Something Rhymes with Purple - Cerealia

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

This week, Susie & Gyles demystify calendar mysteries. Join us as we unravel the the quirky origins of the m months’ names - from January to December. 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:  Dromomania: The desire to wander Nostomania: The desire to return home hiraeth: The deep longing for something, especially one's home. Gyles' poem this week was ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by ‘Robert Burns O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve! And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile. 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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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Amex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language and etymology, where words come from, how they've evolved over the years. And it's presented by me, Giles Brandreth, and by my friend and colleague, Susie Dent. Susie, where are you today and how are you today? Well, I am in my usual spot at home in my study, looking at your gorgeous self on a screen. I know you're somewhere more exciting. Just quickly to answer, how am I?

I'm suffering a little bit, Giles, because I went for a lovely walk today near me, then stopped with a friend at a pub, a lovely pub near me for lunch. We sat outside. There was a wasp that was stuck in an empty bottle of Coke on the other table and looked very sort of perplexed and worried and was desperate to get out. So I tipped the bottle over, let it out. And guess what happened then? It didn't sting you.

It stung me. Oh. Yes. So that's the last time I help out any wasp. But I have to say, I'd forgotten how extremely painful they are. Because thankfully the wasp didn't die. That's only bees.

But it was, yeah, it's still hurting, I have to say. So if you see me scrunching my nose at any point or wincing, it's not because of what you're saying. Now, just remind me, wasp, W-A-S-P. I know that the French for this is the word GEP, G-U-E-P-P-E, and they're connected in some way. Explain to me why that W becomes G-U in French, or the other way around. Yeah, it does often do that. So, for example, we have a warranty from English that went the sort of old English route, and then we have garantir, which became guarantee in English. But ultimately, you know, this one

didn't really come from French. It came from the old English. What we did is we swapped the S and the P around. So in old English, it was whips rather than wasp. And do you know, it goes back to the Latin vespa, which means a wasp and those wonderful vespas which i've always wanted to ride are so cool because of the wasp like buzz that they make well this is why people listen to the podcast because they learn incidental things even before we've begun if i'm sounding a bit strange to you or if there's an odd gap between whatever i say and your reply it's because i'm coming to you from a different country today. You are in England, in Oxford. I am in Scotland, in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, because I'm appearing

from now until the end of August on the Edinburgh fringe. I'm one of 3,553 different shows that are being put on here this month. It's just an amazing experience. I can hear you loud and clear. And I think the purple people hopefully will too. And well, we have a lovely subject today. We do, because this is the month of August. And I associate August with being in Edinburgh. And that, I think, is what's led us to talk about months, the months of the year. And for me, the start of a show in Edinburgh is always a red letter day. So can you begin perhaps with months and red letter days? Well, tell us more. Yeah, red letter day. So first

of all, the word calendar, we're talking about the calendar today, really. That goes back to the calends, which you probably will know all about. So that was the day at the beginning of each month when interest on debts fell due in the Roman calendar and calends itself comes from the Latin word calare meaning to proclaim it gave us call to call out and it's said to have originated in the calling of citizens together on the first day of the month when an individual called the pontifex informed them of the time of the new moon because of course month is very much a relative of moon because it's all about the revolution of the time of the new moon, because of course month is very much a relative of moon, because it's all about the revolution of the moon. And the pontifex would also tell them about the

festivals and the sacred days to be observed, really. And the red letter days are so called because in almanacs and also in ecclesiastical calendars, important feast days and saint days, et cetera, were printed in red and all the other, were printed in red, and all the other days were printed in black. So they were seen as special days. Very good. We've obviously, we could go through every month of the year, I suppose, they've got interesting names. I remember vaguely why we have 12 months and not 10. I've never quite understood that, why we had 12 pennies instead of 10, because my line always was, well, we have to have 12, because if our Lord had meant us to go metric, he wouldn't have given himself 12 disciples. But there must be more to it than that. Was it once upon a time,

10 months in the year, now it's 12, because of the Romans introducing August for Augustus, something like that? Does that ring a bell in my distant memory? seeing August for Augustus, something like that? Does that ring a bell in my distant memory? Yeah. So we went from 10 to 12 because the earliest calendars were based on the cycles of the moon, which had about 29 or 30 days in the month, but the lunar year doesn't quite match the solar year. So that's when the ancient Romans created a 10-month calendar, which didn't quite line up perfectly with the seasons. So it was Julius Caesar who introduced the Julian calendar. And that had 12 months, and he added extra days then to some months. And that was better aligned with the solar year.

