Something Rhymes with Purple - Feles

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Psssss psssss... Over here Purple People! It’s your weekly dose of the English language where Susie and Gyles let the cat out the bag about all those word myths you’ve always wondered about!    And speaking about cats, today’s episode will be all about our feline friends.    Gyles and Susie’s cats have been regular guests on the podcast so today, Susie will uncover the link between cats in bags and pigs in a poke, how an affection for the name ‘Margeret’ gave us our moggy cat and why being greedy led to skinning cats (but not literally thankfully)!     Gyles turns film critic and shares his opinion on the 2019 musical film based on T.S.Eliot’s poems, Cats, and we also get to discuss another classic British film when we explore why we find it difficult to herd cats.   We love hearing 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 via Apple Subscription, simply follow this link and enjoy a free 7 day trial: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:   Lack-linen - shirtless  Rakehelly - wild; dissolute; rakehell  Sluggardize - to make lazy   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

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

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there.

Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself.

Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple with me, Susie Dent, and my co-host, Giles Brandes. And we get together every week, really, don't we, Giles, just to, well, to say hello, because I haven't actually seen you in person for quite a while now. I will now in our live shows coming up quite soon, but also just to discuss our absolute favourite subject, which of course is words and language with our fantastic followers, the Purple People. But you're in my head all the time. You may not be. Is that a bad thing?

No, it's a good, it's a good thing. I've got into the habit of waking up at about four in the morning. It's so annoying. Between four and five in the morning, I wake up and I'm awake for about an hour. And I've decided instead of lying there worrying, I'm going to think about you. So I have a kind of conversation with you. And last night, I came up with this riddle which i thought i would try out on you this is i say last night early this morning and this is

the question this is for you suzy dent what were three nouns two verbs and an adjective doing in court um three nouns is the numbers relevant no what were three nouns two verbs and adjectives this is what i'm thinking about at two in the morning i'm thinking how can i amuse discussing their sentence they're waiting to be sentenced yes well done and i'll give you i mean i lay there i've got two more uh and then we can move on to what we're supposed to talk about what is small red and whispers because it's got a sore throat i lay lay there in bed thinking, well, I'm going to ask this to Susie later. What's small, red and whispers because it's got a sore throat? I was thinking tonsils. I don't know. A horse radish.

Oh, I like that one. Because it's a radish, it's small and red and it's also whispering. And the last one, this is relevant to what we're going to chat about today. And that's why I think I thought of it. What do you call a cat caught in the chemists? Cat caught in the chemists. This only works for people who know a big chain of chemists shops. Oh, puss in boots. Boom, boom. Very good. So that's what I do. I lie in bed tossing and turning and thinking well i've

got i'll try and think of some silly riddles to give to suzy do you ever have a sleepless night yes i do i can't remember a night really when i haven't woken up several times but i am quite lucky i do tend to go straight back to sleep so i'm hoping that i'm just coming out of a sleep cycle and then going back in but what you suffer from do, do you remember the word for it from Old English, which is uchtkearu? Oh, no, I don't. How do you spell that? I'm going to write that down.

U-H-T, as in milk, and then C-E-A-R-U. C-E-A-R-U. And it's essentially the sorrow before dawn. Uchtkearu. Uchtkearu. It's not so much sorrow. It is anxiety, though. It's anxiety before dawn. Yes, it's care so much sorrow as it is anxiety though anxiety before yes it's care yeah happily though we do allow our cat nala to share the bedroom with us oh do you no wonder

you don't sleep well she is very very good she she's got a chair that she sleeps on okay um normally but she does sometimes jump up onto the bed. But I find her quite soothing and quite companionable. She doesn't sit on your head like my cat? She does. She sits on my wife's head. What is interesting, she actually, she is my wife's cat. Or she's the neighbour's cat, as you know.

