Something Rhymes with Purple - Euphuism

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

Join us in our linguistic dystopia as we proles explore the language of George Orwell. We’ll be discussing newspeak and oldspeak, and attempting to double-think all under the watchful eye of Big Brother… hoping that we won’t get thrown into Room 101… somewhere Gyles has been before actually.  Elsewhere we’ll be dissecting Orwell’s six rules of writing, Gyles encourages Susie to write a novel, and we discover more about Orwell’s nom du plume, his moniker, his nickname if you will… As always, a trio of words from Susie to add to your collection, and Gyles struggles to talk with a mouth full of sausages… Susie’s Trio: Angel Visit - a catch up with a friend that’s all too rare Pseudologist - a liar Sunwake - the reflection of the sun on the surface of the sea A Somethin' Else production.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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But if you're new to it, you won't know what it's about. It's really about words and language. And it's presented by me, Charles Brandreth, and by my friend and colleague, Susie Dent. Susie, where are you this week? I would love to be sitting on top of the piano or doing something vaguely different. But I am where I have been throughout lockdown, at least when I talk to you, which is in my study, which is a bit of a posh name for a place with a sofa and lots of bookshelves and my desk.

I have to make a confession. I'm quite liking lockdown. I've been here 10, 11 weeks, pretty much isolated. I do go out every day because though I am in a category being over 70, where we're encouraged to stay at home as much as possible. I am not having to shield myself. So I've been going out every day, walking a minimum of 6,000 steps. But people think I'm a very gregarious human being because when I'm with them, I'm talking all the time. But actually, when I'm on my own, I'm not talking. And I rather like splendid isolation. Yes, you are not alone. I think a lot of people are feeling the same combined with the anxiety of coming out of all this as well, which I think is another thing that's sort of making us want to creep back in inside. People will be wanting to

creep back in if they live near me because next week my tricycle Oh. I have three wheels for me. I've got to go green in future. Even though my car is a Tesla and therefore electric, I'm going to spend less time in the car, less time on public transport, less time on the bus and the tube, and I hope more time on my tricycle. But this means it's a little bit alarming if you are living locally and get to be seeing me on a tricycle because I haven't ridden one I don't think in 65 years. Have you got a helmet? Oh helmet do you think I need a helmet? Just if you're going to cycle around London that is the first requisite is to have a helmet.

What about a riding hat? I think I've got one of my daughter's riding hats. Then people really will run away. No get a proper cycling helmet i better order that yeah before the trike arrives how are you going to be moving around once once lockdown is over and you're free and easy again is it going to change your habits um well i've been cycling a lot during lockdown which has been great so i intend to keep that up but of course you know the traffic's going to intensify so i'm not sure whether it will always be as pleasant as it is now but I do love it it's what it's keeping me saying at the moment but inevitably I think it's going to be the car so when countdown kicks off again you know it's funny in my heart I can't wait to get back into studio but in my head

I'm actually maybe or maybe it's the other way around. There is a lot of anxiety about going back to work, I think, but then, you know, we all need to financially and for other reasons. And I realised fully this is quite a stressful time for a lot of people. But what you were saying about enjoying lockdown, or at least finding it a solace in some ways, I've spoken to a few comedian friends because I work with comedians, obviously on the comedy version of Countdown and a lot of them have said their anxiety levels have dropped dramatically during lockdown because the sort of performance element of it, much as they love it, is also incredibly stressful. Yeah, they don't need to get any laughs anymore. No, and I'm stressed about that.

