Something Rhymes with Purple - Cybernetic

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

It's time to reboot your systems as we surf the web and probe around the intricate world of computers.  Join us as we discover the origins of Google (and what the founders nearly called themselves instead), what digital mediums have to do with our fingers, and why you might not want to be invited to a computer 'picnic'.  We also answer a brilliant email about the origins and uses of monitors, plus to help Gyles tell the difference between uploads and downloads there's a very special appearance from the king of the Purple Tech... Gully!  A Somethin' Else production  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to sign up to 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.  If you would like to see Gyles and Susie LIVE and in person on our Something Rhymes With Purple UK Tour then please go to https://www.tiltedco.com/somethingrhymeswithpurple for tickets and more information.  Susie’s Trio:  Callythump - a riotous parade Foregleam - a dawning light Foozler - someone who regularly bungles things 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 card. Other conditions apply. Welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language,

and it's hosted by me, Giles Brandreth, and my good friend, the lexicographer, Susie Dent. Susie, are you happy living in the 21st century? Yes, I am. It's funny, you know, when I was learning languages, I pretty much spoke French and German like an 18th century Beaumarchais or like Goethe or whatever, because I was reading so much old stuff. I wasn't really, I don't think, immersed in, you know, the modern vernacular. So I think whenever I spoke to someone

who was German or French, I probably sounded totally ridiculous and used words that nobody ever heard of. But I think tech wise, I would say I'm quite tech savvy. I would like to think, you know, I think having kids, having teenagers who are totally immersed in that world, I think you have to keep up. So I like to think I'm quite savvy on the tech side. How about you? Well, I really would like to be living, I think, if not in Elizabethan times, probably not then because of the sanitation and also the shortness of life. I think I'm a natural Victorian, possibly an Edwardian, 1880s, 1890s, first decade of the 20th century. This will be the ideal time for me. The 21st century,

I really am finding very difficult. I do not wish to learn another ghastly password. I really don't. Honestly, it is a nightmare. But I also realise that if you resist change, you become unhappy. Change is essential. Change is inevitable. So don't fight it. And also, the new technologies are brilliant. But it's just, oh, goodness. I've mastered some of it. I can work my computer just about. I do Twitter. I've mastered that sort of. Instagram, I haven't really mastered. I mean, I don't quite know what I'm doing. I'm constantly double deleting myself. I don't need people to cancel me for anything unfortunate that I say because I'm busy deleting myself. Cancelling yourself. I'm cancelling myself. And I have never

known you to use an emoji in any message to be whatsoever. Have you ever used one? Only to illustrate how banal they can be, though there are some very, very brilliant ones. I do remember having a conversation with some young people. It was last Valentine's Day or the Valentine's Day before, when we were still seeing people at Valentine's Day. And I was talking to them about love letters. And these were students.

These weren't children. These were students, university students. And they didn't know what a love letter was. One of them thought that a love letter was a kind of contraception i said no no i think that's a french letter they didn't know what a french letter was i said well that's a period thing forget it no don't i didn't don't go there we're not going there today i promise you we'll do another episode on on contraception maybe they they had no idea this is reminding me of rishi sunak saying all sorts of kind of things unwittingly to a group of students

he just got in a hole and then he just what did he say what did he say I think he was saying things like I love coke and actually what he meant was diet coke and then the more he tried to explain himself the worse it got oh gosh poor man well I I've done that before where I've talked about I love how I love the Irish word crack And I declared to the countdown audience with my hands literally up in the air, I love crack. So yeah, so he's not alone. And crack is spelt C-R-A-I-C, isn't it? And that means the atmosphere,

the sort of that wonderful Irish word. Yeah, the spirit. Anyway, these young people didn't know what love letters were. And so I said, well, how do you tell somebody that you fancy them? They didn't know about writing letters. And they said, oh, we send them an emoji, smiley face. And I said, well, you really fancy them, what do you send them? Oh, a smiley face

