Something Rhymes with Purple - Dragoon

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Don your armour and grab your steed, Purple people because today we are galloping onto the battle field to uncover the etymological treasures of Weaponry.    From biting bullets to smoking guns, Susie will guide us through the link between rainbows and archery, what the Armadillo has to do with armoury and why freelancers weren’t always that friendly. Gyles shares some further behind-the-scenes details of one of the most watched events on tele which leads into discussions of corona (but not that corona) and why it’s courteous to curtsy.    Susie and Gyles have their weekly dose of three scintillating words and a delicious poem for us and as always, they want to hear from you!  Find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [e-mail]   We currently have 20% off at the SRwP official merchandise store, just head to: https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple   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:    Kalokagathia: Nobility and goodness of character  Nidification: to build a nest and retreat for a while  Polydipsia: A great thirst (usually in a figurative sense eg. for fame)   Gyles' poem this week was ‘To You’ by  Langston Hughes   To sit down and dream,  To sit and read,  To sit and learn about the world  Outside our world of here and now-  Our problem world-  To dream of vast horizons of the soul  Through dreams made whole,  Unfettered free-help me!  All you who are dreamers,too,  Help me to make our world anew.  I reach out my dreams to you.    A Somethin’ Else & 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

Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes With Purple. My name is Giles Brandreth and my co-host is my friend, the world's leading lexicographer in my view, she always disputes that but I think it's true, it's Susie Dent. How are you Susie? I am very well, thank you. And I have not been, I mean, I've been quite busy, but nowhere near as busy as you. Have you even slept for the last 10 days? Not a great deal, because I have people who've been watching BBC television will know this,

or indeed ITV, people in the UK will know this. I've been taking part in some of the broadcasts covering the death and then the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, which turned into a global event. The reckoning is that more than four billion people across the world watched part of the funeral of the British Queen, who was our sovereign, the longest reigning sovereign in British history. And it was extraordinary in a way that when you think about it, we're not that big a country. We're the 21st most populous country in the world. Our economy is, well, the sixth largest GDP. So we're not up there at the top of the league table. But when it came to, when it comes to the royal family,

and when it came to the queen, there genuinely was global interest. And that is, I think, remarkable. I think it's partly the heritage of royalty. I was at Westminster Abbey for the funeral of the queen, reflecting on the fact that the abbey was founded by King Edgar, the King of the East Angles, even before William the Conqueror, and kings and queens for generations. I think only two of our sovereigns have not been crowned there, and they were kings who weren't crowned. Many were married

there. It's a thousand years of history. So, a huge amount of pageantry, and it was flawless, faultless on the day, wasn't it? Wasn't that extraordinary? Of course, they'd been planning it for many, many years. But nonetheless, the operation worked seamlessly. And the military precision. I mean, I was particularly moved by the young men serving soldiers. Some of them, I think, were actually away in Iraq at the time of her death,

who were back in England and in London, the pallbearers, those young men carrying the coffin. And I have to say my heart was in my mouth all the way through because they looked so intense and at times they looked very pained and it was hard to know whether it was fear for them because of course the pressure of, you know just just holding that weight as i say faultlessly you know without any slip-ups was just huge and they did it they did it so well i wanted to ask you there was so much weaponry on display of different kinds ancient and modern but they're also for me what we had never seen before was state funerals we have seen before. I remember the funeral of Winston Churchill,

for example, which was one of the few state funerals for a person, a non-royal person that's taken place in this country. The military position was extraordinary, but what none of us had seen before was the committal service at St. George's Chapel in Windsor, which involved the removal from the coffin of the crown, the sceptre and the orb. As I was watching it, I wondered about the origin of those words, crown, sceptre and orb. So I'm asking you this without giving you fair warning of it. Orb, I suppose, is orb as in the world, as a globe? Explain those three words. Yes, exactly, as in round, because it is absolutely remarkable, isn't it? So it's something spherical. And the Latin orbis means a ring. Just going back, I was thinking before I

get to sceptre, etc. I was thinking about the pallbearer. The pall is actually the blanket covering the coffin, rather than the coffin itself. It goes to the Latin pallium, like a sort of blanket. And the sceptre, the ornamented staff, it's a symbol, isn't it? I'm not completely sure, maybe of sovereignty, but that goes back to a Greek word and it's to lean upon. So if you imagine it's almost like a, well, it is a staff and a staff is like a sort of stick or a cane, isn't it? So it's something that you would lean upon possibly in its sort of earliest uses, not in its short ornamented uses today. So originally it would have been a lot longer. And what was the other one?