That is stressful, trying to get a laugh. Oh my goodness. I have been taking also a break from the news and that's made me very happy indeed. I don't follow the news, but I did open the newspaper this morning and I saw a headline. It was about the world, what's happening in Russia. They seem to be a bit behind us in terms of where the coronavirus is hitting them. But the headline included two words that I wanted to talk to you about. One was the word Orwellian, and the other was the word dystopian. And I want you to explain both of those words to me. And I thought we might talk about Orwellian, because I know it is a word derived from the great writer, George Orwell. And I know we had an email a week or so ago from Holly McBean. Yes. And she mentioned how all the talk of 1984,

the Orwellian world in which we now seem to be living, had inspired her to read the novel, 1984, which was published, I think, in 1947 and was going to have been called 1948, but the publisher thought better of that. Anyway, that got me thinking about the language of Orwell. So before we dive into George Orwell, tell me a little bit about dystopian, because why is that? What does dystopian mean? Well, it was coined, obviously, as the opposite of utopian. So the dis in there is um something that expresses not just negative but the sort of in some ways it's a place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible as opposed to as good as possible so it's a bit of voltaire in there almost a bit of condeedism um for anyone who's read condeed condeeds but um dis, for example, is the opposite of euphemism.

So euphemism is the process of making something nicer than it actually is or, you know, couching the truth, embellishing it a little bit. Whereas dysphemism is being as rude as possible, you know, for the effect, for a desired effect. So if you want to, you know, tell someone to fuck off, you're probably being quite dysphemistic because you know exactly what you want to fuck off you're probably being quite dysphomistic because you you know exactly what you want so as in euphemism the eu i think is greek for kind or something like that yes and firmism is as in phonetic it means sound so it's a kindly sound so euphemism is a kindly sound

euphony means sweet sounding doesn't it exactly and there is a great word and i think it you'll find it in the dictionary so if anyone can hear me tapping away, it's because I'm, as always, on the Oxford English Dictionary, which is what I spend my life doing. Yes, it is in here. It's a eucatastrophe. E with that EU again of euphemism, meaning good or well, and obviously catastrophe. And Tolkien created this, and it means in a fictional narrative, a sudden or unexpected turn of of events so it's a happy ending really which you which you say that word again what's it called eucatastrophe so it's eu and then catastrophe eucatastrophe is a happy ending yes how interesting yeah so euphony euphemism uh euphuism is a word too, isn't it? Euphuism. I think that means sort of euphuism, euphuism. I think that's a kind of wordplay. I seem to remember when I studied Love's Labour's

Lost, the play by William Shakespeare, which there's a lot of wordplay amongst the young people in the court of the King of Navarre, the Princess of France, they were indulging in euphuism wordplay. Am I right? I don't know. Spell it for me. Oh, I love it. Everybody, you've got to know that this show is entirely improvised. We just meet, we don't know what we're going to talk about. We don't do any preparation. It's all coming from her head. So when occasionally I find a word she's not familiar with, I have to tell you, I get just a little bit high here. Euphoric, in fact.

E-U-phoric. Very good. Which is another word for high. Tell me, how are you spelling euphuism? I'm spelling euphuism. E-U-P-H-U-I-S-M. Euphuism. Wow.

You are absolutely right. Okay, so it actually goes back to a character in a 16th century work and he was called Euphues. And euphuism is the name of a certain type of style which originated in this work and which was fashionable in literature and to the conversation of cultivated society. It's applied to high flown language in general. So it also says periphrastic. In other words, you kind of go around the point. Affected elegance, I think, is one way of putting it. So maybe not wordplay, but I love the word. Euphuism. And I think the reason that I know it is that when I was a schoolboy, there was a wonderful teacher called Mr. Gardner. This is going back more than

50 years. Mr. Gardner, isn't it funny, these teachers, we remember them. Of course we do. This great and good man, who was my English teacher, who taught me almost everything I know. He, I think, told me I was speaking euphuistically. I thought this was a compliment. And that's how we got into it. And clearly, I was doing high-flown Namby Pamby speech. Yes. And he said, you are speaking euphuistically. So he introduced it to me.

