made of, but it's linked to cannabis because of it. So it's a sibling of cannabis, which also means hemp. Oh, well, whenever I go camping, the weather is always appalling. And I have done it quite a lot.

The one thing I have to take with me are my thermals. Yes. Is thermal an interesting word? I suppose it comes from therm. Yes. Heat, Greek. Yeah, nothing. They're kind of heat preservers. So I have my thermals in my nether regions and I have my comes from therm. Yes, heat, Greek. Yeah, nothing. It's the kind of heat preservers.

So I have my thermals in my nether regions and I have my gilet, my little zip-up gilet. That's a French word, I assume. That is a French word, though ultimately it goes back, it's a bit like, how do these have such exotic origins, like cagoule and that kind of thing?

It goes back to the Arabic for a waistcoat or a vest actually worn by slaves in algeria so quite a sort of dark exotic past i suppose very good uh kagul is that an interesting source of that you mentioned it oh yeah i just i just think that quite often we don't um we don't realize that you know these things that we see as being ultimately quite sort of plain and practical and functional actually have nice origin so that's i think um from quite a long time ago and it's french for a cowl a sort of cowl neck which one day i will tell you is linked to the cappuccino coffee that you meet like in the

morning but we don't have time for that now okay well what i'm going to be doing i wouldn't mind a coffee though i don't drink coffee anymore but i'm going to have something uh by the fire what about camping food what will i have there toasted marshmallows um yeah sausages we'll have vegetarian sausages you and i so sausage if you remember goes back to the latin for salted meat so it's related to salads which were salted vegetables goes back to salary because of roman allowances in the military of salt so sausages will be there what else should we have um well i want a noggin of some kind oh noggin yes oh you have to tell me this is not our christmas episode but do you like eggnog i never did and it's got alcohol in it isn't it it's got alcohol in it and it's it's rather sweet

it's just the egg bit it's a sort of yellow drink that people people drink extraordinary things at christmas don't they they do well the reason i mention it is because the noggin as in the small quantity of alcohol that you might have around the campfire is linked to eggnog because one theory is that eggnog is a drink that yes it's sweet also fairly strong, and might go straight to your noggin, which also used to mean a person's head. Ah. Yeah. Is the noggin now the drink, or is it the actual mug? Yeah, it can be a small drinking cup, you're right, but it can also be a small quantity of drink. Did you see, speaking of small drinking cups, one of our, we know we have this merch, or rises purple merch did you see somebody tweeted the other day that they'd got uh our mug our little mug with the word bloviator on

and they were thrilled with it i was so pleased they were loving it um and they were it had arrived oh i like it she's flashing her bloviator uh listeners um what does bloviator mean are we yes bloviator noun someone who says, bloviator, noun, someone who talks at great length on a subject they know very little about. I better shut up then. Have you got anything more to tell us about the world of camping before we get on to our listeners' letters? Well, we mentioned marshmallow,

which I just think is one of the most beautiful sounding words in the English language. It just kind of sounds soft and fluffy and bouncy to me. But have you ever had a s'more? A s'more? Yeah. What's a s'more? Okay, so s'mores are really lovely. They're basically, well, the ones that I've had anyway, are usually chocolate covered toasted marshmallows. But you can also, in the absolute authentic, genuine s'more, they are sandwiched between what they call graham crackers, in which graham is spelled Graham, and named after Sylvester Graham, who was actually a bit like Mr. Kellogg, was a nutritionist or a dietician. I'm not sure he would have approved of s'mores, because they're incredibly sweet, but they're really lovely. And those came about in the 1920s, but they're really making a comeback. It's just that toasting the marshmallow over the fire, covering it in chocolate, and then maybe sandwiching it between two nice little crackers. Very good.

There was a reminder this week, a story, or the other day, of somebody being killed by, was it a buffalo? A reminder that these big beasts can be quite frightening. And I do remember as a child going camping, and we actually found ourselves in a field where during the night, or maybe it was as dawn broke, a cow's head poked itself through the flap at the entrance of the tent. Can you imagine how alarming that was? I would never be afraid of a single cow, but I have read quite scary stories of cows, as a herd, basically becoming quite belligerent only when they're sort of scared.

But I think if I had a lot of cows running towards me, that would not be good. One cow could cope. It's also tricky sharing a tent. Many, many years ago, I was with a group of people who were, we were theatricals, and they were doing Alfresco Theatre. Alfresco was not the name of the agent. They could have been, oh, yeah, my agent did all the open air work. He was called Alfresco. I mean, it's from...