She's linked to my wife and she does sit. And I think it's because she wants, my wife says this is just cupboard love. She's just wanting a sort of midnight feast. It's very true. But why do they sit on a head? I don't really understand this. So either that or you feel like you're having,

you know, the word nightmare goes back to not a horse that's a mare, but the sort of evil spirit called a mare that was said to come and sit on your chest and almost make you feel like you were suffocating. That was the nightmare. And that's how Bo, my cat, makes me feel if she sits on my chest. It's like I wake up and I can't breathe. Your cat is called Bo, not as Bo Brummel, B-E-A-U, but as in Bo Peep. She's a she. And yes, we didn't give her the name Bo Peep. And it seemed

quite sweet because my kids were a lot younger when we got her from Battersea. Battersea is a cat and dog rescue centre, which has been going for many, many years. Brilliant. In London, they have lots of stations elsewhere in Britain as well. And we got her from there when she was a tiny kitten and they called her Bo Peep because she was the scaredy cat, the real scaredy cat. cat so she was just very very shy and would peep out from under a chair to see whether it was safe to come out so they called her Bo Peep so we've kept her we don't we don't ever call her Peep we just call her Bo. I wonder what the origin of Bo Peep is I mean it's a nursery rhyme character isn't it? It is yes Bo Peep I don't quite know why she was called Bo though little Bo Peep. Maybe it's maybe it's to do with Boo, saying Boo. Yes, maybe. Does your cat have a breed?

She's a Moggy. She's an absolute Moggy and a small, I think they just said small domestic breed. She's got the most beautiful eyes, I have to say. I would love to have Bo's eyes. They're just absolutely gorgeous. And we'll get onto the etymology of moggy later, actually. But I should just say that it's very interesting when you look at dog breeds, there's always a story to them. So we've talked about them before that the poodle goes back to the German puddlehund, a splash hound because they love water, a terrier loves digging up the earth, and it goes back to terra, meaning earth in Latin and terra in French. So quite often dog breeds have really lovely etymologies. Cats, not so much, unfortunately. They tend to be named mostly after places.

There's Bengal, the Abyssinian, the Persian, the Siamese, etc. So we thought we wouldn't focus on those today because most of them are, as I say, fairly self-explanatory. Though I have to tell you, I'm sorry I'm not focusing on them because I've done a lot of research. Oh, tell us, tell us. No, no, what what i'll share with you what i will share with you maybe we'll come back to this another day is i have a son-in-law who's a vet oh yes and i said to him what are the most popular breeds of cat in the uk and he said he reckoned the most popular breeds in the uk

probably first the british short hair then then the Bengal, believe it or not, then the Siamese, and then in fourth place, the Maine Coon, which is what our cat, Nala, is a Maine Coon. Ah, okay. Then Persian, then a kind of breed that I hadn't really heard of called a ragdoll. Yes, ragdoll. Rachel Riley used to have a ragdoll one as well. The ragdolls, I think, were so named because they're incredibly docile. So they have an unusually docile temperament. So they are just a doll that just sort of hangs there in your arms. So I think that's where it comes from originally. Not recorded until 1970, the ragdoll.

Well, take us into the world of cats. Where are we going to begin? Where do you want to begin? Well, we could start with the word cat itself, if you like. Please. Because you will find catus, Ca-t-t-u-s in latin and in some roman text but it's generally thought to be an egyptian word because it's in egypt that cats were first domesticated but it's a little bit like dog we've got a slightly clearer

view of its journey but if you remember dog and we often mention this one of the most mysterious etymologies given its everyday use in english we just don't know where dog came from and it's not too dissimilar for for cat because what the romans normally called a cat was philes f-e-l-e-s and that meant she who bears young oh i thought it meant faithful or happy no felix but that's philes or philes and felix is happy and philes is faithful yes so that's whyides. Or fides. And Felix is happy and fides is faithful. Yes. So that's why dogs are called fido, as in faithful.

Yes. And cats are called Felix or have been, as in happy. But that doesn't relate to feline. No. So the feline, as I say, does go back to Latin. And feline doesn't appear in English until the late 17th century. And most modern European languages have words that are linked to the phile, that Roman word. And it's interesting, I was reading this in the dictionary actually, that feline is generally linked with positive words, isn't it? She has feline eyes, for example, or feline grace,

whereas catty is something you definitely don't want to be. That is just spiteful, resentful, and not nice at all. So it's interesting that they've gone in two different ways when catty is something you definitely don't want to be. That is just spiteful, resentful, and, you know, not nice at all. So it's interesting that they've gone in two different ways when it comes to context. Well, I suppose the origin of catty is because certain cats, when they're fighting, fight in a quite unpleasant way. Oh gosh, and the noise. The screeching. How long has the word catty been around? Would Jane Austen have known the word catty? 19th century. Oh, so she might have known. Yes, possibly. And then, I mean, cat features in so many colourful English expressions, so we can talk about those. But I did say I would mention the etymology of moggy. Please. And moggy being a non-pedigree cat. So Bo is, as I say, a short

