Something Rhymes with Purple - Electrick

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

We’re full of energy this week as we fuel up on petrol (or should that be gas?) and blaze through the language associated with power and resources. Pop a few coins in the meter and join us as we discover the remarkable etymological links between electricity and amber and between fuel and focus as we discuss the Three Day Week and the origins of fossil fuels. 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: Glandaceous – the yellowish colour of a ripe acorn Paralipsis – the rhetorical device of drawing attention to something whilst pretending you’re not mentioning it Agathism – the belief that all things tend to the positive 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 Something Rhymes with Purple. This is the podcast, or this is a podcast, about words and language and whatever my co-presenter and I can come up with, essentially. And my co-presenter is none other than the brilliant Giles Brandreth. Hello, Giles.

It's good to be with you again. And I'm excited about this week because we're talking about one of the words or the subjects that I think is fundamental to everything. I think, is fundamental to everything. And it's energy. Years ago, when I was doing work on, I was trying to write a book about what drives people, what makes people, what makes life happen, what makes people succeed. I met a lot of very high-powered individuals who were great achievers.

And several of them gave me the same answer, most pithily put to me by a man called Lord King, who was then running British Airways. I said, to what do you attribute your success and the success of your company? He said, energy, energy, using my own and harnessing that of other people. Energy, drive it forward. Energy is everything. Where would we be without energy so given that there is literally in the world an energy crisis with the cost of the energy that we need electricity gas and all

that going up and also personal energy we thought we'd talk about the world of energy a good idea we would did you know by the way that the word energy is linked to orgy so all is not lost i'll just give them Giles a heart attack. No, well, yes, exactly. Well, for me, that would be a trip down memory lane. I mean, just actually, orgy would be a trip into fantasy land. Have you ever taken part in an orgy? Of course not.

No, not have I. But when I was at university, there were some people I knew who didn't want quite an orgy, but they took off all their clothes, and they sort of, males and females, and sort of took showers together. It was like an orgy. I didn't take part, but I knew it was going on.

And I didn't have the nerve to take part, you know, and the fact here I am 50 years later, still thinking about it. I think I can tell. I wish I'd never mentioned an orgy. But anyway, I'm sorry, you can't say energy is linked to orgy. I think so. I can tell. I wish I'd never mentioned an orgy. But anyway. I'm sorry, you can't say energy is linked to orgy. And then not. I mean, I was spluttering into my upset. And to allergy as well.

Oh, well, that's more like it. We're allergic to orgies. Have you had the monkey pox speaking of that? No, I hope not. Tell us about the connection between the word energy and the word orgy. Well, their link is at the Greek ergon, meaning to work. And an allergy is sort of working alongside something. So there's something that's not quite right because there's something kind of interfering. And an orgy, I suppose, is all about the energy that you put into different matters,

really. But yeah, it's to do with ergon, meaning to work. And of course, work can mean lots of different things in lots of different spheres. But just before we go into the main things like electricity and fuel and gas and all that sort of stuff, do you remember in the 70s, and I was a bit young for this, but the three-day working week? I remember it vividly. I was already working by that time. And that was to save electricity, wasn't it? Yes. The government of Edward Heath was a Conservative prime minister in the early 1970s. They introduced a three-day week to conserve electricity. I mean, it was a time when there was, as there is now, an energy crisis in the world caused by all sorts of things, the price of oil, among other things.

And so the idea was, it was one of several measures introduced at the time, that people were supposed to only use electricity, run their offices for three days a week. And most people went along with this. I mean, it was made worse by, I think there was industrial action by coal miners and railway workers, which also made the mining of coal at the time, which was one of our main sources of energy in those days, and its distribution more difficult. So essential services like hospitals, supermarkets, I think even the newspaper, printing presses, they were exempt. But I do remember television companies were required to cease broadcasting at 10.30 in the evening after the 10 o'clock news. And in those days, there wasn't a lot of daytime television anyway. It was before breakfast. Yes, it was just before breakfast television arrived in this country. And people actually went along with it. And they did only go to work for three days. And at home, people turned off their lights, unless you were my mother. My mother, at the time, lived in a block of flats