Crown. The simple word crown. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm imagining that that is simply, again, from the Latin corona, which is exactly what that means, meaning a wreath or a coronet. But I think it had a French influence along the way. So it, as so often, was sort of slightly corrupted in our sort of Anglo-Norman hybrid, the sort of language that emerged after the Norman Congress, which was a sort of mishmash of English and French. Let's, I mean, there were arms on display of every kind, not A-L-M-S, but arms as in armaments that some of the people were called gentlemen at arms.

Yes. Arms for armour, I mean, what's the origin of that? The root of arms is from the Latin arma, A-R-M-A, which means weapons of war or tools of war. The word armour, as in body armour, has the same root, but it's not the same word as the arm that's part of the body. So that came into English via German, I think. So very, very different. It's an old English word and not connected with the military arms. But you will find the military arms also, which I've always loved this, in armisticeice which you might expect which um means the stopping still of arms so they're sort of putting down laying down of weapons but also armadillo because

an armadillo translates from spanish into little armed man oh that's delightful that's very sweet yeah weapons arms can be weapons what's the origin of the word weapon weapon is simply old english it's very very ancient and it simply means a tool of war so nothing particularly exciting there except if you want to introduce a little bit of phallic symbolism weapon can also mean your penis so there's a lot of kind of there's a sort of different tangent that weapons go on and it's almost if you remember the f-bomb also started, we think, in a Latin word meaning to fight. So that whole sort of hostility, which I think is probably slightly misogynistic, is all wrapped up in this idea of sort of, you know, weapons and

fighting and sex viewed through that prism. One of the interesting things about doing this coverage for the Queen's funeral was learning things I didn't know before. I mean, I knew about the Order of the Garter being the oldest order of chivalry, but I didn't know that it took precedence over all other orders except people who have won the Victoria Cross or the George Cross. Ah, I didn't know that either. So you learn things. And I did know that it was senior to the Order of the Thistle, which is really the Scottish equivalent of the Order of the Garter. And of course, there were on parade people who belonged to the Order of the Thistle.

And in Scotland, they have these wonderful hats with all sort of feathers in. And it has some link with archery and the company of archers. And then I began to think, well, where does archery come from? Where do bows and arrows come from? These are weapons too. Can you enlighten us there? Well, it all began really with the Roman's word arcus, meaning a bow. And if you think about an arc, it's a slightly bow-shaped.

So it's as simple as that. But the bow part, the archer's bow and the act of bending and bowing, which we pronounce differently, are related because you are bending your body and the archer's bow got its name from again that sort of slightly bent shape and you'll find that in elbow as well believe it or not and a rainbow too so when you bow it's the same origin as bow it's the same idea of being bent forward they're related it's not a kind of direct line for each of them they're slightly parallel but they are siblings how intriguing while we've got to bowing do you know the origin of curtsy which some females are supposed to do when males

bow though i think possibly when you are as for example the princess royal international people need to know that the princess royal is the title that was given some years ago to Princess Anne, who was the late Queen's eldest daughter. And Princess Anne got very good coverage here. I think people thought, well done you. She is the busiest member of the royal family, rivaled her father, the late Duke of Edinburgh, in trying to fill her diary with more things done in a day than anybody else with a leaner team. And she was with her mother, the Queen, at the time she died in Balmoral in Scotland, and then accompanied her body from Balmoral to Edinburgh and then from Edinburgh to London. And some of the uniforms that she wore were uniforms that had trousers. And when she was

wearing those, she would bow rather than curtsy. And when she was wearing those, she would bow rather than curtsy. But when she was in a frock, she would curtsy. A long way of asking you, you've told us about bow, tell us about curtsy. Curtsy is simply a mangled form or a variant of courtesy. So when you curtsy, you are showing courtesy

and chivalry. Women weren't necessarily connected with chivalry, which if you remember goes back to mounted men at arms and the French cheval, meaning a horse. So yeah, it's simply a relative of courtesy. Well, in those ancient days when there was chivalric contests, I can picture them, people on horseback riding towards one another with shields and lances.