And so July is named after him, is it? July is named after Julius Caesar. And am I right that August is named after Augustus Caesar? Exactly right. And September would have been the seventh month, and October the eighth month? Yeah, well, let's go through it. Let's go through them. But the measuring of time is just such a fascinating subject, really. It's shaped our history, you know, because every civilization has tracked time using various methods, really. You know, and today we have clocks in which time is measured in atoms. But of course, they used to have sundials,

and they used to have, in Neolithic times, hill chambers through which sunlight would announce the solstice. I mean, it is the most incredible subject. Well, if we start in January, I know this. January is named after Janus. Is it a Roman god who looks in two directions? So Janus is looking back on the old year and forward to the new year. Is that why it's called January? Yes, that's absolutely right. And we have Janus words as well. So these are words that look both ways. So they're called otherwise contronyms. And an example of this is we might dust our table to get rid of the dust, but we might also dust our cake with chocolate powder, in which case we put dusting, you know, dusting of something on.

We might cleave to something by sticking very firmly to it, or you might cleave it by chopping it in half. So these are called Janus words. But he gave us not just January, but also Janus, because he was a gatekeeper. He stood at the gate, as you said, the old year and the new one and looked both ways. So it's a lovely metaphor, I think. Very good. February, I like February. One of my daughters was born on the 2nd of February. Is the 2nd of February Groundhog Day? I think it is. Anyway, February, where does that come from? But we can talk about Groundhog Day, actually. And also at some point, it would be really nice to tell you what these months were called for a while in Old English, because they're really, I don't know,

I just find them really rich in some ways. I wish we would bring them back. So February goes back to Februar, F-E-B-R-U-A, which was the name of a purification feast that was held by the Romans in this month. It was called Spockelmond by the Dutch, and that meant vegetation month. But the Anglo-Saxons knew it as Solmonath, which means mud month, which I think is far more appropriate, personally. And actually, January is probably my favourite Anglo-Saxon month name. It's Wolfmonath, because it was wolf month, because wolves were particularly hungry in January,

because there was not much food to go around. Oh, howling through the night. Groundhog Day is the 2nd of February, isn't it? And why is it so called? It is. It's so called from the saying that the groundhog first appears from hibernation on that day. And the superstition is if it sees its shadow, it goes back to its burrow for another six weeks, indicating six more weeks of winter weather. Because the general idea is that although that's a sunny day, when it sees its shadow, it means a late spring, whereas a cloudy day, when it can't see its shadow, means an early spring. I can't quite work that one out. But anyway, that's the superstition. And of course, in 1993, Bill Murray made it, you know, notorious by the brilliant film, which was of a cynical weatherman

who is made a better person because he's forced to relive daily the Groundhog Day celebrations in his town. And there is now a musical at the Old Vic Theatre in London, England, that I'm told is sensational. A musical version of that movie called Groundhog Day, the musical. And I've not seen it yet, but people are acclaiming it. March, of course, is my favourite month because I was born the 8th of March.

My wife was born on the 14th of March. She shares a birthday with Albert Einstein, I think, and Michael Caine. Not many people know that, 14th of March. And my son was born on the 13th of March. So I love March. I assume that's Mars, the god of war. Yeah, the god of war.

The old Saxon name for it actually meant rough month, which is pretty much the same idea. So, yes, so that is March. And we have Lent, of course, as well in March. And that actually goes back to an old English word meaning spring or literally a sort of lengthening because in this month the days noticeably lengthen. Oh, hold on. You say Lent, we have it in March. Do we always have it in March?