called Chiltern Court above Baker Street, Tube Station. And I remember walking down a darkened Baker Street and seeing, looking up at this block of flats, and seeing darkness in the building, complete darkness from the bottom of the building to the top, except for four windows, a blaze of light. My mother. She pretended that she hadn't heard the news, that somehow she turned on the television, it wasn't working properly, so she'd abandoned it. She pretended she didn't know what was going on, and she blithely carried on as if nothing had happened. I said to her, Ma, we're

supposed to be conserving energy. I don't think it applies to media. You know, I've got to boil my egg. I must have my cocoa at bedtime. Extraordinary. Some people are extraordinary. Well, should we start with electricity? Yes, please. Because I love the origin of this one. It's quite unexpected. It actually goes back to the Greek electron, meaning amber, believe it or not. Amber, we know really as a beautiful, precious stone, and you'll find it in jewellery. But the ancient scientists, if you like, the alchemists, discovered that when you rub amber, it creates this charge of, well, this power really, this charge of static electricity, I guess, and it's able to pick up light objects such as feathers. And it was later used for the charge itself rather than the stone.

But that is how it began with this observation that amber had these special qualities. And the first usage of the English word electricity is in 1646 in a work by Sir Thomas Brown. And they talk about an electric or an electric body that attracts straws, for example. And so, yeah, simply put, electricity was originally the property of behaving like an electric, if you like. And it was only later that it shifted to mean the cause of the attraction instead of the property of being attractive itself, if that makes sense. I mean, Thomas Brown was one of the most remarkable people who ever lived, born at the beginning of the 1600s.

And he was a true polymath. And I think lots of phenomena and perhaps lots of language connected with science and medicine and also more esoteric subjects comes from his work, even though he isn't so well known today. Yeah, and he wrote something called the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, didn't he? Which was quite a seminal work. So that's electricity for you, and really, really ancient origin, as has gas, actually, which I love.

Now, that was only coined in the 17th century, again, by the Belgian chemist and physician. He was called Johannes Baptiste van Helmont. And he was the first scientist to realise that there are gases other than air. He discovered carbon dioxide, for example. But he based gas, believe it or not, on again, a word from the ancients, which was chaos, chaos. Now, the Greek chaos meant a gaping void or a chasm but then came to mean the kind of formless matter out of which the universe was thought to have been formed and because it was formless and quite random we get today's sense of chaos confusion and disorder and that was first given us by shakespeare but yes he used it to describe things that were other than air and

this substance out of which it was believed the universe was formed. Well done him. It's great, isn't it? To gas, though, as in, you know, gassing and gossiping. Well, not gossiping, gassing, talking excessively. People say, oh, stop. Well, they don't anymore, but it used to be kind of slang for talking. Yeah, stop gassing.

I think people would say that today, stop gassing. That's simply letting out air, I in that you're you're talking so you're just blowing out hot air essentially if you're if you're gossiping a lot and why are you if you're having a gas you're having a good time um so i mean to say to someone that they're gassing is a bit gas yes it's interesting isn't it i think it probably means that you are charged it's a gas. Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? I think it probably means that you are charged. It's the same idea maybe of sort of having energy, perhaps. And in the jazz age of 1940s America with Charlie Parker, etc., gas meant to excite or to thrill, you know, to impress or to please somebody enormously. you know, to impress or to please somebody enormously. So it just meant extremely pleased or thrilled, you know, as opposed to the horrible sense of being gassed and, you know, literally killed by poison gas,

which of course we associate with the Holocaust. But yes, it had also the sense of being drunk or intoxicated. So this is kind of parallel life in slang that was going on with that word. My father always pretended that when he was young, which would be the 1920s, he had experimented with laughing gas. And he maintained that people used to do this.

You know, you'd go to a party and you'd get a canister. Oh, really? They do, do they? Well, I don't see it with canisters, but they buy the helium balloons and then they deflate them and suck in the air and then they talk like pinky perky, pinky perky. Ohky oh i mean it's nitrous oxide isn't it it is yeah but i think isn't a helium balloon i just i have nitrous oxide in it i think we don't know our chemistry do we is it safe do you think in small doses i would imagine yes when inhaled produces anesthesia or

at lower concentrations a feeling of exhilaration, also called laughing gas. So maybe, actually, maybe what you breathe in from a helium balloon is different. That just makes you talk funny. And laughing gas is the nitrous oxide that makes you feel elated. I think they're two different things. Well, I would go a little bit carefully.