What is the origin of the lance? It's a weapon too, isn't it? Yes, because we've talked before, haven't we, about freelancers and freelancers were mercenaries free to use their lance for whomever paid the most. But yeah, that simply goes back to a Latin word meaning the same thing which came into French as lancier, and it gave us a lance corporal as well in the military. And the lance corporal, I think, is an analogy of an old Italian word, lancia spedzata, meaning a broken lance. And a lance corporal is the lowest grade of non-commissioned officer, I think, And it's believed that the broken lance was used to describe a long-serving soldier who was likely to have broken many of their lances during battle. As well as a lance, of course, there were soldiers in olden times, and indeed the soldiers that we saw on display during the Queen's funeral.

Some of them were wearing or carrying swords. Well, I mean, I always love the word sword because it's an anagram of the word words. But what is sword? Where does it come from? Sword simply comes from the German Schwert. It's a Germanic word and that explains this silent W because in German it's S-C-H-W-E-R-T. Of course, we don't say sword, do we? No. Sword is something quite different. Yeah, and that's, remember, English is absolutely peppered with silent letters

because, well, for lots and lots of different reasons, but quite a lot of them are to do with the fact that we hoovered up words from all sorts of different languages. One of the reasons I am still exhausted, even though it's a while since the funeral, is that we had to get up very early, particularly on the day of the funeral. If you were like me, broadcasting with the BBC, originally I was told, please, you're going to be on air with BBC Breakfast at 7.30, please be there by 7.15. Then the night before, they got in touch and said, I'm sorry, we're sending the car for you at five in the morning. It's five in the morning,

we're not on until 7.30. They said, no, it's because the whole of Westminster is going to be shut down for security reasons because we have 200 world leaders coming, including the President of the United States in the Beast, his own car that he brings from Washington, D.C. with him. And so we went in at five in the morning and then the cars took us to the perimeter of the locked off area. And then we had to walk the last mile ourselves to get to Westminster Abbey through the streets and through lots of cordons with all our security passes.

But that made me think, oh my gosh, let's pray there isn't a bomb. And we now know it's after the event there wasn't. The security was good. It was the biggest security operation in London since the Second World War, apparently. Yeah, phenomenal. But maybe think about the word bomb.

Where does a bomb come from? It's probably on a mass pick. Well, it goes back to the Greek bombos, which meant booming or a humming. And of course, a bomb goes boom. So yeah, probably born for its sound. But the very first bombs, and we're looking back to the 1600s now, are what we would call shells. So they had fuses that you would ignite and then you

would fire them from mortars. So that was sort of how they originated. And a bombardier gets their name from an early gun, which was called a bombard. And that comes from the same source as bomb. And would bombast, a word like that, be linked in the same way? No, I think bombast, or originally bombast was padded material that was stuffed into waistcoats and things. So it was a sort of downy material that made them quite warm. But then of course, if you include lots of padding in your speech, you might be described as being bombastic. So I think that's got a different origin to do with material.

Oh, I love the way you know all this stuff. In the days of those early bombs and shells was the time when people were firing muskets. What's the origin of musket? Weirdly, it goes back to the Latin for a little fly, a musket, which was a sort of midge, if you like. It also gave us the name of a kind of sparrow hawk, which obviously sort of flies, which in French was a musquette. And maybe the hawk was called this because obviously it flies and it looks quite speckled when it's in flight.