Not Mr. Diggin'. We've discussed that before, I know, in one of our other episodes. In the fresh well we were young troubadours and we we traveled around the country doing open air shakespeare and i remember being in the next door tent to this couple we were sharing tents and in the next door tent was this this couple and they were attached to other people it was a boy and a girl they may have been playing romeo and juliet and you get quite quite intense on tour literally they were intense in the tent and they decided at the beginning of the evening that they would have they were in their separate sleeping bags and they were head

to toe as it were so that his head was by her toes and vice versa and then I couldn't get to sleep because they spent the whole night of discussing whether or not they should get into each other's sleeping bags and they had this terribly intense conversation went on for hours hours with her saying oh go on why don't we you know we're on tour it doesn't really matter you know it's not as if we're married it's it's only you know we're just and he was saying well actually i'm engaged i'm so i'm not really i'm sort of engaged i don't know do you think we should and it was completely gripping to listen to. But after about two hours of this, I had to put my head through the tent and say,

I think get on with it or let us go to sleep. And there was no reply of any kind. Silence fell. I was probably mortified. And I retreated to my tent and then I had to listen intently to see whether I could hear. And I think, I think I heard a very quiet unzipping. I don't know. You'll know who you are if I'm talking about you. It was many years ago. You will now be a person of riper years. If you want to share this story, do get in touch with us.

And no names, no pactual. What happens on tour stays on tour. But if you want to tell me how that night ended, I would love to know. And if you tour. But if you want to tell me how that night ended, I would love to know. And if you've got a story you want to share about your camping holidays, it's purple at something else dot com, purple at something else dot com. And something is spelt without a G because we like to be a little bit different. Have people been in touch this week, Susie? Yes. Do you remember we talked a while ago about um someone who loves to give books away as opposed to a biblio clept which was one of my trio once which is somebody who is constantly stealing other people's books and after paul peterson from minnesota suggested bibliodore in reference to his wife we've had some more come in so will wallace

suggests a freeder instead of a reader a freeder um adrian moore who's a brit um living in washington dc likes biblio socialite um jill pearson thinks that someone who sets books free that's a lovely word uh way of putting it could be a libert libertarian. Oh, I like the libertarian. That's very clever. Yes, instead of a libertarian. And Mark Newman from Wexford in Ireland goes down a slightly different route with this email. He says, well-known for her philanthropic gestures,

including giving away millions of children's books, I propose that the word should honour Dolly, the great Dolly Parton, and the act of giving away books, all to be known as partonage instead of patronage. I love that. That is brilliant. brilliant you know i love to name drop and i have i have met dolly parton and the well brilliant she is both brilliant i met her to talk about this scheme that she has literally of you know encouraging literacy and reading and giving away books this wonderful example of

partonage but she is tiny. She is really, really tiny. I mean, I know she's famous for being, as it were, wonderfully proportioned. And she loves that and she makes the most of it. But she's a very petite person. You know, she's not tall at all. Really complete surprise.

Yeah, I've always imagined her as being very petite. There are a lot of small film stars, you know, and they often have big heads. Tom Cruise is quite small from the neck down, but quite a large head, big head, small body, and often huge lips, huge lips. I wondered where you were going there. But let's not talk about Julia Roberts now.

Who else has been in touch? OK, Caroline Costa-Leng has written in to say that our show has helped her walk many, many Ks while working in Melbourne during lockdown. So thanks for that, Caroline. Her daughter said to her the other night, I know what cream of the crop means, but can you tell me why it's crop? What does a crop have to do with cream? Very good. They couldn't find the answer and thought that we might know.

Well, the crop is simply a crop that you might harvest in the field so that one's not surprising there and cream is simply used here figuratively to mean the top or the best of something because obviously cream rises to the top when milk is left to stand so it came to be used figuratively to mean that the top or the very best so you might say they're the cream of society for example and the cream of the crop it simply means the very best of that yield that's the idea well thank you thank you caroline costa leng melbourne australia how wonderful they're all locked up in in australia you know locked up for years hopefully hopefully that will go soon but

we're here anyway we're here for you keep listening to us we care uh susan oh look that's amusing i was talking i was talking we had costa mentioned there caroline costa lang and here's someone called susan coop or could it be co-op she she named after the co-op um no i think coop coop is her name i think coop what is susan coop writing to us about uh she uh was walking walking in North Yorkshire near the beautiful Harrogate and came across a spring with Adam's Ale engraved into a nearby rock. And her husband from West Yorkshire had never heard of it. But Susan is from the Midlands and knew that it meant water, but they were both puzzled about where it comes from.