My advice to you is don't overdo the laughing gas. Or the helium for that matter. Or the helium for that matter. Or the helium for that matter. Very good. What a gas. And why do we call, we call in this country, the United Kingdom, where we make the podcast, you go to the petrol station and you get petrol, or maybe you get diesel for your fuel. But in America, you go to the gas station. When did that difference begin and what is the origin of that? Yeah, so petrol, petroleum, that has been around since old English, believe it or not. And that has got ancient roots as well. It goes back to the Latin petra, meaning rock, which came to us

from Greek ultimately, and the Latin word oleum, meaning oil, because it's the kind of liquid mixture of compounds and hydrocarbons that you'll find in rocks and that's then extracted and refined much later to produce fuels like petrol and find in rocks and that's then extracted and refined much later to produce fuels like petrol and paraffin and that kind of thing. But I love the fact that these have such ancient linguistic origins. So that's petrol. Gasoline came about in the 19th century, the mid-19th century, and I'm not quite sure why the word gas was then applied to petrol. I'm not completely sure. I mean, the lean bit is, you will find that, or lean indeed as well as a suffix for lots of chemical

compounds, et cetera. But I'm not completely sure why gas itself came to mean petroleum. I should know that and I don't. So bear with me. Yeah, it's a shortened form of gasoline. That came about from gas and then oil and then eene, a light fuel oil made by the distillation of petroleum, etc. So, yeah, I would have to be a chemist to understand what the exact link is there. But linguistically, they both had very, very different journeys and also very different chronologies. I haven't done any name dropping this episode so far.

No, did you happen to know Rudolf Diesel? Well, as chance would have it, he is the person who gave his name to Diesel, did he? He did. Or did you know Otto von Bismarck? No, I did know Sheikh Yamani. Does that name ring a bell with you at all? Sheikh Yamani? No. It doesn't. Well, he was a Saudi Arabian politician and he served as Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources in the 60s, 70s and 80s. And he was a minister in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, for 25 years.

OPEC for 25 years. And he was the figure in the world who was considered to be responsible for the oil price, the rises in oil price, the release of X-Royal. So he, during these years, when there were things like the three-day week, he was a hugely significant figure. Everyone knew about Sheikh Yamani, the great oil OPEC man. And I met him and interviewed him and found him incredibly charming. And then at the end of the interview, he said, may I put some oil on your hair? I thought, oh dear. I mean, this is the man. But anyway, his hobby was making perfume.

And he had made his own fragrance. And he gave me a little head massage and applied this oil to my hair. Gosh, what a good back to you. Oh, I love head massage. Well, there you are. I had, this will only impress older listeners, but if you are of a certain age,

I think you will be impressed that you're listening to somebody who once had a head massage and oil applied by Mr. Opec himself, the great Sheikh Yamani. Some unguents. Lovely. What's the origin of the word unguent? Is that interesting? Unguent goes back to, as a Latin for ointment,

but it also gave us unctuous because somebody whose unctuous is quite oily. I talked about coal coming up from the ground and problems. Oh, we need to go back to diesel. Of course we do. Absolutely. Tell us about Mr Diesel. Well, I find diesel fascinating because it's got a little bit of a murder mystery behind it, potentially. When Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, declared war on France in 1870, he unwittingly was essentially paving the way for the invention of the diesel engine because at that time, Rudolf Diesel was living in Paris. He was

young man, German parents, but the outbreak of war forced him to flee to England with his family. And no sooner had they arrived than Rudolf's uncle in Germany offered to take care of the boy until the war was over. So he was put on a train with his uncle's address on a card tied around his neck and the trains weren't running on time. This was war. It took this young boy eight really long days and he remembered this. And when he grew up, Rudolph apparently was determined that those steam engines that carried him to his uncle should be replaced by something better. So it really inspired him to conduct numerous experiments. And some of them were pretty lethal. One of them nearly killed him

because his first diesel engine exploded. But he kept going and he tried alcohol, he tried peanut oil, and then finally found this crude oil that he used as fuel for his diesel engines. But the reason I mentioned this sort of murder mystery is that he became very rich and famous as you would expect, but he died under very mysterious circumstances, unfortunately, because he was travelling to England on a cross-channel steamer, and this was maybe opening decade of the 20th century. And he was on deck, he was seen on deck with his travelling companions and then retired for the night. But he didn't appear the next morning for breakfast. And 10 days later, they found his body and they have no idea how he died. But nonetheless, Diesel is an

eponym and he gave it his name because of those experiments that, as I say, were inspired by that horrible journey that he had to make during the war. I can't believe there hasn't been a movie about this. I know. You would think so, wouldn't you? Extraordinary story. Someone needs to actually unravel the mystery. I agree. What really happened to Diesel.