But also early firearms were often given the names of animals. So you have a dragoon, dragon, you have a falcon, which is a kind of cannon, and so on and so on. So Mosquito was really a sparrowhawk, and the ballistic weapon probably took its name from that bird of prey. And then you've got the three musketeers, haven't you, as well? And never mind the three musketeers, what about the seven samurai? We were talking about swords. Is a samurai a person or is it a sword? What is the samurai?

Yeah, samurai is a member of a Japanese warrior caste. Originally, they were the aristocratic warriors, but then it came to apply to all members of that kind of warrior class. They rose to power in the 12th century, and then they dominated government, really, in Japan until the late 19th century. And the sword was the symbol of the samurai class, which is maybe what you're thinking of. And samurai itself means they who serve. Oh, they who serve.

What about a machete? Thinking of weapons. Yeah, horrible things. Because it comes from a Latin word meaning slaughter and sacrifice. So never very good. No. My son, during his gap year, anyway, years ago,

when he was, before he went to university, he went on a trip to India and brought back in his luggage from India a sort of machete. I mean, I think it was a sort of tourist. How could he bring it through security? Well, wasn't that amazing? Yeah.

I don't know where it is now. He used to have it in his bedroom. I thought, oh dear. I mean, I really didn't like it being up there at all. No, not surprised. I love to name drop and I haven't for a while. But speaking of the Windsors, and of course, the Queen was from the House of Windsor. I was introduced by the late Barbara Windsor to some of her friends who had, well, who

had gangster connections. And one of them showed me once, this is years ago, talking about the 1970s, showed me a knuckle duster. And what a sinister weapon that was. Yes. It was a small one. He only went over three fingers. It was like three rings that he put on his fingers. But can you imagine?

I mean, explain how, if people haven't heard of what a knuckle duster is, how they work, what they were used for, what the origin of it is. I think the duster part is kind of criminal slang for a sort of weapon, a bit of a kind of dark euphemism. So a knuckle duster is essentially a metal guard that's worn over the knuckles and worn expressly to increase the effect of your blows because you're being hit by, you know, whacked with a hefty bit of metal. So they're kind of finger guards.

They're not unlike what the Roman gladiators called the cestus and they use something sort of a little bit similar. I want you to tell me about shotguns and shotgun weddings after the break. Okay. I do want to say something. We've just done a fun live Purple podcast on stage in the West End, and we're going to be doing more.

So if you want to come and meet us, Purple people want to, and people... We'd love to meet you, more importantly. This will amuse you, Susie. Yeah. I spent literally every day for 10 days near Buckingham Palace, or wandering around that part of London. And I was admiring the amazing floral tributes. Tens of thousands of people left flowers in memory of the Queen. Many of them left Paddington bears, miniature bears.

I saw those and little corgis as well. Not real ones. Enchanting. Two curious things happened. One day I was crossing Green Park, going down towards Buckingham Palace, and a child began pointing at me and shouting, saying, there's the king! There's the king! Yeah, well, I think, which I am the same age as the king, so maybe that was allowable. But I think it was her mother had said it's child's, and I think she had heard it as being child being Charles and therefore came running up to me. So I didn't know whether to disabuse her and pretend to be the king so that she could feel that she had met the king. But I didn't think I could beat that experience.

But the last time I was there and I was with some lovely people from the Royal Parks who had helped the broadcasters invaluable. And they helped keep the file of people waiting to go to see the Queen lying in state, but also the people leaving the flowers. There was such a lovely, lovely, friendly atmosphere. There was nothing but a friendly atmosphere throughout. And I met some of these guys who were gardeners in the Royal Parks, and they had left their own tribute, geraniums. Anyway, I was chatting to this guy, Mike, who was one of the head gardeners there, one of the head people in the park. And a fellow in a purple t-shirt ran up to me and said, oh, it's you, it's you. And I said, no, I'm not the king. He said, no, no, I know who

you are. You're Giles. Give my love to Susie. He said, I'm a purple person. And he was wearing- This purple person thing is really catching on, isn't it? He was wearing a purple t-shirt. Oh, it's so lovely. I went back to my old college this weekend for a dinner. And the principal of my old college, Jan Royal, she's just lovely.

