Something Rhymes with Purple - Chenille

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

We are morphing from etymologists into entomologists today as we put the world of insects and other creepy crawlies under the microscope.  We will find out why bees really are the busiest especially when it comes to the English language and what caterpillars have in common with very hairy cats. Ironically, Gyles finds the fly in the ointment when he tries to get to the etymological root of ‘fly’ and Susie shares the silver lining of always being bitten by mosquitoes - it’s wohlweh (the pleasurable pain caused by scratching a mosquito bite).  We also hear from our youngest known listener who has a question for Susie, and Gyles treats us to twopoems today by the wonderful Ogden Nash.  A Somethin’ Else production.  We love answering your wordy questions on the show so please do keep sending them in to [e-mail]  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple. We currently have 20% off all our merchandise in our store.  If you would like to join the Purple Plus Club on Apple Subs please follow this link https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823 and make sure that you are running the most up-to-date IOS on your computer/device otherwise it won’t work.  Susie’s Trio:  Slipfast: the longing to disappear completely by melting into a crowd and becoming invisible Looseleft: the feeling of loss upon finishing a good book. Hankersore: finding someone else so attractive it actually pisses you off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is our 165th podcast, but it may be the first one you have ever heard. And if it is, we want to make it something so interesting to you

that you want to come back week in, week out. I do this every week with my friend, the world's leading lexicographer. That's how I think of her. That's how most people who listen to the podcast think of her. She is much more modest. Her name is Susie Dent. Hello. Well, is that what you're going to say, Susie? Yes, because you know what I'm doing? I'm currently trying to, I've got basically a box in the corner of my screen with you gracing the right-hand corner and me not so much gracing the left-hand corner. And I want to get rid of myself, but I keep getting rid of you. So that's, if I look a bit distracted, it's because I'm trying to see more of you and

less of me. You sound like my wife has been trying to get rid of me for 50 years. No, I'm trying to get you on this. Anyway, hello. Lovely to speak to you. It's lovely to speak to you. Suddenly introducing this podcast has reminded me that about 50 years ago, almost as long ago as that, when I was very young and beginning to work in the theatre, I went one day to have lunch with an actor who was quite well known at the time.

He was called Sir John Clements. He and his wife were famous as actors in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. And he eventually succeeded Sir Lawrence Olivier as the director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. And we were having lunch in a restaurant in the Haymarket in London. He was appearing in a play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, one of the oldest and most beautiful theatres in London. Also with us at lunch was my best friend at the time, he's no longer alive, an actor called Simon Cadell. And it was lunchtime, and they were going to do a matinee at 2.30. We were having lunch first. And Simon ordered a glass of wine. And Sir John Clements said, what are you doing?

And Simon said, well, I'm having a glass of wine, sir. And he said, no, you're not. We've got a matinee at 2.30. And Simon, young man in his early 20s, said, but Sir John, just one glass of wine. It won't make any difference. He said, it might take the edge off your performance. And Simon said, but sir, let's be honest. The show's not going that well. There are going to be about 50 people in the audience. And Sir John Clements said, if there is one person in that audience who has never

seen me before, I intend to be at my best. And I would advise you to do the same. And ever since that moment, I've always thought every time I go out onto a stage or do a broadcast or I'm here doing a podcast, I think, hmm, there may be somebody out there who hasn't come across me or this before, and we better do it as well as we can. So, Susie, in that spirit, let's make this our 165th podcast, perhaps our most intriguing and best ever. Well, we shall try. We shall try. I have to start with an example of where I wasn't at my most stellar. And an apology, because it's time for a purple putting to rights section,

because we have had many purple people who heard last week's episode, which was on measurements, if you remember. It was called Furlong. And we said, Giles, and it was called Furlong. And we said, Giles, and it was probably me leading up the garden path, that there were 12 ounces in a pound. So thank you to Peter Collins and Mary Scanlon and lots and lots of other purple people who got in touch to let us know there are 16. So I'm so sorry about that. Well, I only wish there were just a dozen in a pound, because then I'd be losing weight more rapidly and I'd be losing more pounds than I am.