To Rudolf Diesel. So, yes, so that is Diesel. And we haven't talked about fuel either because that's i just what i love about this is that obviously we associate these things these things with so much modern technology but actually they go back to the ancient world and fuel is no exception because it goes back to medieval latin focalia and the focalia was essentially the hearth or the fireplace which it's related to the word focus so the focus of any house was the hearth or the fireplace, which it's related to the word focus. So the focus of any house was the hearth or the fireplace, because that's where people gather to keep warm

and to cook, et cetera. It took on our modern sense of, you know, the sort of central point or the burning point of a lens, et cetera, the point at which raised meat, et cetera, et cetera. Isn't that amazing? That is, because as you know, one of my great sayings in life is don't dabble focus and i never knew that that's the other it's the fireplace that is the origin the focus of the house yeah and it gave us fuel because of that hearth and it also gave us foyer because this area in the theater was where the public could gather during intervals, where the focus was, so people would go there. And often, of course, it was lit by a big fire. Oh, and there's good King Wenceslas, gathering winter fuel.

Well, of course. And the winter fuel he was gathering was simply sticks and wood to create this fire that would be the focus of the home. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. It's great, isn't it? Have we got time quickly before the break to give me the origins of coal and oil? Yes, I can definitely give you coal.

So that is Old English, this one, and it is Germanic. So it came to us from our Germanic invaders, but it meant a sort of glowing ember, really, coal, as it was C-O-L in Old English, rather than the substance that produces that glowing ember. And eventually it was transferred. And there are a lot, I think after the break, we should do some idioms like hauling someone over the coals, because not very pleasant, but a lot of people might not know where that began, for example. And oil, I have to admit to you that I always thought that was Germanic, but it's not. It's Latin, oleum, which referred especially to olive oil, believe it or not.

And then that came into French, well, old French is oile, O-I-L-E. And then eventually it came into English, meaning the kind of viscous liquid, if you like, particularly the one that nowadays is derived from petroleum. So that's oil for you. And crude oil is so named because in Latin, crudus meant unrefined. It's why the crude humour is unsophisticated. But crude oil, of course, is unrefined and unprocessed.

One of the great mysteries of my childhood, I used to love watching the Popeye cartoons on television. And it was clear to me that Popeye and olive oil were not man and wife. He seemed to have Olive Oil as a girlfriend and yet there was clearly a child called Sweet Pea. Oh, yes. And I, as a little boy, couldn't understand how these people,

Popeye and Olive Oil, had this child, Sweet Pea, when they weren't married. Yes. Is that because he explicitly called her his girlfriend? Yes. I don't think they were married. In fact, I think Sweet Pea may not necessarily have been his offspring. No. No, I love that. I'd never, ever thought about that. Well, it could be that somebody...

When you write to us at The Purple, Purple People, you don't have to stick entirely to asking for etymology. You can also unravel the mysteries of my childhood, if you know how to. It's purple at somethingelse.com. We want to know the truth about olive oil. of my childhood, if you know how to. It's purple at somethingelse.com. We want to know the truth about olive oil. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

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If you want to get all episodes at once and completely ad-free, subscribe now. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Tell me, Susie Dent, why do my grandchildren sometimes call me an old fossil? It's not very... I know it's not meant in a flattering way. Do they know what they're talking about? What is a fossil?

You won't like the origin either because it actually goes back to the Latin fossilis fossilist meaning dug up i'm so sorry about that that is why a foss is a kind of ditch um in french so fossils are really the petrified remains of creatures that are dug up what are fossil fuels in a nutshell so fossil fossil fuels are, I guess fossil fuels are the natural ones, aren't they? So again, it kind of gives you the idea of something that comes from the earth. So they are coal or gas, and they're formed from the remains of living organisms, essentially. It's strange, isn't it? The world of energy, again, these words have come into other phrases in the language.