And then he gave me an example of where it's used in a respectable way in Love's Labour's Lost, where these characters are speaking in high-flown turns of phrase. And you remember this? Of course I remember it. The joy of talking to you is we can get down, taken down so many different cul-de-sacs, but we must stay on the main highway. We are today talking about a remarkable writer,

a famous writer called George Orwell. I have been a fan of George Orwell since I first began learning about him. His real name was Eric Blair. No relation of Tony Blair, nor indeed of Tony Blair's dad, Lionel Blair. Eric Blair, who is a famous socialist, a novelist, a journalist, a polemicist, born around this time of year in 1903, born in British India. People think of him as a socialist thinker and writer. But in fact, he came from a very well-to-do family. His grandfather was a country gentleman who married a sign of the aristocracy, the daughter of the Earl of Westmoreland. He was educated at Wellington and at Eton.

And he became a journalist. And we remember him. Well, I think of him almost every week nowadays because I work at the BBC. And when I'm, when normally, when I'm going to the BBC, I go into the one show. And the entrance to the one show you've been, you will know faces a statue that was put up outside the BBC in 2017. Indeed. How do you know?

Do you know the artist? I do know him because, well, not only is he a friend of a very good friend of mine, but he's also the most brilliant sculptor. He did the beautiful Betjeman statue that you'll find at St Pancras. But also, he helped me with a book that I was writing once. Do you remember? It was on tribal language, the language of different professions. Oh, of course I do.

And I spoke to someone at Madame Tussauds, who was a sculptor of the dummies there. And I then spoke to Martin about his kind of tools and trades. So I do know him and I love the statue. He's got a fag in hand, isn't he? And a slightly crumpled coat. I think he got some criticism for the cigarette, actually, because people said, you know, he would have been horrified Orwell. But actually, Martin Jennings said, well, I'm sorry, but he was never seen without one, really. And it's got a quotation behind it, which I can't remember accurately from memory. But it's one of the things that Orwell said about freedom of speech means the freedom to be allowed to say things that people don't want to hear.

And I think that would have been Jennings' defence of putting the cigarette in his hand. Also, the freedom of actually depicting things people don't necessarily want to see. To see, exactly. He believed in the freedom of speech. And of course, he introduced us to all these words that are to do with control and lack of freedom of speech. And many of them come from his famous novel, 1984. Let's get into some of those. Big Brother. People say, or William, they mean this is a big brother world where the big brother is watching you. Did he originate that phrase?

No, he absolutely didn't. There were many before him who used that. So, obviously, it originally meant an elder brother, and that sense goes back to 19th century, at least. That's when it was first recorded. But with the capital letters, as in a person or a state that is a bit like an elder brother, so they have authority, protective role, etc. That is early 19th century. It was only with Orwell that it really came to mean an authority that not just monitored people's behaviour and kind of tried to protect them through it, but actually controlled it as well. So he definitely gave it that dystopian twist. In 1984 and in Animal Farm,

he comes up with a number of phrases. Big brother, the thought police. That's one of his, I think. Is that original with him? It's funny, I was looking up, I've got here a list from the oed this is a wand of the oed so you can look up an author and you can look for first quotations in other words were these authors the first to give us a particular word or phrase in the language anyway these are the ones that it will give you for orwell double think um which is the mental capacity to accept as equally valid two completely contrary opinions or beliefs. So in 1984, Orwell says, to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in them both,

to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy. Isn't that wonderful? I mean, you just get a taste of him from that, really. Give us some more of these words, please. Okay, so that's Double Think. Newspeak. Now, I have to say, for a very long time, I thought new speak was news speak. So I assumed it was the kind of the speech and the written word of the mass media. But actually, it's as opposed to old speak, isn't it? It's new speak.