with a tongue hanging out. I thought, no, I'm not going there. So I haven't really used emojis. I just about can use my computer. Well, let's start. Let's do some tech words today. Computer, where does the word computer come from? Why is, I mean, who invented the computer? Well, let's start. Let's do some tech words today. Computer. Where does the word computer come from? I mean, who invented the computer? Well, don't tell me that because that's probably too complicated. But why is it called a computer? Well, the very first meaning of a computer was somebody who made calculations or computations. So it was a calculator in human form. And in fact, that was the first meaning of calculator as well. And computer would also make calculations in an observatory, for example. So 1613 is the example that is first given in the OED. And it says, I have read the truest computer of times and the best arithmetician that ever breathed, and he reduces thy days into a short number. So that was the very first meaning of

computer. And obviously, as technology moved on, then that did as well. But the idea was always about making calculations and computations. And the computer that we know, the machine that does this computing, that's a 20th century invention. And when I was a child, they were huge. Computers filled whole rooms, buildings. One computer would fill a building. Yeah. Well, you have to think of Bletchley Park, I suppose. When did it come to mean that? Is it the 1930s, 1940s? Well, by the 1960s, I think you would find that those huge early electronic computers, which, as you say, were cumbersome, and they employed huge numbers of vacuum tubes and

needed huge amounts of electricity. By the 1960s, those had been replaced by transistors so they could get a bit smaller. But the first mention of a computer in the modern form in the OED is 1945. So within the computer, well, when I first got a computer, we had things like a mouse to make it work. Now I use my finger on a pad, but there was a mouse. And I suppose it was called a mouse because it looked like a mouse. Is that right? Yes. And it kind of scurries around the mouse pad. And I know what you're going to ask me next, but I'll let you ask me. Yeah. What is the plural of mouse? Is it mouses? Is it mice? Is it meese? Okay. Well, the dictionary, as you know, likes to cover all bases. And it says people often feel

that the computer mouse needs its own distinctive plural. But in fact, the ordinary plural mice is commoner than mouses. And the first recorded use of mice in the plural meaning the computer mouse is 1984. Very good. So I've got my computer. I've got my mouse. I've got my screen. That's obviously the word screen is for a screen.

Is there any interesting etymology with the word screen? No. I don't think so. But one of our listeners has come up with a brilliant question about the word monitor. So we'll come to that at the end. Okay. Well, thank you. Give me some more words from the world of computer science. Okay. Well, Google is quite interesting. Google, I remember when I was working at Oxford University Press and working on the dictionaries, there was a big debate as to whether Google should have a capital letter and even the verb as in I Googled it, whether that should retain its capital letter because it had one at the beginning. And eventually it was decided that no, it was used generically as a verb to mean to

look something up, even if you weren't necessarily using the Google search engine. So that had a small lowercase g, whereas Google, the search engine itself, of course, has a big G. But Google itself is quite nice because it's a creative spelling of Google, G-O-O-G-O-L, Google. And that's a number equal to 10 to the power of 100. And Google itself was named by the nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, and he was working with large numbers like 10 to the power of 100. And the search engine's name was inspired by that number because the founders of Google, the search engine, they wanted to reflect their mission that they were organising this infinite amount of information on the web. So it was pretty much a boast as to how much information

it was able to index and then provide. It's a commercial name. So it's like Hoover. It's a commercial name. You know, which now means a vacuum cleaner, but was originally made by the Hoover company. And so Google is a commercial name. Exactly.

And it's just fallen into the language. And when we use it, if we're Googling something, it's a small g. But if we're referring to the search engine, it's a capital G. That's how we know the difference. And I'm sure there are purple people out there who can confirm this, but I have heard that the earlier name of the Google search engine was Backrub because the system checked backlinks just to check the importance of a site. So if it was indeed Backrub, I think they made the right choice with Google.