I'm talking about coals. You haul somebody over the coals. We send coals to Newcastle. This, I suppose, comes from a period where coal was very much part of everybody's daily life. Yes. I mean, hauling over the coals is actually really horrible. Raking over the coals is the same idea because they are inspired by a torture that was applied to heretics in the Middle Ages.

And that did involve, I'm afraid, dragging the prisoner over a bed of red hot coals. So pretty horrible. And it was quite common in the Middle Ages. So the idiom itself became popular in the 1800s, but that was definitely its reference point. Coals to Newcastle is happier because coal from Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England was really abundant. It was very famous just before the Industrial Revolution. It was really famous for its supplies of coal. And so to carry coals to Newcastle meant it's redundant because

they already have lots of it. So if you're saying, oh, you're carrying coals to Newcastle, it's just there's no point. Okay. Well, I think we've only really just begun to scratch the surface with energy because I want to find out from you one day about all these measures of energy. I know you're not very good on measurements because you're the person who thought there were 12 ounces in the pound when there were 16. Yeah, absolutely. But I want to hear about joules and watts and amps and voltage and all that sort of thing. But we'll have to do that another day. We can't do it all, can we?

No, it would be lovely to, but we will definitely come back to it for sure. And tell you something I wanted to say to our listeners. If there's ever a subject that you think we should be talking about, you feel we may not have touched on before, do get in touch because we really love hearing from you. And if you do want to point us in a particular direction, get Susie digging away,

looking for linguistic fossils with this old fossil, just contact us. It's purple at somethingelse.com. So who's been in touch this week? Well, we have a great question actually from a doctor, Dr. Richard Simpson. And I think he is a medical kind of doctor given his question. Whilst still medical students in Manchester, a friend once challenged

me to list all of the medical or surgical specialties that end with atrix. At the time, I could only come up with paediatrics, geriatrics and bariatrics. It's intrigued and annoyed me ever since why some specialties are ologies oncology nephrology etc some atrix like the ones above and some just x orthopedics genetics etc please could you tell me what the rules are dr richard simpson i think we have to do an entire episode richard on atrix because just the words there pediatrics geriatrics and bariatrics, will just be fascinating to explore. Bariatrics is essentially the branch of medicine that deals with obesity. So it's a brilliant, brilliant question.

And I'm going to answer it as simply as I can. So ology, those of us who grew up in Britain will remember Maureen Lipman, who Giles knows extremely well, is a good friend of his. But she did this fantastic advert for BT, wasn't it, Giles? British Telecom, telephone people. British Telecom. She's nattering on the phone and she's quelling or gushing over her neighbour's achievement, her nephew's achievement. She goes, what, he's got an ology?

Terrible impersonation of Maureen. But anyway, ology is actually a real word and it comes from the suffix meaning a field or branch of study. So it's the comprehensive, usually scientific, but it's the study of a particular subject. And there are many, many of them. It comes from the ancient Greek logia, meaning the study of. So it actually has nothing to do with apology. That's one that doesn't belong in this family, but there are lots and lots of zoology. I mean, Richard mentioned lots there, oncology, nephrology, et cetera. So it is the study of a particular field. Now, atrix that I mentioned here, geriatrics, et cetera etc that is a little bit more focused on medicine because it

goes back to a root greek again meaning healer or physician so atrix usually was it was used on its own meaning belonging to medicine or a physician so the atric art was the practice of medicine, essentially. And so that inevitably went into other branches of medicine. So clearly there's an overlap because the people who study these things will study them comprehensively and it is a particular subject. But the atrix bit belongs more closely to medicine, whereas you can have ology belonging to lots and lots of different subjects. What about other atrics? I think immediately of theatrics. Yes.

Is that related in any way? Actually, that's a very good point. You always throw these things at me, Giles, and I think, why did I not think it? Why did I just think it was just... Well, this is partly to prove to the listeners that this is a genuine conversation. Which I can't always answer.