But she was very bemused when someone on the other side of the table leant over and said, I'm a purple person. She just had absolutely no idea what was going on. But it is lovely. It's such a lovely community club, a clubbable thing. Do you call these reunions Gaudis? It wasn't a Gaudi, actually. It was just an alumnus dinner.

What is a Gaudi? Why is it called a Gaudi? Because it goes back to the Latin Gaudere or Gaudere, to rejoice. Oh, as in Gaudiamus, we will rejoice. Yes, we will rejoice. And alumni is a Latin word meaning? Alumni is a Latin word meaning, I don't know. I mean, I know what it means, but I don't know what...

Where it comes from. Yeah, okay, leave that with me. I'll tell you after the break. Please, tell us after the break. But if you want to meet us, and you don't need to be an Oxford alumnus or alumna, or even a group of alumni, you can meet us in Oxford because we're going to be on Susie's own turf at the University Theatre, the Oxford Playhouse, on the 9th of October. So we were both lucky enough to be undergraduates, as they were called in my day. They may have been called

students in your day, I don't know, at the University of Oxford. But come along to the Oxford Playhouse on the 9th of October. Each show we do is different, and we try to meet as many purple people as possible, you know, during the interval before the show whenever we can. If you want tickets, info, go to somethingrhymeswithpurple, all one word, dot com. Follow us on social media at somethingrhymes, that's on Twitter, capital us on social media at Something Rhymes. That's on Twitter, capital S, capital R, Something Rhymes, Facebook, or Something Rhymes With on Instagram.

So find out more. We're coming back to the Fortune Theatre in the West End in the coming months, but we are in Oxford on the 9th of October. We will take a break and then you'll find out all about, well, alumni and the shotgun. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm Giles Branruth. Susie Dent is an Oxford alumna. What's

the origin of that, Susie? You know, this may be one of those moments where I think, I never knew that. You know, a word that, I mean, I suppose I don't use it too often, but I really should have known that alumnus and alumna goes back to a Latin word, alare, meaning to nourish. And it first had that general sense of someone or something providing nourishment. Isn't that lovely? And in Latin, the literal meaning of an alma mater, which is related is a bounteous nourishing mother, which is gorgeous. So it's all about being nourished by your group or organisation, because as Jan Royal, the principal of Somerville, said, you know, once a Somervillian, always a Somervillian. You never leave, do you?

You do never leave. That's absolutely true. My wife would wish I would leave school. She said, you're still at nursery school. You never leave, do you? And also you sometimes feel they are nourishing you, but they're wanting you to provide nourishment for the next generation because whenever the alumni association of my old college get in touch they're dunning you for money but there we are yeah understandably i suppose i also wanted you to tell me about a shotgun what's the origin of a shotgun well a shotgun obviously is the idea of shooting but it's interesting the way it's used metaphorically. And often people will say, shotgun that seat or shotgun that piece of cake. And it's because, I think we've maybe talked about this on a previous episode, but the shotgun seat was the front passenger seat in a vehicle.

And it was traditionally where a carriage would be protected by a man, usually a man armed with a shotgun. And the chance to sit in this seat on a particular journey as that need diminished was, you know, was too good to miss, really, because it was a prime seat. And so if you say shotgun, it means I want that seat. And by extension, I want whatever it is that, you know, that is being coveted. Is there a difference between a gun and a shotgun? Because it's rather like people talking about horse riding. I suppose you could ride different things than horses,

but mostly people, when they say, I'm going riding, you know it's on a horse. But shotgun, what's the difference between a shotgun and a gun? Well, gun is one of those really interesting words because it comes from the female name Gunnhilde, which, of course, is a great Germanic word. Actually, it's also Scandinavian, I think. So we think it came from that because guns and warfare, particularly in medieval time, were given pet names, if you like. Remember Brown Bess, which was the nickname of a musket used in the British Army once, and then Mons Meg,

which is the 15th century cannon in Edinburgh Castle. So that's gun. And a shotgun is simply, I'm guessing, a gun that shoots shot. I'm guessing it's as simple as that. A smooth war gun for firing small shot at short range. Oh, as opposed to a single bullet is firing shot. And a shotgun wedding is where in olden days, if there was a couple, they found themselves, Now, in olden days, if there was a couple, they found themselves, one of them found herself pregnant before matrimony, the father of the girl would go to the father of the child and put a shotgun to their head and say, you marry my daughter, make a lady of her. Also, I think it's got a slight sense of speed, hasn't it? Ah, oh, they had to do it quickly. It was a shot, I see.