It has indeed meant water for quite a long time, since the 17th century. And the idea is simply a reference to the Adam, the first man of Adam and Eve. And so water is taken to be a drink of natural simplicity. And so appropriate to the first, at that point, untarnished, pure first man. That's the idea. And I looked this up in the Oxford English Dictionary. There's a quote from a 17th century lawyer that speaks of poor prisoners

that have been shut up in dungeons, allowed only a poor pittance of Adam's ale and scarce a penny bread a day to support their lives. So a bit miserable. Well, thank you for being in touch wherever you are in the world and whatever your name is. I love unusual names. And I think Susan Coop, it's a glorious name. Now it's time,

Susie Dent, for your trio of words. Interesting, genuine words that you feel deserve greater currency. What have you got for us this week? Okay, well, I'm going to be sort of merry-go-sorry with these. I love merry-go-sorry, if you remember. This is not one of my trio, but it means the sort of merry-go-round of life, which occasionally brings sorrow and then happiness and then sorrow. And it's all very, very circular. So the first one is more in sorrow, and it's the verb to gowl. So written like howl, only with a G at the front. And it means to weep more in anger or frustration than sorrow. To gowl. The next one is something that we all might do in the shower first thing, for example. I just think it's really nice and it's very pithy. To glad warble, glad warble hyphenated is to sing joyfully. I love that. To glad warble. Well, it makes it clear what it is. To glad warble,

you're warbling gladly. Exactly. And then the third one is, I think I might have talked about a snirt before now, but this is to snirtle. S-N-I-R-T-L-E. And it's to try to suppress your laughter, but without much success. It's got a little bit of a kind of snort in there,

but it's a kind of, you know, that kind of thing. Snirtle, I like it. A very useful word. It is is i've got a poem if you're new to something rhymes with purple we have a sort of shape to our shows we usually pick a theme and we always have a trio of interesting words from suzy and i often try to choose a poem that's appropriate to whatever we've been discussing and for me one of the blights of going camping are the midges, the insects, the midges, the creepy crawlies. I'm not good at any of those things. You obviously can cope with a cow poking its face through your, into your tent. What I

can't cope with, apart from the cow, is creepy crawlies, flies of any kind. But sometimes they are beautiful and fascinating. And there's a poem, a summer poem, written by the great Thomas Hardy that actually describes his encounter with a, I think it was a daddy longlegs, and a moth and a dumbledore. Do you know what a dumbledore is? Yeah, it's an old word for a bumblebee. Yeah, I mean, it's, of course, a character now famously in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories. Because she said that she liked to imagine Dumbledore walking around and humming to himself quietly.

Ah. It's a nice idea. Well, I think there are four insects in this poem, as well as the poet Thomas Hardy. insects in this poem, as well as the poet Thomas Hardy. And the poem actually begins indoors, but you could picture it maybe out of doors around the campfire with a lamp lit late at night. A shaded lamp and a waving blind, and the beat of a clock from a distant floor. On this scene enter, winged, horned and spined, a longlegs, a moth and a dumbledore, while mid my page there idly stands a sleepy fly that rubs its hands. Thus meet we five in this still place, at this point of time, at this point in space.

My guests besmear my new penned line, or bang at the lamp and fall supine. God's humblest they, I muse. Yet why? They know earth secrets that know not I. Hmm. Well, how true is that? Oh, he's so brilliant, Thomas Hardy. Completely gripping character.

Anyway, more poetry, more wonderful words from Susie Dent. When you next join us, we've got 100 more episodes that you can catch up on on so please dip into our grab bag of delights from yesteryear but stick with us purple people we love you we're grateful to you we do and i should just say that for um those listeners of um acute hearing you'll probably hear the backdrop to this entire episode has been just sort of the drip drip drip drip of rain outside very appropriate to camping um but here in Britain, in Blighty, it is absolutely chucking it down,

at least in my neck of the woods. I thought it was your tummy rumbling. I thought she's got the conny wobbles again. No, it's constant pitter-patter of rain. No. But even if you did hear that, I hope you still enjoyed it and we hope that you will join us again.

Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale,

Josh, who has joined us today for the first time. Thank you, Josh. And, well, I don't know where he is, but frankly, you know, we just keep him on the credits until he comes back.

It's, you know, who... Golly, he's away with the Dumbledores.