Well, a big apology for me on the number of ounces. And Giles, I would just say to you, just don't stress about the ounces. Please believe we didn't last week. Don't stress about the ounces. I won't stress about the ounces. I do stress about words and language. And today you're going to hear a great deal from Susie, because we've decided we're going to talk about the world of insects. And I'm no entomologist. Am I right, though, Susie, that entomologist is the word for somebody who knows

about insects? Yes, exactly. The famous joke is people are always getting confused between an entomologist and an etymologist. And it really bugs me because it is all about bugs. Very good. How are you with creepy crawlies, first of all? I'm in a different room. The creepy crawly appears. I'm out the house. Really?

No, I'm not as bad as I have to say my wife is. She really doesn't like spiders. She hates flies. In the kitchen, she hates flies. And indeed, we have got one of those rather sinister machines with a blue light that seems to attract flies. And you hear this terrible sizzling sound, which is perhaps rather shaming to admit, particularly since we're both vegetarians. But she hates flies and she is fearful of spiders, which I am not. To be honest, I am the one who catches them in the top of the upturned glass, tries to put a bit of newspaper underneath

to carry the spiders safely into the garden. Oh, good for you. So that's me. But spiders are insects, yes? So spiders are arachnids, really. So they are... I always remember the very famous definition in Samuel Johnson's dictionary of a spider

when he wanted to kind of look into its etymology, not its entomology. And he said, so-called perhaps because it spies the door from its resting place. But yeah, so an arachnid is an arthropod. And I don't think, I'm just looking this up now, I don't think an arthropod would be necessarily classed as, you know, solely an insect. So it can be an insect, a spider or a crustacean. It's an invertebrate, essentially. While we're with the spiders, though, what is the origin of an arachnid, whatever it is, I know about arachnophobia, an arachnid, how does that word formed? And then

where do we get spider from? Okay, so spider itself, despite what Samuel said, Samuel Johnson said, it comes from an old English root meaning to spin, which makes spent a sense. And it's die Spinner you will find in German as well. An arachnid, which gives us arachnophobia, goes back simply to the Greek for spider. So quite easy, that one. So you can see already the different influences that come to bear upon English. Since you don't know how many ounces there are in a pound, I'm not going to ask you how many legs the normal spider has. Incy Wincy always has...

How many? This is... I'm so bad at numbers. I think it's eight. I think so. Let's give a spider eight legs they have eight legs except if you were at my uh prep school where there were horrible no don't tell me i won't tell you i won't go i won't even name him but uh this is no joke spiders do have eight legs that they walk with but they also have a pair that they use sort of like hands. And these are the front pair of legs. They are referred to as pedipalps

or just palps for short. So a spider has eight legs and two forward limbs as well. I think some spiders possibly can have more. I don't know. Oh, I'm sure there are. And actually what's quite interesting about the spider, the arachnid,

is that its body is essentially unsegmented. So it's got a fused thorax and abdomen. And the etymology of insect will explain why we don't call spiders necessarily, you know, directly an insect. We call it an arachnid because an insect goes back to the Latin insectum, which means with a divided body, so literally cut into. Latin insectum, which means with a divided body, so literally cut into. And that's because insects appear to be cut into three different sections. So three body parts and their legs. Absolutely. And I think insects do only have six legs. I think it's one of the essential differences between the insect and the spider. Six legs on your insect, eight legs on your spider. And they're also carnivorous, aren't they?

Spiders. Yeah. And of course, they hunt using venom. And in certain parts of the world, some of the spiders you can meet are pretty lethal. What about a fly? We don't know where fly comes from. And isn't that strange? It must be because it flies about.

Isn't that a reason it's called a fly? You'd think it would be really, really simple. But actually, it's called different things in different languages which aren't related to the fact that they fly, which suggests that actually it's not quite as simple. I mean, obviously, there's a connection there. The German is fliegen, so that means to fly. But where that goes back to before then, we're not completely sure.