But I can't help thinking that Orwell wanted that kind of ambiguity. And that was originally, in his novel anyway, the artificial language that was used for official propaganda. And then it went on to mean any corrupt form of English, especially as used, again, in political propaganda. There's no doubt that language is power. The way the phrases we use, the way we talk, defines the discourse. You only have to see pictures that sometimes emerge from North Korea, where it does seem to be an Orwellian society, where the devoted people surrounding the great leader, the young women with tears in their eyes of joy, mouthing Newspeak,

the language that they've been told to use to worship, to deify really, their leader. I was just thinking, I'd love to know, I'd love to have Orwell's take on this whole debate at the moment about fake news. You know, so much going on at the moment. You've got politically, obviously, you've got the whole debacle with trips to Durham, et cetera, recently. You've got Trump being monitored by Twitter with, you know, verification checks going on. I mean, it's extraordinary, really, just how insightful he was and how prescient he was.

Anyway, so we've got Oldspeak as well to go with Newspeak. Prol, short for the proletariat. Oh, the proletariat. Yes. So when people use slang saying, you know, oh, the proles, that's a George Orwell neologism. He invented that. How interesting.

Working back from proletarian. Yeah. And this was in a letter that he wrote. He says, as to the great proletarian novel, I really don't see how it's to come into existence. The stuff in Seven Shifts, that must be one one of his is written from a prole point of view but of course this literature is bourgeois literature um that's what he says there snakily i just like that one snakily in a snaky or snake-like manner windingly um so that's a nice one snootily unperson uh that sounds so modern unperson a person who usually for a political misdemeanor is deemed

not to have existence existed and whose name is removed from all public records later a person whose contributions or achievements are officially denied or disregarded or a person of no political or social importance well that happens nowadays some poor unfortunate says something on twitter that is politically incorrect or mistaken. They say it in their cups or what have you. They suddenly become, they have to delete themselves. And then they come for a while, they become an un-person, a non-person. They never existed. You've also got people who are, who seek, understandably quite often, to kind of delete themselves from search engines because what's up there is either misleading or incredibly old. So you've actually got people trying to unperson themselves. And it reminds me of unfriend, which was first mentioned in the 17th century. I think Shakespeare

used unfriend. So, you know, unfriend, unperson, they sound so modern, don't they? But they've been around for a very long time. Well, I sometimes want to do it about myself. The other day on Twitter, somebody had managed to find a clip of me 50 years ago doing a television interview in Wigan. Funnily enough, Wigan, one of George Orwell's books, novels, is called The Road to Wigan Pier. Yes, of course. And I'm in Wigan interviewing people 50 years ago for BBC television. And I sound like Terry Thomas on speed. You wouldn't believe how strangled. Hello, everybody.

Hello. Here we are in Wigan. This is Giles Prandtl reporting for the British Broadcasting Corporation. You would not believe it. And I thought, oh, how can I unperson myself? How can I? And I wasn't here because I'm not sophisticated enough. I didn't know how to delete this.

Well, I did. Sometimes I'm not sure you can. But well, there you go. That's exactly what you were trying to do. But I know Orwell mostly through his writing about English and his writing about language. And he came up with some rules, didn't he, for effective writing, which we should come to. Look, why don't we, before we disappear down the memory hole, why don't we take a quick break and then we'll give you

George Orwell's Rules for English. But before we do, and I'm saying disappearing down the memory hole because I think that was one of his, I have taken part in two different versions of Room 101. Okay. I did it many years ago with Paul Merton when he was doing it, and then more recently I did it with years ago with Paul Merton when he was doing it. And then more recently, I did it with Frank Skinner. It's a programme where you have to choose what you would put into Room 101.

Tell me, what is the origin of Room 101? That's an Orwellian creation, isn't it? I think, I'm sure I read somewhere that his office at the BBC was actually Room 101. I think it was a torture chamber in 1984. It reputedly contained the worst thing in the world. So the idea of the game show is what do you want to put in the worst thing in the world? Can I ask what you put in? Well, all I can remember putting in, because I've done it twice, I put in loads and loads of things. I think on one occasion, I put in loads and loads of things.