Because Lent is the beginning of the Easter, the run-up to Easter, the 40 days and 40 nights, is it, that in the Bible story, Christ spends in the wilderness. So I think we work back from whatever the date of Easter is to the beginning of Lent. But maybe it is always in March. Maybe that's the way it works out. Well, I suppose that's true, actually. Now we only use Lent in a religious context, but actually before that, and we're talking about maybe before the 17th century, it was a sort of season of new growth. So it was pretty much what we saw as spring. And spring, as you know, is short for spring of the leaf, which I absolutely love. Just as fall was our word for autumn before the Normans got their way and we took it from Luton.

But that was short for fall of the leaf so yeah so so that's lent and then we have mardi gras which we've talked about before which translates as fat tuesday and that's shrove tuesday isn't it the day before lent starts celebrated famously everywhere we have shrove time now do you remember shrove and shrive well i mean i know shrove t Tuesday is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, and that's the beginning of Lent, but I don't know. Shriven, no, tell me. Actually, Shrove is the past tense of Shrive, and to Shrive one's sins was to confess them and to seek penance. So that's why it's the so-called before Ash Wednesday, but it is at the heart

of our saying to give someone short shrift, because prisoners awaiting execution would have their confession heard by a priest just before they went to the scaffold. And it had to be short because the crowds and the executioner was waiting, so they were given short shrift. Yeah. Well, all these Easter things like Mardi Gras, which of course is the Tuesday where you eat up all the stuff before Lent begins because you're going to be having the penance of Lent and going on a bit of a disciplined diet. And that all comes to a head with Maundy Thursday, which is the day before Good Friday. Any interesting stories with either of those? comes from the first words of a saying for that day, which was mandatum novum do vobis, a new commandment I give unto you. So that's where that comes from. And then gifts of Maudy Mania given by the sovereign. That you love one another. Yes, I remember this because,

as you know, I've written a biography of the late Queen Elizabeth II. And Maundy Thursday was always one of the most important days in her calendar, when by tradition, as the monarch, she would give out Maundy money, alms for the poor people, more recently given to simply old people as a kind of symbol. But she always felt that was very important because it is the first commandment to love one another as you love yourself. So that's the origin of Maundy.

Comes before Good Friday, which seems a strange name given it's such a grim day. That's the day that is the anniversary of the crucifixion of Christ in the Christian story. Yes. Yes. And good here means holy. And both Christmas actually and Shrove Tuesday is to be called the Good Tide. So yes, not quite good in the modern sense, really. And then Easter is a nice one. That's actually, well, it was adopted for the Christian festival from an old English word for a heathen or pagan festival that was held at the vernal or spring equinox. And that was in honour of Easter, who was a Germanic goddess of the dawn and from Easter of course we have east as well so those relatives of each other but no connection with oestrogen and eggs no no none of these that actually begins with an o obviously whereas I don't think Easter

has ever linked to that and oestrogen is from um or we talk about the oesterous. And the oesterous really is when a female mammal is in heat. I love the way, I love the way you know all this stuff just off the top of your head. You are extraordinary. So we've done January, February, March, April. We must get halfway through the year before we take our break. So April comes after March. April, who's that named after? Is that a god, goddess? Yes. I wanted to ask you whether you are a prankster and whether you play April Fool's joke. But it's actually, it's a bit of an outlier, April, because it came to us from Latin, which is fine, Aprilis. But in itself, it probably goes back to an Etruscan word. So a fairly exotic and ancient word there.

