Something Rhymes with Purple - Easter update

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

Happy Easter Weekend Purple People! Due to the UK Bank Holidays, this coming week's Something Rhymes With Purple will be released on Wednesday 15th April, and Susie & Gyles will be dissecting and discussing some very famous proverbs. To tide you over until then, here are a couple of rather timely word origins for you. We hope you are well and staying safe. Please do keep in touch with us via [e-mail]. A Somethin' Else production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, Susie. It's the Easter weekend, which means that our podcast isn't going to go out on its normal Tuesday because we're all going to be chasing Easter eggs. It's going to go out on Wednesday, the 15th of April. So 24 hours later than usual, but it will be there. The Easter weekend. I've not had my usual Easter egg hunt, but I've been wondering, the word Easter, where does that come from? Now you ask. Well, a couple of theories about this, one more plausible than the other. So the first is that it comes from a goddess named Eostre, who represented spring and fertility, which makes sense. And it kind of ties in with the tradition of eggs, doesn't it, which is also the sign of obviously fertility. And that would have been a pagan festival. And there's lots of precedents for that. So Christmas famously had a pagan root, Yule and Yuletide,

which was an ancient festival. But there is another theory, which probably, I think it's the front runner. And that's that it comes from an older German word for east and that from an even older Latin word for dawn, because in spring, dawn marks the beginning of days and will outlast the nights. And those dawns begin in the east. And so the basic logic seems to have been that it was spring and then sun and then dawn and then the east. So that's possibly, we think, where it does come from. But they're two theories combining, vying with each other. And I think they're both beautiful. I do. I think they're lovely. I want to talk when we get together on Wednesday about proverbs, because when you can tread on nine daisies at once, spring has come. And I think this week

on my walk, I could have trodden on nine daisies at once. That reminds me of the beautiful origin of daisy, which I've told you before. The daisy is a shortening of day's eye. And that was the Anglo-Saxon word, not spelled quite that way, but for the flower, because the daisy opens its petals at dawn to reveal that central sunny disc, yellow disc, and then it closes its petals at night. So it's the day's eye, the eye of the day. That's lovely. That couldn't be more beautiful. Well, there we are. In the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. As Alfred Lord Tennyson says, which reminds me, I've got to say goodbye to you, Susie,

because my wife is needing a cup of tea. I'm going to go and take you to her.