I think on one occasion I put in the Royal Variety Show, which was a big mistake. I just thought that was an amusing thing to say because it means I haven't been invited to take part in it since. So I put that in. And then I thought I'd put my constituents in. I thought I'd been an MP. They didn't want me. So I thought, well, I don't want you either. Yeah.

So fuck you. He's from 101. That didn't go down too well either there's so much of my life that i would like to unperson yeah meanwhile i'm putting myself into room 101 now for a moment or two while we take our break but we'll pop out of the memory hole in just a minute with george orwell's rules for effective writing you know that feeling when you're like why isn't there more of this? This show is so good. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler

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Welcome back. This is Something Rhymes with Purple with Susie Dent in Oxford, me, Giles Brandreth, in London, and we're looking at the lifetimes and legacy of the great George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. You can tell me about his pen name in a moment. But first, you mentioned these rules for effective writing. I'm a fan of them. You're not.

No, I mean, that is the difference between us, isn't it? I think I am the kind of liberal hippie chick and you are more of a stickler for rules about english it's only because it's probably slightly prejudiced on my part because i think i break a lot of all world's rules which is why i've decided to discard them but some of them i absolutely see the sense of so number one was never use a metaphor simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. In other words, avoid the cliche, which I think is absolutely right. Number two, never use a long word where a short one will do. But I'm the sort of person who, when I was a child, I used to say that a slight inclination

of the cranium is as adequate as a spasmodic movement of one optic to an equine quadruped, utterly devoid of any visionary capacity. When what I really meant was a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. Very good. Short and simple. Winston Churchill used to say, use the Anglo-Saxon rather than the Latinate. Well, a lot of people have taken that to mean swear words, haven't they?

When in fact, most of our swear words, as we have discovered and established, aren't Anglo-Saxon anyway. Do the people think that? Oh, no, they're not that. People aren't that stupid. Not the people listening to this. No, but Anglo-Saxon is used Do the people think that? Oh, no, they're not that. People aren't that stupid. Not the people listening to this. No, but Anglo-Saxon is used as a...

Oh, as a euphemism. As a euphemism for a bad language. Yes. But what he's saying here is short, sharp words are better than long-winded persiflage. I think that's absolutely right. But then occasionally you will get a long word that packs a punch and actually manages to encompass a whole spectrum of emotions.

It may be long, but it's incredibly pithy. Does that make sense? Absolutely. That's where I disagree with them. Absolutely. Like ultra-crepidarian, as you know, one of my favourite words, somebody who loves to hold forth on a subject they know absolutely nothing about. But would you put that in the opening sentence of your novel? The reason I ask that is I don't like it if I'm reading a book and I'm having to have recourse to the dictionary all the time. I want to get on with the story.

That put me off Dickens for years, actually, because I remember we had to read Our Mutual Friend at school, which I love now as a novel. But on the very first page, he used the word neophyte. I had no clue what that meant and actually put it down and didn't return to it for a little while. So yes, I'm with you. A neophyte is somebody who is new to something, innocent and young. A neophyte, a newcomer. That was number two. Number three, if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Get that too. Simplicity is what he's going for this one i don't agree with possibly because i overuse the passive tense he says never use the passive when you can use the

active i might get really annoyed with spell checkers and grammar checkers online that actually try and do that for you or will give you a huge red squiggly line because you've used a passive voice but i think sometimes it's necessary and it's more beautiful. Where are you going to be writing your novel, Susie Dent? Oh, you're working on it now. This is your lockdown secret. Exclusive, exclusive. Susie Dent writing a novel. No, I'd love to be able to write one.

But why aren't you getting on with it? Because can you imagine the pressure of someone who pretends to be a wordsmith and then comes out with something sort of quite mediocre? Excuse me, it wouldn't be mediocre. It would be you. I would love to read your novel. I will encourage you. I was given a wonderful opportunity when I was young. There was a publisher called Anthony Blonde, distinguished publisher, who, when I left university, offered me five pounds a week, quite a lot of money in those days, for two years to write a novel. Wow. And I didn't take him up on it.