But yeah, do you do April Fool's jokes? Do I do April Fool's jokes? Of course I do April Fool's. I was brought up, I am Mr. April Fool's jokes? Do I do April Fool's jokes? Of course I do April Fool's. I was brought up, I am Mr. April Fool. As a child, I'd get my parents to walk through doors on which I'd placed a pillow, you know, so as they opened the door, the pillow would fall on top of them. I loved making an apple pie bed, which is one which you used to be able to do before duvets came in, where you had sheets and blankets and you wouldn't be able to get your feet down it. Oh, I love that sort of thing. I went went to joke shops i got little plastic versions of of ink when you used to have ink in bottles and you could do spilt ink and little i'm afraid i'm sorry to say this uh dog turds

you get little plastic ones i don't know who i was trying to fool because you didn't keep a dog Yes, I used to delight in the fake parking tickets and sneezing powder. And the, what was it, the thing that always, there was something that my dad would always put his finger in and it would just kind of, it was quite painful. It would sort of snap shut on you like a mousetrap. I can't quite remember what it was. But in France, of course, it's a poisson d'avril, isn't it? An April fish. And in Scotland, it's a gawk, which is a cuckoo. So also, I'm not quite sure.

I did try and investigate why a fish came into play in France. So if there are any purple people who know, I would love to understand. I'd like to know why we do this on the 1st of April. Why is that considered the year, the time of year for this kind of nonsense? Why is it the 1st of April, not the 1st of November? There are many theories as to its beginnings, and one involves the Roman festival of Serialia. So that's about like cereal, but with IA at the end.

And that was held at the beginning of April, and it was essentially welcoming the burgeoning of crops, the growing of crops and sort of fertility and that kind of thing. And there's one story that involves Prostapina, who was apparently playing in the Elysian meadows and had just filled up her lap with daffodils when Pluto came around and carried her off to the lower world. And her mother, Ceres, heard the echo of her screams and went in search of the echo, but it was a bit of a fool's errand. I'm sure in other stories she spends half the year with her daughter and half the year above ground. But it's such a sort of sad, wonderful, kind of grand story.

And I've always thought it very odd that from Ceres, the goddess of fertility, etc., we get Coco Pops, essentially. It just seems like such a come down. I love the way you pronounce these words, because I would have said series. Oh, it probably is series. And I would have said prosopine. Oh, prosopine. Okay, so prosopina I would have said. No, what was the other one you mentioned? Elysian meadows.

Oh, yes, Elysian. Elysian. That's okay. That was like the Elysian fields. Yes, Elysian fields. Yeah, I can picture that. Yes. So that's April. May, May Day, May Day. That comes from May Day, May Day means help me, help me, doesn't it? That's the international signal for distress. It does. It's nothing to do with the 1st of May and everything to do with the French, May Day, help me.

And why is May so called? May is so called from the Latin maias, which is Maya, the goddess of growth and increase. And the Anglo-Saxons had a lovely name for this, which was three milk month, because at this time, cows can be milked three times a day. Goodness, can they? I don't know if they still can, but they thought they could. Have they agreed and they signed the contract?

They thought they could. And then, of course, we have cast not a clout till May is out, which is that wonderful warning not to shed your winter clothes or your vests or whatever too early in the year. So clout is a piece of clothing. And the last thing I want you to tell me before we take our quick break is June. June is busting out all over and I want to know the origin of the word June. Okay, and then let me go back to, here we go gathering, nuts of May. I want to go back to that. But June is probably named from the Roman gens, which means a sort of people or clan, or the name Junius, which is related to

juvenis, meaning young or juvenis, if you pronounce your Latin words that way. The Anglo-Saxons called June dry month, because presumably then it was quite hot with not much rainfall. But we talked about cast not to clout till May is out in other words don't take your clothes or your vest off don't leave them at home until May is over and we're pretty sure that May in this case is the month but in here we go gathering nuts of May we think that's actually not May the month but May the hawthorn and so essentially nuts of May began as knots of hawthorn blossom, which is quite lovely, which would be made into sort of posies, etc. So we

think it's here we go gathering knots of May. So these wonderful little posies of blossom. There you go. I've cleared that one up. That's lovely. Let's finish this first half with that lovely posy of blossom and take a quick break. And then we'll come back to the joys of July. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there.

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including kids and families, 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+. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm in Edinburgh in Scotland with a slight time lag before I can be heard by Susie Dent, who is in Oxford in England. We're rattling through the months of the year, and she's telling me where the names for those months come from. We've reached the month of July, the seventh month of the year.