hair moggy. And it's simply a variety of Maggie, which in turn of course goes back to margaret now if you remember we have always loved choosing people's names particularly when it comes to animals and birds robin redbreast for example and if you remember the magpie was also named after margaret it was maggoty pie originally nothing to do with maggots and everything to do with mago which was another nickname for Margaret. So we simply attached that to Mog and Moggy. It's nothing to do with mongrel, which is a non-pedigreed dog, because that's based on mingles.

It's a sibling of mingles, but of course a mongrel is a mixed breed. Very good. I think we've touched on this before. Pussy. Puss, puss, puss,ussy cat. Why is a cat a pussy? Well, it's probably imitating the hissing sound. So if you're trying to get a cat's attention, you might go pss pss pss pss. Or the noise of the cat hissing itself might sound a bit like pss pss pss pss. So it's a similar sound that you will find in the sort of nickname for a cat in so many

different languages across the world. It's quite interesting. That sort of nickname for a cat in so many different languages across the world that's quite interesting that sort of replication of the but it was also used as a term of endearment for a girl or a woman and then childishly to anything soft and furry which obviously is where the the slang sense crept in and to play pussy in World War II RAF slang was to take advantage of cloud cover. So to jump from cloud to cloud, either to chase an enemy aircraft or to avoid being recognised yourself. So yeah, that's the sort of the pussy thing, as I say, term of endearment. But as so many terms of endearment have been, they are often applied to female genitals. Yes. There's a terrible joke, which I don't think I dare tell you, but it involves somebody who is making his last wish.

This is a really dreadful joke. Anyway, no, I won't even tell you. I'll just give you the payoff line. He's been captured and he's been strung up and he's been told he can have one last wish. And he's been strung up and he's been told he can have one last wish. And this beautiful creature turns up and he says, no, no, no, no. You said the wrong thing. I said posse, posse. Anyway, that's by the by. He was looking for a rescue posse and not for what they sent. while we're on the pudenda i should just say that there is one rival theory which goes you know it's either the soft and furry thing but it could also be from an old norse word some linguists think meaning a pocket or a pouch and if you remember while we're on this subject vagina goes back to a word meaning a sheath again or a pocket and it's actually linked to a vanilla because vanilla has a pod so vanilla and vagina are rather strange kissing cousins i'm not sure kissing cousins is the right word for it but this is fantastic you just i mean i'm you know here we

are stroking our pussies and we suddenly find ourselves with vanilla ice cream in our pods oh it's too silly for words isn't it it? We have. What about a tomcat? Why is a tomcat called a tomcat, not a billcat or a pencat? Who knows? I mean, Tom famously used a bit like Jack. I mean, I think Jack is probably the most often, the most frequently used name when it comes to identifying objects in English. Tom, probably somewhere on the list, high up. Just a generic name from the 18th century, but there was in 1760 an anonymous work called The Life and Adventures of a Cat. And the hero was a male cat that was called Tom

and was commonly called in the story Tom the Cat. So it may have been popularised by that. Meow. I know how to spell it. I think M-E-O-W. That's the noise traditionally made by a cat. You'll find writers saying the cat meowed. Do they actually ever make that noise? Who invented that word? How long has it been in print? Meow is a word.

That's a really good question, actually, because I don't have the first date, so I'm going to look it up now. I do know that it's almost the same in every different language. I do know that it's almost the same in every different language. Meow in French, M-I-A-O-U, and then it's M-I-A-O, I think, in German. And then in Japanese, it's Nya, which is quite similar. I think Nya is possibly a bit closer to Meow. 1632, according to the OED, to make a characteristic cry of a cat. And they do have in French as well, at least they did have, miaule, M-I-A-U-L-E-R, which was to meow.

Yeah, I think it's quite a good approximation of the sound, but it will never be exact, will it? I mean, do you think cows really go moo? I mean, they go mmm, but I'm not sure they go moo. Meow. Maybe we should have a party in 2032. I mean, next year we're going to be celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's first folio. Yes.