And he would have monitored it. He would have been my editor. It's never too late. There you are. No, no, I do write novels now. Oh, of course you do. You do all your Oscar Wilde mysteries. Of course you do.

I've written nine or ten novels. Yeah. But, and I try, actually, I do try to follow, broadly speaking, Orwell's rules. But you should write a novel from your heart. Okay. And you know all Mark Twain said, the secret of writing a novel, of writing anything, application. Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Sit down and get on with it.

That is your golden rule. You're so good at that. Next week, I'll ask you if you've written the first sentence. What's the next of Orwell's rules? Number five, never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. And a lot of people quote Orwell on this one when they rally against jargon because, you know, jargon has a really, really bad rap and rightly so on a lot of occasions. But actually some of it, I think we've talked about business speak before, can be really useful. And jargon is just inside a language quite often. It's when it becomes meaningless and just churned out because people think it sounds good, that it's a problem.

And the last one, well, actually, this is a kind of summary one. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. that it's a problem. And the last one, well, actually, this is a kind of summary one, break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. In other words, you can just ignore number one to five if actually it helps you avoid anything that's outright barbarous. But he doesn't define outright barbarous. He doesn't say what he might put under that umbrella. But he gives you that opportunity. You can decide what you want to do. But what he's making you do is think about it. Is this barbarous?

You told us what barbarous means the other week, didn't you? Yes. So barbarous goes back to the Greek foreigner, really. So they considered all foreigners to be sort of horrible people who went around and stammered, ba, ba, ba, ba, because they couldn't understand their language. So it became unintelligible chatter. And yeah, we talked about rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, didn't we? Because rhubarb was the foreign fruit, etc. I want to tell regular purple people who listen to our programme

regularly that I shall be monitoring the progress of Susie Dent's personal. Before we get on to, I've mentioned our purple people, before we get on to their letters, it's a pen name, isn't it, George Orwell? Yes. A pen name means a name you use when you're penning something. It's an assumed name, yeah. It's an assumed name used instead of one's real name. Could be all sorts of reasons. Behind it, it could be in the past, obviously, if you're a woman and you didn't think you'd be taken seriously, then you had a pen name, George Eliot, et cetera, the Brontes, or indeed J.K. Rowling. I'm not sure if that was her motivation, but that is the pen name. And in French, of course, it's called nom de plume. Plume meaning feather, looking at a quill, but the idea is the same, a pen.

And are there other words for pen names? I mean, an is an alien you wouldn't really call it an alias would you but that's simply that's from the latin meaning at another time or otherwise non de guerre non de guerre non de plume non de guerre yes a war name so this one was used originally of people who were perhaps spies or they were working undercover so it was your your name during military action it wasn wasn't your real name. When you would be travelling, possibly incognito. Incognito, absolutely right. That simply means unknown.

What about a moniker? His moniker was? Yeah, we don't know where that one comes from. I love moniker. Subriquet? Subriquet, that's another one where we're not completely sure. We know it comes from French. It's usually slightly garbled as subriquet,, but it's actually soubriquet, as you

say. And some people think it comes from a French dialect term, meaning a tickle under the chin. But what that has to do with your nickname, maybe it was a sort of gesture of affection. And so nickname is quite often bestowed through affection. Let's get on to the purple people. Before we do have to do george orwell's nordegair oh you mentioned nickname what's who yes that's a brilliant one so nickname do you remember me talking to you quite a while ago now about a linguistic process called meta-analysis and this is when we kind of falsely divide a word i told you about an adder which was originally nadder n-a-d-d-e-r because but because we said and nada the sort of n

migrated to the a and we got ada instead same with a newt a newt used to be a ute e-w-t is from anglo-saxon but we called it and newt and so the n kind of traveled over to the ute bit well it's the same with the nickname because the nickname was originally an eek name, E-K-E, meaning supplementary as well. So it was a sort of additional name, really. But a nick name became a nick name in the end. Brilliant. Gare. The alias of George Orwell was an alias of Eric Arthur Blair, who chose that name because when he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London, it spoke of, well, tales of poverty in his own life, didn't want to embarrass his upper middle class family, so he changed it. He chose Orwell