It's a great word, Google. What about internet? Yes, we know we invented the internet, I suppose, or the World Wide Web. That was Tim Berners-Lee. But internet originally came from the phrase interconnected networks, or inter-networks for short. And it was used with a lowercase i to mean a computer network that indeed connected a number of smaller networks. But when the World Wide Web came about, proposed in 1989, as I say, by Tim Berners-Lee, the internet became its most widely recognised application. And so internet and World Wide Web became pretty much synonymous, and eventually internet took on a capital I. Digital. I mean, when I was a child,

you had a digital TV. What it meant was you took your finger and pressed button one for BBC One, button two for BBC Two and button three for ITV. I remember that. With your finger. That was digital. But the idea of things being digital, that's relatively new, isn't it? It's new, but very old because you're absolutely right. You just do it with your finger. And of course, Latin digitus meant finger or actually toe as well, which is why we talk about our digits. And so it's got a kind of secret hand behind it, really. So go all the way back to digitus, meaning a finger, and then counting numbers with our fingers led to the idea of a digit, which was a number below 10. And there it stayed really for centuries. And then in the 20th century, it became hugely significant and widespread because it was all about counting,

obviously, to much larger numbers. But it became as explosive as it did as a direct result of the invention of the modern computer. But it does all go all the way back to counting on your fingers. And the phrase World Wide Web, when is that first used? That's a good question. I can look that up for you. I suspect because Tim Berners-Lee proposed it in 1989, that it was the late 1980s. But I can see when. I remember when I was an MP back in the 1990s, and all this was beginning to become a sort of phenomenon. I was working for the then minister who was responsible for what now becomes Digital Matters, but we didn't know what to call it then. And a very young Daniel Finkelstein, now of the times Danny the Fink, came to try to explain to us how all this was working.

And I do remember he gave the analogy of it being like a spider's web. All these things are interconnected. We hadn't heard then of the World Wide Web, but he talked about a spider's web. And that was in the early 90s. Interesting. That's the same idea. Well, 1990 is the first mention that we have in the OED. So yeah, I think probably proposed in 89, as far as I can see,

and then taken as the title in 1990. But it's funny, you know, it's abbreviated to WWW, but actually that takes far longer to say than World Wide Web. Oh, what's so funny is that it's always that precedes it. And everyone always says WWW dot before saying it.

You don't really need to do that, do you? You don't need it. You don't. And you don't need the HTTP colon forward slash thing either. But really, people put that in all the time. And people say to me, you know, what's your website?

And instead of simply saying GilesBrandreth.net, I go through all that HTTP, and by then they've forgotten what it is. You don't need to do that. Oh, it's ridiculous. By the time they put the phone down. What about Wi-Fi? So Wi-Fi is, that term was actually created by a marketing company, apparently, for wireless fidelity. wi-fi some people say wiffy don't they or maybe that's just describing me a bit wiffy wi-fi they're good i've never heard go on go on give us some more okay so um bug i like because we all talk about a bug in the system don't we there's a really commonly believed story behind this term, and that's that it happened just after the Second World War when a moth caused a fault in a Navy computer. And indeed, you will find that moth exhibited in a museum together with a logbook, actually. But the joke in the logbook by the

technician was that the actual moth taped to the page was the first actual case of bug being found, which gives us a clue to the fact that people talked about metaphorical bugs for some time before. In fact, the first evidence in the OED is from the inventor Thomas Edison and an article in the Pall Mall Gazette, this is 1889, which notes that Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering a bug, in quotes, in his phonograph, an expression for solving a difficulty and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and caused all the trouble. So that moth was not the first bug. It may have been the first physical one to cause a stir, but actually the metaphorical kind had been around for a little while before. Bugs put into your system possibly by hackers.