And tell us, where does July come from? Julius Caesar, in fact. We touched on that right at the beginning. Is it Julius Caesar? We did, but do you know who called it July? Mark Antony. So he called it July in honour of Julius Caesar before it all went wrong. And the Anglo-Saxons knew this as meadow month

because the cattle were turned into the meadows to feed then. But also until the 18th century, worth knowing that July was pronounced Julie, as in Rooley, as in Rooley or Unrooley or whatever. But yeah, up until then, it was not July. So that's interesting. This is when we have possibly, during July and August, we have the dog days, the days of great heat.

And the Romans called the hottest weeks of the summer Canicularis Dies. And their theory was the dog star called Sirius rising with the sun added to the summer's heat. And so the dog days, which is named after Sirius, bore the combined heat of the sun, essentially, and the dog star Sirius. So that's why they're called the Dog Days of Summer, which I think is beautiful. Nothing to do with mad dogs and Englishmen.

Who go out of the midday sun. The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it. In Rangoon, the heat of noon. Anyway, never mind. I'm not going to start doing my Noel card impressions. I'm going to ask you to tell me about August, which is clearly Augustus Caesar. Roman emperor who was said to consider this to be his lucky month. And it's so interesting how many of our words in English pick up on this idea of lucky months, lucky days. I think I've talked before about the word dismal or the adjective dismal, which is horrible. Something dismal is just beyond gloomy. And that began with the Latin dies mali, the bad days, and they were literally marked out in the calendar as specific days of the year on which it was unwise and inauspicious to do anything major. Some people wouldn't even go out on the dismal days, the dies mali. So it's incredible

how wrapped up in superstition some of the days in the calendar were. And it's incredible to me how complicated the calendar is because we've now reached September, which as many people know, sept obviously means seven. French, it is still seven, but this is from the Latin and yet it isn't the seventh month. And yet we still call it September. Unravel that if you can. Well, just as I said, you know, the Roman month started in March. So it's the seventh month from March when their year formally commenced. And the Anglo-Saxons called it Harvest Month, or after the introduction of Christianity, they called it Holy Month, because the Nativity of the Virgin Mary was on the 8th, I think. This is the time when you see gossamer,

one of my favourite words in English. Gossamer is, you know, it's that beautiful, filmy, delicate, like cobweb almost material. And indeed they are cobwebs because they're spun by small spiders, but they look like this glorious floating thread, which floats in the air or it settles upon grass in the autumn. And we think it's a shortened version of goose summer because the webs are particularly visible in calm and clear weather and look a little like the down of a goose, or perhaps this is when geese were eaten. That's lovely. Well, goose summer takes me to another phrase, Indian summer. Is that a late summer, is it, as an Indian summer? Because why, in India, summers came late?

No, actually, so this is a sort of old and now considered derogatory use of Indian, I think, because it's of US origin. And it was called this because in the days of the early settlers, this kind of weather was more pronounced in the lands that were then occupied by indigenous Native American peoples. So we wouldn't use Indian these days, but it's kind of got fossilized in that phrase, Indian summer. Very good. October, that means eight, obviously, October. So that's the eighth since the beginning of the calendar in March, the eighth month. That's simple as that, is it? And same for November is the ninth. Simple as that. And the old English word for it was wine month, because this was the time of vintage, which is quite nice. And November, yes, nine months. Now, this is when I was born, but unfortunately, the Anglo-Saxons called it Blood Month, which was because this was the time when beasts were slain and salted down for their winter use. Another Saxon name for it actually was Wind Month, which I prefer because that's when fishermen would beach their boats and stop fishing until the spring. So you are a Scorpio?

I am a Scorpio. That's stinging my tail. I never knew that. Sexy old Scorpio. How intriguing. Do you know, that is really interesting to me. Is it? I never realised that. Marvellous. Oh, we mustn't be distracted. When you and I were growing up, we would, I don't know, I speak for myself here, but I would regularly read my horoscope. And I did put some faith in it. I didn't live by it, but it was quite an interesting thing to read in my Jackie magazine or whatever. And it wasn't until my kids were in their teens that I actually even wondered what star signs there were. I think someone asked me and I thought, I actually have no idea. So it becomes so much less relevant. But I don't know if that's universal or whether that's just my life.