But I think it's both. I think it's both. What about when with guns? What about a smoking gun as a phrase? There's so many phrases involved. Yeah, I mean, smoking gun, I think is literally because the evidence is still there

because the gun is still hot from shooting of a bullet. So a firing of a bullet. So I think it's a literal metaphor, that one, if you like. As is dodging a bullet. I mean, that's actually, you're just literally, you so firing of a bullet. So I think it's a literal metaphor, that one, if you like. As is dodging a bullet. I mean, that's actually, you're just literally, you've dodged the bullet, the gun was firing.

Discharged bullet, exactly. Biting the bullet. There's lots of stories around this, and the most popular story is this one occasion, Giles, where actually the story turns out to be true, because as you know, I'm always the party pooper and have to dispel myths. But it really was that without anesthetic particularly in military hospitals soldiers were given a bullet

to put between their teeth so that they could bite down on the bullet to withstand the pain which is fairly extraordinary that's biting the bullet we fall on our sword don't we we kind of sacrifice our job or our reputation for the sake of others what's about a a two-edged sword? What's a double-edged sword? A double-edged sword, there are such things. I mean, again, I'm not very good at actual weaponry, but a double-edged sword really is a sword with two edges. So if it's a double-edged sword, it means there's no happy outcome, really, or at least there's no kind of easy path. Yes. Whichever way it strikes you, it's going to hurt you. Exactly. Don't bring your knife to a gunfight. That's not an expression I know.

No, I'd not heard that too. I suppose it just means, I think it comes from The Untouchables, actually, which was a brilliant film, if you ever saw that, with Kevin Costner. Did you ever see that film? No, I'm afraid my wife insists that we avoid films with violence. So basically, we are watching Paddington 2 on permanent repeat. That was on last night, actually. It was a lovely thing to do. Because of that beautiful film that the Queen made only a few months ago,

featuring Paddington Bear. Completely enchanting. Yeah. I just love the clinking of the cockery at the end. It was brilliant. Anyway, I think it comes from the out-of-touchables, and I think it means just make sure you bring the right weapons to the right fight kind of thing. In other words, do whatever is appropriate for the context. Give us a couple more of these. Loads, aren't there? And I think most of them are fairly self-explanatory, like a loose cannon is an unpredictable or uncontrollable person. Son of a gun. Do you remember I told you about this one? Son of a gun is a bit of an old, either an exclamation or if you're calling someone

a bit of a bastard, you call them a son of a gun. And bastard is relevant here because it's all about illegitimacy. It comes from naval history. The gun is one of the guns carried on board ships and the phrase is said to have been applied to babies born at sea, to women who were allowed to accompany their husbands or sometimes they wouldn't be the wives. And if the father of the child wasn't known, then the child was described in the ship's log as the son of a gun. Gosh. It's also an expression like son of a gun, just as an exclamation, isn't it? Like damnation or something, isn't it? Yes. Marvellous.

If you are an international person and are not familiar with some of these phrases, but have some from your own country that you'd like us to explore, want to share with us, do please get in touch. We love purple people in communication and all you need to do is send us an email, purple at something else dot com. Have we had good, interesting communications this week? Oh, we definitely have. So we, oh, this is from a fellow Somervillian. This is nice. I've been talking about Somerville. This is from Annabelle H and she sent us a voice message. Hello, Giles and fellow former Somervillian Susie. Thank you for your brilliant podcast. I am pre-empting the inevitable question from my word-loving five-year-old,

whose current favourites include nincompoop and disintegrate. Please tell me kidnapping originally had something to do with goats. And while we're on the subject, what can you tell me about I Kid You Not? Thank you very much, Annabelle. This is child's play to you, or kid stuff. Tell us the answers, would you, Susie? Okay, so I'm afraid that kidnapping does actually come from the nabbing. So nap here is just a variant of nabbing or seizing children. But there are goats involved, Annabelle, because the kid sense of a child, you know, as in my kids, are references to young goats originally. A kid obviously is a young goat.