Where does the hacker come from? Well, the hacker is quite interesting because it's kind of gone in and out of fashion. I think some people have thought hacker is actually quite negative, really. I mean, if you look at, obviously, in the OED, the first meaning of hacker is somebody who kind of goes around chopping things and equally murdering people, which you don't want. And I think for a while, hackers called themselves crackers because actually they were cracking codes, et cetera. They were code breakers rather than people who were willfully intent upon destruction. So I am going to look it up in the OED for the first mention here of hacking in a computer sense. This is quite interesting because we still talk about life hacks, so effective solutions to problems in life. And this looks back to 1972, an inelegant yet

effective solution to a computing problem. So it's a workaround, a shortcut. And that sense comes before the attempt of gaining unauthorized access or control over a computer system. That was 1984. So that's quite interesting. And that was used as a verb. And I think, again, it was the idea that you were hacking your way through a dark forest, something impenetrable and getting to somewhere you weren't supposed to go. Very good. Lots is happening out in the cyberspace. I hear about that. Cyber is C-Y-B-E-R, isn't it? Cyber. It is, and it's been quite a productive suffix, really. So, 1961 is the first use of cyber in the Wall Street Journal as a prefix, but it's a shortened form of cybernetic. And cybernetics

were all about sort of control, self-regulatory control, really, and also the integration of living things with electronic or other technological things. So it's that kind of hybrid, if you like. Oh, it sounds quite an ancient word. I'm thinking, I suppose, of cyclops. That's why it's the CY that confused me. No, you're absolutely right, because cybernetics in ancient Greek meant that you were good at steering. And, you know, it was like a cybernaut was a steersman. So, no, you're absolutely right. It is an ancient route, if you like. It's going slightly off track to mention robotics, but the robot is a 1920s word, I think.

Why do I think that? Yeah, so you will know about this because it was coined by an author. Yes, it was in a play called Rossum's Universal Robots. Is that right? Exactly. By Carol, is it Chapek? Yeah, Chapek, C-A-P-E-K. Yeah.

And robota meant forced labour or drudgery. Oh, really? So that's why robot. And so the robot is doing the forced labour, the drudgery, doing the robot for you. But now they're taking over the world. Very good. Look, let's take a quick break.

And then I want to discover, because you've explored the kind of the slanguage of different tribes. And I bet the people who work in, in fact, I know, because whenever my computer meister comes around, I do not understand a word that he is saying to me. He's telling me to upload things and then download things. I don't know the difference between uploading and downloading. So maybe after. Well, we can talk about that. Okay... Well, we can talk about that. Okay. Yeah, we can talk about that.

And also, I must talk about spam, spam, spam. Oh, spam. During the war, people used to live on it. And now, well, it's something we all hate. I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And this is Crunchyroll Presents

The Anime Effect. We are a new show breaking down the anime news, views, and shows you care about each and every week. I can't think of a better studio to bring something like this to life. Yeah, I agree. We're covering all the classics. I don't know a lot about Godzilla, which I do, but I'm trying to pretend that I don't. Hold it in.

And our current faves. Luffy must have his do. Tune in every week for the latest anime updates and possibly a few debates. I remember, what was that? Say what you're going to say and I'll circle back. You can listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. 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. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, where we're exploring the language of computer science. And you're going to tell me, Susie Dent, about spam, which people of my generation will recall was a kind of luncheon meat popular during the Second World War. What is it to you?

Oh, no, but I remember it as well. It was a proprietary name, wasn't it? And it was a blend of spiced ham. That's where Spam comes from. Oh, it's a proprietary name, like Hoover and Google originally, is it? It's a portmanteau, really. Yes, and it was a proprietary name. And in fact, I think in the dictionary, it's still got a capital s so i remember spam and i remember luncheon meat and corned beef and all that stuff but spam as we know it in the computing sense is not the sort of rubbery pink thing thing that we used to eat although they do have things in common so it actually goes back to the monty python sketch if you remember which is set in a

cafe and the menu is just entirely spam centric. Everything is spam. And so in true Monty Python fashion, the characters, like a chorus of Vikings, et cetera, they break out into a song and it consists almost entirely of spam. So they literally are spamming their conversation, if you like. And that's where it comes from, the idea of this kind of influx, this excessive influx of things. But in that case, it was an excessive influx of literal spam. How amazing, a television series that gave a word that has become universal. That's fantastic. Now do, and well, we know people who work in computer science, they have a lingo that is all their own.