I think it's my life too. I used to follow it much more. And I knew some people who were astrologers. And it still takes up reams of pages in the papers. So obviously, a lot of people do still follow it. But anyway, there we go. It meant something once. I'm sure, you know, the old belief about the power of the stars,

which again echoes through so many words in English, like disaster, which is from ill-starred. You know, and we see it right up to Shakespeare, don't we? Star-crossed lovers, et cetera, et cetera. I think, well, let's not talk about personal beliefs, but, you know, I think that still ripples through quite a lot of science. Look, there could well be something in it. I mean, you talked about the month coming from the word moon. Yeah. And there is no doubt the tides are affected by the movement of the moon.

So why couldn't our moods, our personalities also be affected by the movement of the stars? Exactly. Well, I don't dismiss it totally. No. But I don't follow it in the newspapers in the way that, like you, I used to do when I was a child. Yeah. Give us December. Obviously, 10 again.

This is just the 10th month since March. Yeah. Give us December, obviously 10 again. This is just the 10th month since March. Exactly. And the old English name for it was earlier Yule. And of course, Yuletide was the Christmas season. And that actually is related to an old Norse word for Jol, J-O-L, which was the name of a pagan festival at the winter solstice. And we think that's possibly behind Jolly as well. Noël in French, obviously, is an alternative. That's what they would call Christmas. We have the first Noël. So Noël, obviously, in France.

And that ultimately goes back to the Latin dies natalis, birthday, because Noël is a traditional name given to somebody born at Christmastime. So, yeah, it's really, I mean, there's so much more to say and there's so many sort of, you know, important days, obviously, that we can come back to because it's a rich subject. There's a song by Flanders and Swan who are English songwriters and very entertaining about the English weather. And it ends after we've had the awful month of December

and then it's bloody January again and the awful weather continues. So we've covered the 12 months of the year. If we want to cover the days of the week, we haven't got time now, but we might do it in our special Purple Club, mightn't we? Oh yes, in our bonus episode, that's a very good idea. But we ought to get on with correspondence because every week people write to us at our new email address, which is simply purplepeople, all one word, purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes, again, one word, something rhymes, purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Send us whatever you want to ask us. And here, I think we've got a message from somebody. In fact, it's from a

double act, Gemma and Chris. Hi, Susie and Giles. My husband and I love listening to the podcast. I'm a doctor and prescribe medicine, which may come in a tablet form. We also use the word tablet for some handheld devices. I wonder how do the two of these have the same word but such different meanings? Thanks so much, Gemma and Chris. Oh, good question, Gemma. What's the answer, Susie? Well, no surprise really if you look back to the origin of tablet,

which is the Latin tabula, which also gave us a table. of tablet which is the latin tabula which also gave us a table and essentially it was a smooth stiff sheet or even a thin piece of stone that was used for writing upon so public messages and announcements etc would be written on these tablets very often and so it was this shape of something smooth and stiff that eventually was transferred to a flat or compressed piece of a solid substance, especially medicine. So this was about, well, in the 15th century, tablets of arsenic were referred to. So that idea, again, of something small and flat was applied in 2002 to a portable computer. And it's actually linked Gemma and Chris to the tabloids because the first tabloids hit the press in the late 19th century and these were small round and white nothing to do with the scurrilous headlines that we associate them with today because they were also pills and these were

pills that compressed medicines in like morphine for example and tabloid means little tablet and tabloid newspapers were so-called, of course, because they were compressed versions of the news in shape and in size. So, yes, it's all linked. Keep taking the tablets. Danny Hodder has been in touch. Hi, Giles and Susie. Thanks for your podcasts. I'm a long-time listener and I love them. I'm not sure if you've covered this, but I'm curious about the word skive. I came across this in connection with leatherwork, meaning to cut, shave or split. It's also used to mean avoiding work. Is there a connection? And does the word skivvy with two Vs, meaning a servant, have any connection?