And so the idea was simply transferred from young animals to young human animals. young goat. And so the idea was simply transferred from young animals to young human animals. So there is a kind of link there, as there is with kidding someone as in, oh, stop kidding around, or, oh, you must be kidding. That probably is from the idea of making a child or a goat of someone, in other words, just sort of making them look a little bit foolish. So we think that's where that came from. Very good. Well, thank you, Annabelle. People who didn't follow what Somervillians are, Oxford University is a university which has a college, collegiate system.

And so when you go to the university, you are in a college. And I was at New College and Susie was at Somerville College, which in my day was a women's only college. Was it a co-ed by the time you were there? No, it was in my day too. And it went mixed, not long after I left, actually.

But no, it was all women when I was there. And in fact, when I was there on Saturday night, I was remembering the awful drinking nights that we were encouraged to go to because Oriel College was all male. And so we were encouraged to go and have kind of sherry parties, which never, never really worked. So gangs of girls and gangs of boys got together honestly it was worse than the school disco we we had sherry parties at New College we even but those of us who thought we were rather special there was even a Madeira evening when you didn't have sherry you had Madeira can you imagine totally ridiculous those the days. If you've got college memories

you want to share with us or any linguistic queries, don't forget it's purple at something else dot com. Every week, Susie, you come up with three special words. What are the three words you've come up with this week? Well, I have one for the Queen, the late, great Queen Elizabeth II. It's not one that trips beautifully off the tongue, but it has a beautiful definition. And it's kalokagathia. So it's K-A-L-O-K-A-G-A-T-H-I-A. And it means nobility and goodness of character. Kalokagathia.

I like that. It's also a reminder of nidification. I know I've talked about nidificating before. I don't know if you remember it, Giles, but to nidificate if you're a bird is to build yourself a cosy nest and retreat for a little while. Oh, I love that.

So that is the act of nidification is just retreating for a while in your cosy den. And finally, again, I don't think the Queen had this, polydipsia. Polydipsia is a great first, but usually in a kind of figurative sense, like he had a polydipsia for fame. So those are my three. Do you have a poem for us today? Yes, I have got a poem. And it's a very simple poem, but it's one of my favourites by Langston

Hughes. I'm sure I've quoted him before. He was a pioneer of what I think was called the American jazz poetry movement. It's basically, you know, built on jazz-like movements in rhythm, repetitive phrasing, and the appearance of improvisation. I think he wrote these poems quite carefully. There was something called the New York Harlem Renaissance Movement, in which African-American poets develop a sort of sense of pride. And this is one of his poems, and I just love it. It's called To You. To sit and dream, to sit and read, to sit and learn about the world outside our world of here and now, our problem world, to dream of vast horizons of the soul

through dreams made whole, unfettered, free. Help me, all you who are dreamers too. Help me to make our world anew. I reach out my dreams to you. Oh. And I thought of that poem this week because I felt that during the 10 days of official mourning in the UK, meeting all the people who were, and I know not everybody was, I know, but I think most people were, not everybody, by all means.

But as you rightly said at the beginning, people who weren't necessarily monarchists or royalists had a special feeling. There was a good feeling. People were being pleasant to one another. There was a nice atmosphere in the air. And I just thought, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if that could last a little bit longer, if that could be one of the legacies of the Queen's special life. That's what made me think of that poem by Langston Hughes. That's a lovely poem. And we hope you loved it too, and that you loved the show so please keep following us on apple

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and in person, it's... Gully. Never call him a polydipsic. Oh, not an income group.