My computer meister sometimes tells me to download things and then occasionally says upload. Is there a difference between downloading and uploading? Do you know who we need for this one? It's Gully. Would be great. Should we bring Gully in? Oh, people don't believe that Gully exists. They think he's some character we've created. Here he is. There is Gully. What a good looking lad he is. Hello, purple people. Gully, as the best person to ask about this thing, please can you tell us the difference between uploading and downloading?

I mean, I sort of get it, but I don't think I could give you a good definition. So, yeah, the word load is just the same as we use in everyday life in terms of, you know, you might load the car, but instead of groceries, we're just talking data. load the car but instead of groceries we're just talking data and to upload just means to send data to arrive at another destination and to download is just to receive data from another destination that's usually just the cloud or a remote network. Yes, download and upload is just quite interesting because there's a verb, Giles. They actually originated in the military.

So to upload was to put something in an aircraft cargo and to download it was to take it off an aircraft. But as a noun, download has always had a computing sense. But I love the way that all of these quite often are rooted in really old expressions. So we talk about rebooting all the time without knowing that actually we're talking about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps because of the similarity to the kind of pulling up your bootstraps and getting going and a computer running by loading some software and that

software must be run before anything can be loaded. So it's the idea of literally pulling something up and getting going. I love that. But shall I give you a few more of the ones that I collected? And Gali, you can butt in because I don't know if you use any of these. I suspect you might use this of me and Giles when we're not listening, which is picnic. Problem in chair, not in computer.

In other words. I like like that it's us also oh there's all sorts of words for that stupid spinning cursor in windows where you oh yes yeah the ball of doom on the mac what's it called the donut of doom the beach ball of death loads of those there's a higgs bugson which is a hypothetical bug that's cited when the actual, the IT person hasn't a clue what the real problem is. There is Baklava code, a code with too many layers, a sausage code, which is one which once you know how it's made, you never want to use it again. And mouse arrest, I don't think anyone actually uses this one, but I like it. Mouse arrest is getting caught out for violating an online services rule of conduct. You are under mouse arrest.

I love all those, certainly amongst the tribe that I spoke to, but may not be universal. Well, look, we answered a listener's query because somebody wrote in to say, does Gadi really exist? And now you've actually heard his voice. And we're going to try and get him to come to one of our live podcasts. We're doing a number of live podcasts later this year. And in the spring, you go to Tilted Co, tiltedco.com to find out more about those where you can find us, which will be fun. I think we're going to be in Newcastle as well as London, all over the place. So and Gully may turn up at one of those. So thank you, Gully, for your guest appearance. People do write in with requests of all kinds. And we've had some amusing

correspondence this week. It's Lauren here from Leeds, says one email sent to us at purple at something else dot com. I was recently in a conversation with my boyfriend about his very complicated desk setup. And it occurred to me that he describes both his speakers for audio and his screens for visual as monitors. Why is this? And what's the connection? Monitors. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, again, monitor, really early, early word, old word. It actually goes back to the Latin monere, meaning to warn. So a monitor originally was a reminder or a warning of something. And you'll find that monere in admonish, in monster actually, because a monster was a kind of warning or a portent of something evil to come. The monitor lizard, because the way it reacts can warn people of the presence of a venomous creature and so on. So it's all the idea

of noticing something and respecting it as a warning. So it's all the idea of noticing something and respecting it as a warning. So to Lauren's question as to why it's used for this text, so a television receiver used in a studio to select or verify the picture being broadcast was called a monitor, which is why we then talk about a screen as being a monitor. So the idea is that you're using it to verify the picture or to sort of study something. And then when you're talking about the speakers, that is because monitors were used a lot by performers on stage to hear themselves and to check what is being recorded. So behind all of this is the idea of checking or supervising something. But as I said,

it goes all the way back to that idea of being admonished or being supervising something. But as I said, it goes all the way back to that idea of being admonished or being warned about something. Very good. I just think it's so extraordinary how the world has changed in my lifetime. I first remember watching television in 1953. I was a very little boy, but we had a black and white set. We didn't buy it.