Thanks, Danny Hodder. Oh, Susie. Interesting questions. What are the answers? Yeah, I really have to thank Danny for this one because I had absolutely no idea that scything leather was to split it or to cut it. Same with rubber, apparently. And it's particularly to cut it into slices or strips. And that is the relevant part because we think it's related to a word called shive. And shive was used for a

slice of something it could be a slice of bread or Gerard Manley Hopkins famously introduced the word shive light which is beautiful shive light was a sliver of light that you might get piercing a canopy of trees so skive in that sense and shive are related and they have nothing to do with skiving off. We think, not completely sure, but we think that goes back to a French word, esquiver, which is E-S-Q-U-I-V-E-R, which means to dodge, to slink away or to move quickly. So if you're bunking off, you might be sort of, you know, quickly moving away from what you should be doing. As for whether Skivvy is related to either of these senses, the answer is probably not. But we don't sadly know where Skivvy comes from. But we do know it was first recorded in 1902. You know so much. And you also know that every week,

Susie gives us three special words that are a bit unusual that she likes and wants to share with us. What's your trio today? Well, I appreciate that a lot of people are either going on a late summer holiday or coming back from their holiday. So the first two words relates to that, really. If you have a desire to wander, what the Germans famously called Wanderlust, you have also Dromomania. And that is the desire to wander far away dromomania the desire to wander if on the other hand you desire to return home for whatever reason you have nostomania nostomania from the great nostos which is behind nostalgia as well which is homesickness of course and speaking

of home as well I had to add one of the most beautiful, well-known Welsh words, which is just lovely and almost needs no explanation. And that's hiraeth. And hiraeth is a sense of home and of belonging. And it doesn't always have a very physical application. So it may not actually be to a home that you once lived in, but it is a sense of homefulness, as well as a kind of longing for it, which I think is quite beautiful. Wonderful. Very good. Do you have a poem for us, Giles? I do have a poem for you, and because I'm in Scotland

I thought I must give you a poem by Scotland's national poet, the great Robert Burns. And I thought, well, today we're going to be talking about the months of the year. And then immediately I thought, yes, of course there is a poem by Robert Burns that references at least one month, the month of June. And this is one of his most famous poems and loveliest. And I'm going to read it with my English accent

because it's a beautiful poem. And I think it works whichever way, whichever way you speak the words. Okay, here goes. Oh, my love is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June Oh, my love is like the melody That's sweetly played in tune So fair art thou, my bonny lass So deep in love am I And I will love thee still, my dear

Till'er the seas gang dry Till'er the seas gang dry, a the seas gang dry my dear and the rocks melt with the sun i will love thee still my dear while the sands of life shall run and fare thee will my only love and fare thee will a while and i will come again my love though it were ten thousand mile oh that's beautiful so that's lovely and the the english version because he he wrote scottish poetry and english poetry as well we understand most of those words don't we gang till a the seas gang dry what does gang mean there become i suppose gang there is going so a gang way is from so in german gang is your sort of gate or to go from gayen so

it's all about that they will go dry uh it's absolutely beautiful great well look if you happen to be in scotland this august do come and see me in my show jazz brand with can't stop talking suzy also is doing shows around the country and i'm in fact taking my show on tour afterwards and keep following us please on all the, you know, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Stitcher, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcasts, that's where we are and do recommend us to friends, follow us

on social media and for more Purple, actually, do consider the Purple Plus Club, we get ad free listening there and exclusive bonus episodes on different aspects of words and language. I think we should do one. Well, in fact, we've said we're going to on the days of the week.

That's next. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naio Dio with additional production from Naomi Oiku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, and, well, we have a new kid on the block, don't we, Giles? Oh, Richie, we love him. We don't care about the old one. He suffers from something called dromomania. That's the word you introduced me to. He's wandered off somewhere. Yeah. Whereas Richie is here. Goodbye, Gully. Welcome, Richie.

You've buggered off.