No, but you have the answers to everything, if not already in your head, at fingertips uh yeah at my fingertips because i have the oed in front of me now i am wondering if yeah it's actually not linked believe it or not which is really interesting but theatric it goes back to the latin theatricus, meaning belonging to the theatre. So I think if you have theatrics, you are basically engaging in theatrical behaviour. But I think those go back to theatricus rather than theatrics that belong to medicine. Brilliant question. Very good. Well, look, keep your questions and queries coming. It's simply purple at somethingelse.com. And we get so many that we must quite soon, I think, devote another episode

simply to trying to answer all the queries that come in. Oh, I love all those episodes. They're my favourites. Do you have, my favourite moment really is hearing your three words and I try to write them down and then use them. Otherwise, I'm afraid they go in one ear, out the other. Okay, well, these are quite unusual ones

and not sure how much you're going to use them really but the first is i just discovered this one today and i've never heard of it before because it sounds actually really nasty glandaceous glandaceous so to be glandaceous means to have the yellowish color of a ripe acorn oh that interesting very interesting yeah so just just i just was struck by that one today because it wasn't what i thought the next one i think i possibly may have mentioned this before but it is very useful paralipsis do you remember what paralipsis is paralipsis oh it does ring a bell go on say it again yeah it's a really sneaky figure of speech where you're essentially drawing attention to something while pretending to say that you're not going to mention it so you know when we say oh not

to mention blah blah or to say nothing of blah blah actually what you're doing is drawing attention of it so i won't even mention the fact that you got drunk last night giles so that's paralipsis which as i say is quite useful but not particularly pleasant. And the final one is Agathism. Agathism is essentially the belief that all things tend to the positive. It's not quite the same as an optimist. An optimist kind of believes that in the sort of good here and now, and that essentially good things, you know, are about to happen now. But agathism is more fundamental, that in the end, all things tend to the positive, even if the means to get to them are horrible.

And I find that quite reassuring. Explain the root of that. The ism would be as in theism or atheism. Yes, a doctrine, for example. It simply goes back to the Greek agathos, which actually didn't give us very much except the name Agatha, but agathos, and it just means good. Oh.

Agatha means good. Yes. How lovely. It is nice, isn't it? Because the idea of Aunt Agatha and Agatha Christie writing Murder. Aunt Agatha. No, but I feel there was a kind of character called Aunt Agatha. It's a period name, isn't it?

And people of the generation of Agatha Christie, so born, as it were, 100 years ago or so. Yes. Well, I didn't realise that it was a war. Good and honourable, sort of. Oh, that's lovely. Well, you know, that's how I want to be. Though I have to say, sometimes reading the newspapers

or turning on the television or the radio and hearing the news, I do feel a little bit negative. But this is good. Let's all try and become more optimistic and agathistic. Exactly. Exactly. Speaking of which, do you have a poem for us? I have a couple of very short poems. I've still got on my bookshelf Ogden Nash's Zoo. These are poems by the wonderful 20th century American versifier. And I wanted to make sure that I was getting this one right. It's one I know well,

it's called The Cow. I thought since we were doing energy and gas would come up, I would give you... Yes, exactly. Because apparently the cow is one of the main sources of methane gas in the world. Absolutely. That's why we should all go veggie. Absolutely. And it's a very short poem. It's well known. It's called The Cow by Ogden Nash. The cow is of the bovine ilk. One end is moo, the other milk. But there's another poem, which is a little bit longer, and I'm just reading it because it's on the facing page in this little book of Ogden Nash's zoo. It's called The Duck. Behold the duck. It does not cluck. A cluck it lacks it quacks it is especially fond of a puddle or

pond when it dines or sups it bottoms ups speaking of bottoms ups i don't know if you heard a little bit there sorry that was my cat pulling up the carpet if anyone had the sound effects behind um but that's quite appropriate we actually thought it was you breaking wind. It did sound a bit like that. Show empathy for the poor beleaguered cows. Yes, being punished for naturally giving off methane gas. So it's a jolly unfair world at times, isn't it? 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 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 while stocks last. Oh, yes. Thank you so much to all the Purple people and the being attacked by my cat for getting in touch with us in the past and also hopefully in the future.

Something Rhymes with Purple, this is Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale, who's with us today and the person who just, well, he's sadly not, is he, Giles? No, well, I've heard he's off at a high-energy orgy. Ah, he's working. Yes, that's where he is, with the oil of Olay. It's Gully.