after the River Orwell in Suffolk that he was particularly fond of. The purple people can put us right on so much. What have they been putting us right on this week? Or what have they been writing to us about? Because we talked about Orwell entirely because Holly McBean or Holly McBain wrote to us about George Orwell. Who's been writing to us this week? Well, we have some questions, but we also have some comments. We have quite a few sausage poems.

Do you remember this? In our episode called Yakamosh, and I didn't know how to pronounce that, but we were talking about the world's most beautiful languages and most beautiful words. We asked people to send us our saucy sausage poems or tongue twisters. Well, lots of people did, Giles, lots of the purple people, and they're absolutely brilliant. Now, have you got those in front of you?

I have got a couple of them. OK. I'll give you one from Kevin Laurie. OK. A couple were furky toodling with a saucy sausage or two. She said, we shouldn't be doing this, he replied, I know, after you. Shall I remind everyone what furky toodling was, just so they get the full picture? To furky toodle is to kind of kiss and fondle in

in my grandparents terms and it's foreplay basically just to mess about you give us have you got the one that i have in ryan kevin ryan from huntingdon goes with suzy dent and giles brandreth hardly caught a breath they spoke of foreplay they go saucy message, but not as naughty as calling Susie a very saucy sausage. That's very sweet. It's got a little tongue twister feel to it. And this certainly does. A couple of people, including Susan Kirkpatrick, offered this tongue twister that apparently was popular in French classrooms in the 1960s. I get it now. I'll repeat that at the very end. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast

because we're running out of time and I think we've got to get your three words in and then I will practice saying this properly so we can end today with my quotation of the week will be a correct rendering of that wonderful French classroom tongue twister. Okay, do you want my trio? Give us your trio. Give you my trio. Okay, do you want my trio? Give us your trio.

Give you my trio. Okay. A couple of these I think I've done before, but you know me, I tend to just do whatever's at the top of my mind at the moment because it kind of fits with my current situation. And the first of those is angel visit. It's a catch up with a friend that's all too rare.

In other words, it's one that doesn't happen very often. That's an angel visit um and um just again we've talked about you know truth and falsehood and everything being in the news a lot at the moment a pseudologizer you can guess this one pseudologizer is a synonym for a liar and the dictionary has lots of them from leasing monger to a falsificator, a wrinkler, a gabber. There's so many. But a pseudologizer or a pseudologist is essentially someone who bends the truth. And I will end with someone that's a little bit nicer than that, kind of ties into our

beautiful language pod, actually. And that's the sun wake, sun wake, which is the reflection of the sunrise or the sunset on the surface of the sea. That is the sunwake. I love it. The sunwake. It's beautiful, isn't it? There's been lots of apricity recently, hasn't there?

Oh, there has. Although it's just getting hotter and hotter, isn't it? So not so much the chilly, lots of the sunshine. Oh, I thought apricity was the warmth of the sun on your back. It is, but it's usually on a chilly day. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes, but you are applicating at the moment. So there's a linked word,

which is to bask in the sunshine. You're applicating. I love a bit of applicating. Me too. And I love you, Susie Dent. And I'll be with you again this time next week. And if you want to be with us and to take part in the conversation,

you can tweet us or email us at purple at something else dot com. That's something without a G at purple at something else dot com. That's something without a G. Purple at something else dot com. I'm going to conclude by giving you this French classroom tongue twister from the 1960s. Si, si saucisson sont 600. Si sans saucisson sont 600 cents. A la prochaine.

Salut les copains. Au revoir, Suzy. Au revoir, mon ami. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker, Jay, who's looking on today, and Gali. Oh, Gali.

Quel saucisson.