Maybe you and I should organise a great cat gathering, the biggest meow in the history of the world, for the 400th anniversary of the word meow. Get millions. Get millions of cats. You couldn't get cats together because they just don't like each other do they i was having this conversation about hamster with my youngest because she wanted to get another hamster and hamsters famously just kill each other to you want the fight to the death so i don't know if it would be very similar with cats i'm not sure you'd want them all in the same room not least because they would give out lots of catawalling which is a horrible sound and it's

reminded me actually of a great word in German for a hangover, which is a Katzenjammer, which again is a kind of caterwauling, because the sounds in your head when you've got a hangover just are like the din of cats collectively clamouring at each other. You know what we used to do with our children when the hamsters died?

Because we had hamsters as well, and they were always dying and fighting with each other, exactly as you said. We eventually put them in the blender, in the mullinex, and spread the residue on the flowerbeds with the most fantastic results. You won't believe it. You probably heard, you may wonder why, but you will have heard the song. There's a song about it, you know, because you know you get tulips from Hamster Jam. I knew this was going somewhere. I hoped it was going somewhere funny because I just thought, how could you ever use your blender again? And it wasn't going anywhere funny. It was going somewhere awful. Tulips from Hamster Jam. A dreadful, dreadful pun. Anyway, you mentioned my idea of getting millions of cats together. People use the phrase, like herding cats.

Cats have come into lots of phrases in the language. I assume like herding cats is simply because it's so difficult to herd a cat. Yes, absolutely. And there's a very popular belief that this began with a script from The Life of Brian, the wonderful Monty Python film. And it does seem like it was used there. And if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, it will give you 1986 for its first record of trying to herd, or be like trying to herd cats, in other words,

an impossible task. And The Life of Brian was the 1970s, wasn't it? 1976. So it's very possible that it did popularise or even give us that phrase like herding cats. But yes, it's an impossibility. So I think definitely we will not be having a meow fest. Not sure I'm going for that one, Giles. But there's so many expressions, aren't there? Cat got your tongue? Yes, cat got your tongue. Now there was, well, I mentioned ancient Egypt and in ancient Egypt, Well, I mentioned ancient Egypt and in ancient Egypt, cats were considered to be very, very sacred. So one of the ideas was if the cat got your tongue, it literally, your tongue would be kind of taken out if you had sort of transgressed either against a cat or against society. And so

you would, you know, you basically have your tongue whipped out which i think was quite a common punishment but i think the dates in english i'm just checking this in the oed 1911 i was so angry at her that i made no answer this is from a novel presently she said has a cat got your tongue but it says here in many colloquial and proverbial expressions of obvious meaning but it's not at all obvious i think where that one comes from so who knows may? May go back to ancient Egyptian mythology, may simply be to do with a cat of nine tails, which certainly is behind the no room to swing a cat. Now, the cat of nine tails was a really, if you remember, pernicious instrument of torture aboard ships and sailors who had broken the rules would often have what would be beaten and flogged using the cat of nine tails. And why is it called a cat of nine tails?

I think because it had lots of sort of lashes that were attached to it, probably nine of them, I'm guessing, that when you swung them around, you know, particularly if they had sort of horrible studs attached to them, they could really perform something nice. But why is it called a cat? Yeah. Oh, here we go probably the name was one of grim humor in reference to it scratching the back okay so it's like marks like cats scratch claws yeah it's a bit grim isn't it it's very grim and how does that relate to

swinging no room to swing a cat well no room to swing a cat is you literally this is a whip with nine knotted lashes you'd need quite a good swing room for that oh oh so it's not actually picking up your cat by the tail and swinging it around well there are theories that that is behind it as well because i'm not going to detail here because it really is too distressing but they do absolutely awful things with animals for entertainment so it's not beyond the realms of possibility oh dear and letting the cat out of the bag, is that something horrific as well? Yes. Now we have done this one before, I think, when we talked about buying a pig in a poke, and we also talked about letting the cat out of the bag. So buying a pig in a poke was the scam,