But yeah, Germanic for sure. And you know how you always say that a lot of words in Old English actually described an entire class of things rather than just that individual thing. So I always say to you that the word deer meant any animal, and that the word meat meant any food whatsoever. So that was with fly, because a fly in Old English was any winged insect whatsoever, not what we would call necessarily a fly today. Flies have been around, I think, for hundreds of millions of years. I think they're among the first animals to evolve flight. Do we know how old in English the word fly is?

Could that help us find the root of its etymology? Well, it goes back, as I say, to Old English. So, you know, since the beginning, pretty much. Whether or not there is, I suspect, an absolutely ancient root, so it may go back to that reconstructed language that I mentioned, often called Proto-Indo-European. But it has sort of, it's got relatives in German, so you have the Flieger, but in French, of course, it's called a Mouche. so that obviously came to us via a very different route and yes it goes back we think possibly to an ancient ancient route meaning to flow but we're not completely sure. I remember I was at the French lycée in London when I was a very little boy and I used to find it very confusing that mouche meaning fly was mouche

and mouchoir meaning handkerkerchief, was handkerchief. And the idea of finding a fly in your hanky, you know, was quite horrific. Anyway, explain to me how there's some expressions that, I mean, fly obviously has had, there are all sorts of other things that are flies, that are fishing flies, which are related to flies because they are about insects.

But there are flies that people used to have on their trousers, the little buttons at the front of people's trousers. Do you know why they're called fly buttons? Yes. Do you know what? I always used to say that it was a little bit like zip because you zip them up very, very quickly. Other people would say it's because things kind of flap open a little bit if you leave your flies undone. But some people think that it goes back to the idea that they're only partly attached to their base, these flies, as if they could kind of fly off. So I get that for buttons. So you would still call a zip your flies, wouldn't you? And that isn't so much the case that it could fly off. But of course, you have flies in the

theatre as well, don't you? Indeed, where the scenery flies out, though. I can see why they're called the flies. Yes. But that's the idea. But I think it might just be the idea of everything flying freely if things go wrong. And I suppose that's what the dictionary is saying, is that they could fly off at any time.

Fly on the wall is an expression that people use all the time. Yeah, someone who's kind of listening in, if you like. So that goes back to the 1920s. So it's any observer who's unperceived and can overhear things, like a little innocent innocuous fly that actually is a party to proceedings, even though you don't know it. What about the fly in the ointment? Again, quite obvious, rather like the mush in the mushwa, a fly in the ointment is something you don't want to see.

How old is that as an expression? That's from the Bible, so we're talking pretty old here. Wow. Yes. And it doesn't appear quite in that form. The phrase from Ecclesiastes is, dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour. So does the little folly, him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour. So a little bit of stupidity, even if it's in somebody who is prized for their wisdom and honour, is never going to look good. Well, the fly on the ointment is that we have to stop occasionally when we're in full flow, but we don't mind because we come back after the break, when you'll find bees in our bonnet. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey.

No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. How to write a book is for

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discussing flies and insects, discovering the difference. And we've now got on to the busy, busy bee. Is a bee an insect? A bee is an insect. Good. Yes. And the bee has been very, very busy when it comes to English. I mean, there are so many words and phrases related to it,

either directly like a busy bee or a sewing bee, spelling bee, a beeline, bee in your bonnet. As you say, so many different ones. And we've also got the hive mind, you know, the sort of mind as though it's kind of governed by the the law of a hive so that's a entity that's got a large number of people and they share their knowledge and they share their opinion so it's kind of collective work and it's non-hierarchical although of course you have the queen bee that's another word that we have in our language where does the basic b come from what's the origin of this amazingly straightforward word, B-E-E?

Yes. Germanic, again, possibly in ancient Greek meaning to fear in the sense that it's quivering. So whether it means quivering as in the bees buzzing around or that actually they inspired fear in their beholder. I love bees. I particularly love bumblebees, which, as you know, used to be called Dumbledores, hence J.K. Rowling's choice of Dumbledore. Oh, of course. Why were they called Dumbledores? They just were. It was just an old dialect term. And I'm not sure about the door bit. I think that was quite a regular suffix. But I love the fact that it was chosen for the master of Hogwarts really because J.K.