We rented it from Radio Rentals. And it just had BBC. That's all we had in black and white. In 1955, ITV was introduced, but we were a middle-class family. And we didn't have ITV. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't regarded as respectable. So we just had, for the first, you know, until about 1960, we only had one set on the screen. There was just these little grey, black and white pictures. And think out

what the world is now. It's just amazing. In one lifetime, we've got, and this whole language that's come with it. All the words we've been talking about today, none of them would have been understood. Internet, Google, downloading, uploading, Wi-Fi, none of them would have been, robot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, none of them would have been robot jane austin charles dickens oscar wilde none of them would have known these words they wouldn't understand what we're talking about isn't it phenomenal no but what's lovely does as we've said is that their etymology would have been understood because they go back to things that actually were around then so you know we talk about bits and bytes and things but actually bit is a shortening or a blend of binary digit and that takes us back to that

idea of fingers. So, you know, they may be new, but I love the fact that we are rooting them in things that have been familiar to people for centuries. That's the joy of language. It evolves, it grows. And Susie Dent is here to be our monitor, to make sure that we're behaving ourselves and she's observing it correctly. Grand slam now, John Hebblethwaite writes to us. In what has been a really challenging year, your podcast has cheered me up so much. Oh, how lovely. And accompanied me on many long walks and late nights in the garden by the fire. That sounds fun. Fire in the garden. Anyway, thank you, he says. My question is, what is the origin of the term Grand Slam,

which is used in lots of sports, but particularly rugby and tennis, plus some card games? This is an expression that I had been asked about before, John, and I've never quite been able to get to the bottom of it. So I can tell you where it originated, but I can't actually explain the slam bit. So maybe card players, and I'll explain in a minute, can tell me exactly why the slam bit has come into play. But the term seems to have originated in the game of bridge. So if you look at Hoyle's Games Improved from 1814, it will tell you what slams are. And one of the explanations here is, these declarations will supersede that of Boston winning the first six tricks, the highest called Grand Slam is undertaking to get 13 tricks. So that is a slam, but actually that is the Grand Slam. But slam itself was the fact of losing or

winning all the tricks in a game of cards. So it was a very decisive thing. Maybe that's the metaphor here that just as you might slam your hand down on the table. A slam in cards was something very decisive, losing or winning all the tricks in a game. But it's also Grand Slam used obviously in lots of different sports. And we will talk about Grand Slam in tennis too. But I think you would find it in baseball where it means a home run. I think in basketball also it might be used. And I was wondering if there was a link there to slam dunk. But I can tell you John is that it originally meant the winning of all the tricks of one hand in a card game especially a contract to win all 13 tricks in bridge so I think the idea is of something as I say very very decisive but if anyone else out there any of the purple people can tell me exactly

why a slam other than that idea of being very quick and decisive then let me know somebody walked up to me in the street this week a purple person and said you must have answered this before but what is the origin of podcast and i said well it's a it's like broadcast uh or narrowcast but it's a podcast and they said, is it a pod as in a peapod? What is it? iPod. Yes, it's an iPod broadcast. That was the idea because people were using their iPods to listen to them. What's an iPod? You don't have an iPod? No, I don't. What's an iPod? Oh, do you have an iPad? I think I've had an iPad. In fact, this is a true story. My mother, who died aged 96, was given by my son an iPad for her 96th Christmas. And he said, I'm giving you an iPad. And she didn't know, she was, you know, she had no idea