if you remember, where I thought you were buying a little piglet, which you could then grow for pork, breed for pork. And it would be in a poke, which is an old name for a pocket or a posh, a bag. And the idea is that you pay your money, you get home, you open the poke or the pocket and out pops a cat, which was not considered to be valuable at all. So you let the cat out of the bag and the secret is out. Very good. Yeah. Any more? A Cat in a Hot Tin Roof? I mean, that's the title of a play, I know. Is that the origin of the bag and the secret is out. Very good. Yeah. Any more? A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? I mean, that's the title of a play, I know. Is that the origin of the phrase? No. No. The play was named

after the phrase. Yes. I think it's just to be really... It's a Tennessee Williams play, yeah. Yeah. To be really agitated. So obviously, if you imagine a cat on a hot tin roof, it's going to be lifting its paws up and down because it's too hot to stand. So that's the idea, is you're just unable to keep still. You're like a cat on a hot tin roof or on hot bricks is the other version, isn't it? And then you've got more than one way to skin a cat, which again, sounds really grim. Happily, I'm not sure this is to do with literally skinning cats because the OED thinks it begins in the 17th century with a completely different phrase, which is to skin a flint. Now, to skin a flint was all about greed, essentially.

So a flint is a piece of hard stone used to make sparks. And there is no skin, of course. And so the idea is that if you're even trying to whittle away at that, then you are very, very mean indeed, because you're not prepared to spend any money. As a skin flint. Like a skin flint. Exactly. That's where we get that from. And apparently to skin a flint was one of many phrases about skinning things that were

all about either stinginess or the willingness to go to extreme lengths. So there were lots of them, I think, and definitely not just cats. I'm just trying to think if I can give you skin a louse, skin a flea, and finally to skin a cat. But it underwent a bit of a change there as well, because it was, you'd say, oh, he's someone who would skin a cat, again, meaning that he's very greedy, not greedy, but very stingy. But then it sort of changed to the expression that we know today, there is more than one way to skin a cat, meaning there's more than one way of achieving your aim. Why do cats have nine lives? Well, I mentioned that cats being worshipped in ancient Egypt, they were highly revered, they were praised for being magical. And that's probably why they were thought to have nine lives,

because they had some sort of special supernatural power that enabled them to evade danger. And lots and lots of different traditions really revolving around cats. So farmers would often leave offerings for cats to ensure a good harvest. The Chinese apparently still believe, we might have some purple people in China or who are Chinese, that believe cats protect their crops, presumably from being eaten by rats and mice. But again, they're good omens. We talk about a black cat crossing our path as being very lucky. So lots and lots of different associations with luck and with charm. And so, you know, perhaps they did have magical powers that would enable them to escape more often than

other animals. And then you have to also remember that the number nine, particularly in Greek mythology, has also got magical significance. It starts with the nine muses, the goddesses in Greek mythology who, you know, inspired musicians and dancers and authors. So nine, a special number, certainly, in mythology and tradition. One of my favourite poems about cats is Gus the Theatre Cat by T.S. Eliot. Oh, yes. One of his collection in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. And a film was made of the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats

that was deemed to be very unsuccessful and people mocked the film. I went and saw it and I really enjoyed it. And in the film, Sir Ian McKellen performs Gus the Theatre Cat. And it is 10 minutes of bravura theatricality. I just recommend people, you don't need to enjoy the rest of the film, just go to see Ian McKellen being Gus the Theatre Cat. Oh, and it's got your friend Judy Dench in it as well, hasn't it?

I have to say, I've not seen it. Well, a lot of people haven't seen it. She, Judy Dench, indeed hasn't seen it. And I said to her you should go to see this film a you're amusing in it and b your friend ian mckellen is brilliant in it but she said she doesn't like going to see the films that she is oh i totally i totally she feels awkward looking at herself and also she says it's so frustrating because you think oh i could have done that differently.

I could have done that better. She prefers being on stage where she knows, well, there will be another night. I can perhaps do it better tomorrow. Whereas on film, it's there. Speaking of being on stage, because I was, my last stage partner was indeed Dame Judi Dench. I was at the Gielgud Theatre this summer with the great Dame Judi Dench. I may be back with her in the theatre again. But having warmed up with Judi Dench, I'm now sharing the

stage with none other than Susie Dent. I know, I can't wait for this. When is this? It's quite soon, isn't it? End of September we're starting again. End of September. And we're taking Something Right with Purple back on stage. So we will be recording a podcast. Each show will be very different. There will be extra bits, so not just the podcast. And we of turned to it and many other podcasts, I'm sure, as well, just for some escape, really, and some calm. We're not exaggerating, I have to say. Every time we've been very moved in the wings chatting to each other. And then we meet people either in the interval or after the show or before the show.