Rowling said she used to imagine Dumbledore walking around his office humming to himself which is quite lovely but bear with me and I will look up what the I mean that there's a Dumble and there's a Humble used to be called the Humblebee as well and the Bumblebee so those are all of a muchness but the door bit comes from oh actually old english any insect that flies with a loud humming noise but the door bit is not necessarily it's not very onomatopoeic so they don't know where that came from well the the bee has been used as you say in so many other words and phrases can Can we start with the bee's knees? Why somebody described something that was the acme, something that's really good, is described as the bee's knees?

Yes. Well, the bee's knee, I think we've talked about this before in the pod, actually. The bee's knees used to be used to describe something that was really, really tiny. And what could be tinier than the knee of a bee? that was really, really tiny. And what could be tinier than the knee of a bee? But like so many formulations, similar formulations that were just coined to express, as you say, the acme of excellence, the very best of something, I think because it sounded like that, it was then used for something that was really, really good. So you can see it shift if you trace it in the OED. And as you know,

because I always say there were so many other brilliant ones like the Kipper's knickers and the elephant's adenoids and indeed the dog's bollocks, which if you remember, again, started off as something very different, the colon dash amongst typographers. And then because it sounded like the cat's whiskers, et cetera, became again a byword for excellence. Good. Well, so the bee's knees is the cat's whiskers, if not the dog's bollocks. It is. Exactly. Exactly.

And the busy bee is simply because... They're very sociable and they work incredibly hard. And also the bee line I find quite interesting because before there were very good studies of the behaviour of a bee, people believed that they instinctively took a straight line when returning to the hive. I don't think that's necessarily true, but that's what people believed. They'd certainly, when I observed them,

they don't seem to be following a straight line. No. They seem to be buzzing around all over the place. I know. They are gorgeous, gorgeous creatures. What about getting bees in your bonnet? Bees in your bonnet is, if you've got, people used to say you had a head full of bees as well. It's just a sort of obsessive person as if you've just got so many thoughts buzzing around in your head. That's the idea there. And then a spelling bee or a sowing bee is a gathering, which again is suggested by that hive mentality, the social nature of the insect, how they all come together and collectively work. I'm old enough to remember the time when people went around with beehive hairdos.

Oh, yes. So-called, I suppose, because it looked like a traditional beehive, a kind of mound of hair. Exactly. Exactly. It goes back to 1909. That was our first record of it. Really? Gosh, I would have been convinced it was a post-war thing. I can't picture people in Edwardian times with beehive hairdos. How interesting. Well, it's less a hairdo and more a hat probably in those days, I would think. And then the beehive-shaped hairstyle I think was more 1960s actually.

That's when it came out, yeah. Caterpillar. Well, I mean, are we allowed to discuss caterpillars today are they are they they're not worms are they they are insects oh my goodness we're going to get absolutely slaughtered by the purple people now because we don't know our insects from our yes from our pounds and ounces so i love caterpillar oh do you you love caterpillars i love caterpillars and i love them linguistically as well because they come from the French or old French for a shaggy cat, a chatapouleuse, a shaggy cat, which I think is brilliant because someone

somehow stretched their imagination to think that a caterpillar's head looked like a cat. And believe it or not, the current modern French for a caterpillar is chenille, which goes back to the Latin canicula, meaning a little dog, because someone thought that the head of a caterpillar looked like a dog. I mean, you couldn't really make it up. And there's a lovely, lovely word in Welsh, which I'm not going to try and pronounce because I feel like our heads are already on the block, but it means hairy tailor, or there's another one, tailor with 100 feet. And I would love Welsh-speaking purple people, A, to tell me how to pronounce it, and B, to explain why and what has to do with a tailor.