what an iPad was. She thought it was going to be an electronic incontinence pad. And she said, I don't think I really need one, darling. Anyway, she opened it up and tried to play with it. An iPad. I love that. So an iPad. ipad okay so the i we think just goes back to internet short for internet and a pad and a pod those were both riffs on imac which i'm speaking to you on now it's a it's a brand name for a type of personal computer and the pod was smaller than the pad but these are just all names of particular types of machines. But yeah, so that's it. It was an iPod broadcast. And of course, the first meaning of broadcast was to scatter seeds very widely in farming. So how things have changed there as well.

Do you know we must do an episode on farming, on tilling the soil? Ah, the answer lies in the soil. Now, you've got three words. No, stereotype us, we. I have got three words. You've got three words for us. What are the three words this week? I just did a tiny bit of broadcasting for the BBC a few weekends ago for the Lord Mayor's Show. I was talking about the vocabulary associated with the Lord Mayor's Show. And it reminded me of the word calithump. And a calithump is a riotous parade. I wouldn't say the Lord Mayor's Show is a riotous parade. It just made me think of the wonderful word calithump and calithumpian. And a calithump is usually quite cacophonous. So it's a group of people who've got all sorts of instruments or

spoons, utensils, and it's celebrating, celebratory, but also if they're unhappy about something, they can produce a calithump. And did you know, Giles, when I looked into this, there was a word, the galithumpians, which is recorded in the 18th century, and they were a society of social reformers, and they used to regularly disturb parliamentary elections, the galithumpians. Wow, the galithumpians, no, I've never heard of them. No, I have not heard of them either. So Gallythump, a riotous parade. The second one, I just think is quite beautiful. It's a four gleam, F-O-R-E, gleam, and it's a dawning light. So you might just see the hint of a four gleam at dawn. Well, you would, and I just think that's

quite pretty. And then another F word, it's a tongue twister, to finish with, just a word that makes me smile really, to foozle something is to bungle it. And if you manage to bungle most things in life, as I do very often, you are a foozler. You don't bungle anything, but it's a lovely word. I trust me, I do. Foozling, you foozle. I love that word. You're a fusler, you are. Absolutely love. Well, I love those three words. I've got a poem for you. The other day we were talking about Spike Milligan and it sent me back to, I've got lots of collections of Spike Milligan's verse. And one of my favourite ones is a very short poem. Well, I might give you two of Spike's poems.

One silly one to begin with. The herring is a lucky fish from all disease inured. Should he be ill when caught at sea, immediately he's cured. You get it? Get it? The joke about the herring?

But this, I think, is a lovely, it's a five-line poem by Spike Milligan, and this is my offering for this week. Things that go bump in the night should not really give one a fright. It's the hole in each ear that lets in the fear, that and the absence of light. Ah, how true. These are brilliant for kids, aren't they? Yeah, they're brilliant for kids of all ages.

I think we should keep in touch with our, you know, I want us to go skipping around. We don't skip, you and I, enough. We skip in our minds. No, I do skip with my kids. Quite often they will challenge me to skip with them down a very busy street and I will always do it

just to defy their expectations because I just think, what the hell? Good. That's the attitude. We want more skipping. That's what we want for Christmas. We want the purple people skipping. Yes.

A big frolic. That was what we need. Well, thank you for being a purple person and for listening to us. And if you enjoyed it, do follow us on Apple Podcasts, if you enjoyed it do follow us on apple podcast if you don't already and on spotify and stitcher and amazon music and wherever you do get your podcasts and also it really helps us if you recommend us to friends if you feel so inclined and also we love you getting in touch via purple at something else.com somebody will be writing in

immediately to say frolic that's an interesting. I wonder what the origin of that is. Well, we'll tell you another time. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells, with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale and... King of the tech. It's Gully. Gully, Gully Gumdrops. We love you, Gully.