So it's a chance to say hello to purple people in person. And we're doing a whole series in London at the Fortune Theatre, which is a beautiful little theatre in the heart of Covent Garden, just opposite the Theatre Royal Covent Garden. And I will find it very difficult to resist telling some of my theatre stories there. And when we're in Oxford at the Oxford Playhouse on the 9th of October, I will find it impossible not to tell some of my stories about the great Sir John Gielgud and Ronnie Barker and a whole host of other people that I first met

at the Oxford Playhouse. I was thinking of Ronnie Barker just last night because I was at a recording of the comedy countdown version, 8 out of 10 cats was countdown, eating some really delicious food that was made by a canteen, a mobile canteen called Four Candles, which, of course, comes from a very, very famous Too Ronnie sketch. And it just made me laugh. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait to hear those stories.

Good. Well, if people want tickets, they can just go to somethingrhymeswithpurple, all that, all one word,.com. Somethingrhymeswithpurple.com, and you can get tickets for those shows and we'll see you there. Should we take a quick break?

Let's take a break and then we'll get back to correspondence. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers internet. Visit rogers.com for details.

We got you, Rogers. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx.

Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Who's been in touch this week, Susie? Well, our first email, and I have to say it's one of many for which, yeah, we are really, again, very appreciative. And we do read all of them, even if we can't quite get to all of them on the podcast. But this is from Daniel Sturman. Dear Susie and Giles, a recent US Supreme Court opinion used the term mayor's nest to refer to something undesirably tangled or complicated. A legal podcast that I listened to was fascinated by that phrase and took a side journey to discuss its origins.

Since I know that one of the hosts of that podcast listens to your podcast, I think she would be tickled pink to hear from an expert in the field. What is the history of the term mayor's nest, and how has it changed over the years? Thanks for a wonderful podcast. Daniel Sturman, Jerusalem, Israel. Thank you, Daniel. Mare's nest.

I know the phrase and I know I think what it means. Something very complicated, full of fraught with complexity, but I've no idea what the origin is. Yes. So that's how we tend to use it these days for a confused mess or a muddle or a misconception. But actually, it started off meaning something very, very different. Because if you had spied a mare's nest in the 16th century, you imagined that you'd discovered something really wonderful, but in fact, it didn't exist.

So it was a kind of an illusion, but especially one that you boasted about and then looked very foolish because of it. So obviously, horses can't produce nests. And there was an earlier version to horse nest, meaning suppose, we associate with things that are just sort of full of miscellaneous bits and bobs. We came to confuse it with a muddle or associate it with a muddle or a confused mess. Lucy Dakin has been in touch. Dear Susie and Giles, I have recently discovered your podcast and have rapidly become somewhat addicted. A Brit who lives in Brisbane, Australia, I listen mostly whilst walking our dog. I have a question about the word cute. My 12-year-old daughter uses this word very frequently, mostly when talking about our dog, and I wondered about the origin. I noticed the word used in the novel Mill on the Floss

written as cute with an apostrophe. I wondered if it was related to the word acute. Best wishes, Lucy Dakin. How interesting. Well, the answer is yes, it is. She's absolutely right. And it's not really, this is not a couple that you would put together. And it's a sort of process that's called a thesis, A-P-H-E-S-I-S, which is the kind of gradual unintentional loss of a short vowel at the beginning of a word. So if you think of squire for esquire, for example, that's an example of a thesis. And so it is with cute and acute. But the first meaning of cute was acute, to be clever, to be keen-witted and sharp, to have a cute mind, if you like.