Please get in touch, purple at somethingelse.com. Also the catkin, which is really nice. You know, the catkins that fall from trees, those flowering spikes of trees, you get them from willow and hazel and I think they're pollinated by the wind. Those go back to the same idea of looking like a caterpillar. The mosquito. Oh, these, I'm not very fond of mosquitoes. And I have been on holiday where most of it seems to have been spent with a rolled up newspaper, bashing the walls when I used to go to sort of Mediterranean places

where there were whitewashed walls inside wherever you were staying. And you'd bash the mosquito. You'd leave the squash mosquito on the wall and then a sort of mark of the print of the newspaper. So, oh, dearie me. So anything to do with mosquitoes is rather leaving me cold. I'm just the first person to get bitten, and usually the only person to get bitten really badly as well.

They just love me, unfortunately. This is why I want to go on holiday with you, because you just sort of, you are the... The magnet. Yeah, they just come. They love to suck your blood. Why are they called mosquitos? What is the origin of that?

Okay, well, the ito bit is the spanish diminutive so it just means little and the mosca in spanish means fly so a mosquito is a little fly but as we know there's so much more than that and there's a lovely link if you remember between the mosquito and a canopy because canopy goes back to the g konops, meaning a curtain from what, you know, to prevent what's mosquito curtain, essentially, that you would drape over your bed to stop mosquitoes coming in. And eventually then it was transferred to the bed rather than the curtain, which is when, if you remember, we eat canapes at a party that's related to because things look like food on the served on little beds, but they all go back, believe it or too, because things look like food served on little beds.

But they all go back, believe it or not, to conops, the mosquito. So that is a canapé. And do you remember one of my trios once was a lovely German word, Wohlweh, W-O-H-L-W-E-H. And it means means pleasurable pain and i mentioned this only in relation to our bites because there is nothing like scratching a mosquito bite before it gets really sore that is just it just feels so good it's quite satisfying is it yes but then obviously it all goes horribly wrong i remember my father telling me don't bother with killing the mosquitoes they only live for seven days anyway so if you wait long enough yes but i said we're on holiday here for a week um exactly yeah absolutely so well i think look let's wrap up insects with that because if we start in other areas like butterflies there's so

much to be said about butterflies that i think we should devote we should have a butterfly issue because we can name all the different uh like monoc and uh all the people and you can explain to me about how a butterfly i mean the butterflies to me are about the magic of creation the fact that this funny thing this chrysalis turns into a caterpillar turns into a butterfly seems to me to be sort of almost beyond belief yeah it's yeah i agree okay we'll do a butterfly episode. It's fantastic. Now look, I want to say to people, we love burbling and we meet every week to do this,

but we do little extra episodes too on themes that we think are particularly fun. And if you want to support the show in any way, you can do so for a monthly subscription of £1.89 a month. You don't have to. The podcast is free and available to all and everybody. But we do do these extra episodes. Also, if you do subscribe, you get the episodes ad-free

and you get discount codes on the merchandise and access to our bonus episodes. And we've done some fun bonus episodes, haven't we? We have done some fun ones. And as we would always say, if you can't afford it, it's totally fine because these will remain free. And all our archive is there. Also, Giles, we haven't talked about beetles or wasps or bugs.

We're going to have to come back to this. We will have to, but you must give us bug because you began with your amusing joke about the difference between an etymology and entomology, bugging you, that you couldn't work out the difference. What is the origin of bug? Let's finish on that one. Oh, we don't know exactly where it comes from, but it definitely, if we're looking at

sort of the late 14th century, it meant something frightening. And that's why we have a bug bear as well and as bugaboo and all that kind of thing. And the computer bug, a lot of people think it goes back to a famous episode described by Thomas Edison, who talks about a bug in his phonograph. And if you look at the article, you will see it's quite clear that actually he was making a bit of a riff or a joke on an existing sense of bug to mean a difficulty or something that has gone wrong, as if some imaginary insect has kind of got inside your computer and caused all the trouble. But there is actually, if you remember, a photograph.

And in fact, I think the actual bug was also captured. So you will find that in some museum somewhere, but that's not the origin of the computer bug. And so curious that bug can be negative, when also it's often positive when you think about being as snug as a bug in a rug. Yes, or the love bug. Indeed. This, I think we've got to come back to this very, very soon indeed. But we try not to make our episodes too long

so that if you're going for a walk or a run or you're on a commute, we fill up the time quite nicely. But you can tell us what you want because keep in touch with us, and people do. We have lots of correspondence every week and keep sending any questions, queries, comments to us, Purple, at something else. And if you'd like to connect with like-minded Purple people all around the world, there is, of course, the Something Rhymes with Purple Facebook group, run by our longtime friend of the pod, Craig,

and his gorgeous guide dog, Bruce. Oh, yes. Yeah. So before we dive into the correspondence, we wanted to give a shout out to Sandeep Sandhu, who has had a short story published in a publication. Sandeep wrote in to say, thank you. As they said, they wouldn't have done it if they weren't inspired by the podcast and our episode Gongoozle.

Oh, amazing. Which was, I think, back episode 101 on waterways. Fantastic. So do dip in. Go to the back catalogue and see how we've changed in the last couple of years. Oh, Susie, I must tell you something awful. Vanity.

Vanity. Always vanity. On Twitter, we're both on Twitter, by the way. Yeah. Somebody had put on Twitter a link to a radio interview with me done not that long ago, I thought, 1985. And I, vanity, vanity, this will teach me, I pressed the link and began hearing this interview with me. I sounded so ghastly. Oh.

The strangulated voice. I sounded, I mean, it's interesting how accents have evolved. Yes, you're like the queen. We've been marking the queen's platinum jubilee, and therefore people may have heard broadcast various speeches made by the queen at the time of her accession and her coronation. And her, you know, totally strangulated voice. It was criticised at the time.

And I fear... Orph. Orph in the house. Well, in 1985, I still sounded a bit like that. It's cringemaking. And what interests me is I'm not conscious of having toned down my voice ever since, but I must have done so. Yeah, we all have. Isn't that interesting?

But I guarantee that when you are with the Queen or when you were with Prince Philip, you actually would also have changed. You would have modulated your speech patterns a little bit. Do people do that with the company they keep? Yes, we all shapeshift all the time. Well, over the years, Susie, we've had people from around the world getting in touch and we've had people of all ages. Am I right in thinking today it could be our youngest pod listener getting in touch? I really hope so. But, you know, there is always time for somebody to come in and pip Imogen to the post. But this is Imogen and she's nine years old and I absolutely love her question.

My name is Imogen and I'm nine years old. I love something rhymes with purple. Could you please ask Susie where the word museum comes from? Thank you. Well, Susie, that's the question. Where does the word museum come from? I love the sound of Imogen. I love the sound of Imogen too. And it's such a good question, Imogen. So thank you. Well, I don't know whether you will have heard of nine goddesses of classical mythology, and they were believed to inspire every bit of learning and every bit of creativity. And there was a lovely story attached to these nine muses

was that anyone who heard them sing would instantly forget their troubles. And that is where we get music from, from those nine muses. But anyway, the museum is so named because originally they were places dedicated to the muses, these nine goddesses who were believed to inspire every bit of human learning. I hope that helps. It doesn't help.

It's conclusive. It tells us everything we need to know. That's lovely. So whatever age you are, please keep the questions coming and the comments too. It's purple at somethingelse.com. And Imogen, I would just say I'm very sorry about the dog's bollocks. Well, you shouldn't be apologising to her. She's amused. It's her parents who are saying,

oh, I don't know that it's a good thing for Imogen to be listening to this. Does she listen unsupervised? Oh, dear, dear, dear. Don't worry, Imogen. I think you can cope with whatever. That's the joy of language. It's rich. Oh, it is so rich. And also, I would just say, you mentioned amuse there. Just in case Imogen was wondering whether that is linked to a museum. Actually, that goes back to an old French word meaning to stare stupidly. And actually, the first meanings of amuse were all to do with deceiving people rather than entertaining them.

So that's got a slightly, slightly different origin. But guess what? It is linked, if you go back far enough, to these ancient muses because the whole idea was that you were inspiring some kind of emotion. And in this case, it was basically an emotion where you were a bit gullible and believe in things that you shouldn't. Well, now we move to three words from Susie before you get two very short poems from me. What are your three words this week? Well, there was a book that I was really looking forward to getting. And for anyone who knows John Koenig's website, you will know what I'm talking about. website, you will know what I'm talking about because John Koenig is a brilliant man who essentially created some beautiful, beautiful new words that we didn't have. So he filled lots of

gaps in English in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. So it's been a website for a long time and he's made it into a book. So these are three choices from him basically to thank him for all the work that he's done over the years because I absolutely love it so this is a lovely one the first one is slip fast slip fast the longing to disappear completely by melting into a crowd and becoming invisible that lovely we've all felt that now this next one John has filled a gap that I get asked about so often. People say, how do you describe the sadness at finishing a good book or a good box set or whatever it is? And I always turn them to Finny Fugle. I direct them to Finny Fugle, which is a word in the Oxford English Dictionary meaning end shunning. So in other words, you're shunning the end. You don't want to get to the end because it's just so good. But actually John Koenig has basically created loose left. Loose left is the

feeling of loss upon finishing a good book. And how do you spell that? Loose as in L-O-O-S-E and then left. Loose left. Lovely. And the third one is just to make you laugh, really. Hanka Saw. Hanka Saw is finding someone else you laugh, really. Hankersaw. Hankersaw is finding someone else so attractive, it actually pisses you off. Hankersaw.

So there we go. Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Well, it's wonderful. It's a wonderful book. I've been dipping into a wonderful book too. One of my favourite books. I have always loved the poetry of Ogden Nash. His full name, I think, was Frederick Ogden Nash. He was an American poet known for his light verse. He wrote sort of 500 short poems. He lived a while ago, born in 1902, died in 1971. And I have a

little collection of his poems called Ogden Nash's Zoo. And there's a whole section devoted to insects. And I'm going to share a couple of these poems with you. One is called The Fly. It's very short and it runs to two lines. Fly. The Lord, in his wisdom, made the fly. And then forgot to tell us why.

This is a rather longer one, the caterpillar. And I think what's intriguing about it is that all the facts within it are apparently, according to the botanists, or is it biologists? Entomologists. Entomologists, thank you. Botanists, that's plants, isn't it? I should listen to the podcast more carefully. It's called The Caterpillar.

And what intrigues me is that according to the entomologist, all the details within the poem are correct. The Caterpillar by Ogden Nash. I find among the poems of Schiller no mention of the caterpillar, nor can I find one anywhere in Petrach or in Baudelaire. So here I sit in extra session to give my personal impression. nor can I find one anywhere in Petrarch or in Baudelaire. So here I sit in extra session to give my personal impression. The caterpillar, as it's called, is often hairy, seldom bald.

It looks as if it never shaves, when, as it walks, it walks in waves. And from the cradle to the chrysalis,'s utterly speechless songless whistleless oh wow i can imagine it's whistleless yeah very clever stuff clever guy that very clever indeed yes he certainly was um well we hope you've enjoyed today and as i say there's a lot more we can say about insects so we will return But please do recommend us to other people if you did like us. Or most importantly, get in touch. Purple at somethingelse.com. I ought to mention, you know, that we currently, before we disappear, we currently have 20% off on all our stock in our online store.

We've got amusing merch that people might like. If you're an enthusiastic purple person, go to the link in the episode description and or google uh contraband shop that's contraband spelt with a k contraband shop something rhymes with purple and we've got t-shirts and mugs and totes available wild stocks last something rhymes with purple this is something else production it was produced by lawrence bassett har Harriet Wells with additional production from Steve Ackerman Jen Mystery Jay Beale

and does he look like an insect? I don't know he's a shaggy cat he's a shaggy cat essentially his private life is neither here nor there

remember we've got nine year olds listening anyway he's a shatterpillers is what I mean he is he is a caterpillar I think

which means that he could turn into a butterfly. Well, we live for that. It's Gully.