That was in the 18th century. And then a century later, particularly in schoolboy slang, it was used of things that were attractive or pretty or charming, because of course, quick-wittedness is a positive attribute. And you can see the same journey, sorry to use that word, with cunning as well, because cunning obviously has the meaning of being skillful and crafty, sometimes a bit sly with it. But because all of these were seen as being quite clever and positive, in US slang, to be cunning was to be quaintly interesting or to be pretty and attractive, to be quite cute. And you find it also morphed into canny as well. That's all from the same root. So yeah, language often does this. But as I say, if you think about the sort of traditional meaning of acute, you would never put it together with acute, I think, but that is definitely its

derivation. And that word again, a thesis, for when there's a missing bit of thesis. Yes, it's when a short unaccented vowel sort of drops off the beginning of a word. Ah, so it wouldn't be the same as, for example, until, people sometimes say till, meaning until. Oh, yeah. Until we meet again, until we meet again. Yes, that's more of an abbreviation, really. Fine. Yes, it's more to do with very short vowels. Very good. And I learned something interesting the other day. I've been misspelling violin cello all my life. I knew that cello, I thought the cello was short for violin cello. It turns out it's short for violon cello.

So it's V-I-O-L-O-N-C-H-C-E-L-L-O. But that, again, is an abbreviation, not an aphasis. No, that's a diminutive, isn't it? A violone. The little violone. Violoncello. Yes. Violoncello.

I wish I could speak Italian. I wish you. You make it sound as if it's going to be a lovely pasta dish we're going to have tonight. It does, doesn't it? Can we meet together? Let's have a little violoncello. Violoncello. or maybe a wine, a lovely, oh, slightly green wine on a sun-kissed hill in Lombardy.

Do not miss that. That's the conversation for another day. You missed the whole etiquette. I miss the idea of, but I don't miss the reality of it. And I don't mind never falling asleep in front of the television. If people I'm with you on that one. If people have got letters they want to send, queries they'd like answered, the address is simply purple at somethingelse.com. So do please be in touch with us. Susie, do we know how many words there are in the world? You come up with a trio, three new words every week.

Is it a bottomless pit? How many words in the English language are there overall, do you think? It's an impossible question, really, because I think we've talked about this before, because how do you sort of describe a word? So if you took, for example, run, do you include runs, ran, running? So it is a bottomless pit from that point of view. But if you look at sort of dictionaries you will find usually about half a million head words if you like so that's kind of

where but you know a lot of those would be obsolete and it says that the second edition of the 20 volume oed contains full entries for just over 171,000. But honestly, there are far more than that. I mean, you know, you might have 1 million distinct words if you do count all of those inflections and things. Good. A million words of which you seem to know every single one. None. I know some of them. I don't know all of them. You know a million words. I absolutely don't. I honestly learn a different word every single day well you're going to teach us three words now and let's see if we can remember them in a week's time okay what are the three words i think they're just sort of quite i don't know if they're quite

useful but they're just quite quaint so the first one is um particularly in hot weather if you find yourself changing your shirt quite often and just sort of you want to just say look you know what i've just run out of shirts you can call yourself lack linen i'm a bit lack linen shakespeare used it um wanting shirt lack linen i just quite like that one it's just a bit silly also you will have heard of a rake hell so rake hell is somebody who's so dissolute that they would literally sort of rake the floor of hell for whatever they could get. And I just discovered that there's an adjective for someone who is a bit wild, hence the town red, which is rake-helly. I just like the idea of being rake-helly. They're pretty dissolute, are they? Very dissolute.

Very dissolute. Very dissolute indeed. In excess of the violoncello, and end up Ray Kelly. Ray Kelly. The third one is sluggardise. So a sluggard is somebody who is lazy. Lazy. Exactly. But to sluggardise is rarer and that's a verb meaning to make lazy. So I just like the idea of saying, you know, too much scrolling through Instagram can sluggardise you no end. Because it does. It just induces that kind of torpid, isn't it?

Where you just literally can't be bothered to do anything. So I quite like that word. I don't want to get into a sluggardising state. No. But no. That's why I've got to avoid the life of a rake hell. A rake hell. Because you lose your shirt that way.

Yes. And you end up black linen. Very good. I love sluggardise. Well, we've been talking about cats, and I've already recommended one poem by T.S. Eliot, Gus the Theatre Cat. Too long to read here, but I have got another one.

My favourite cat poem, I think this is. It's a lovely poem by Eleanor Fargen, who lived, oh, from the 1880s to the 1960s and wrote some wonderful children's stories and some beautiful poetry, of which this is perhaps my favourite. It's called Cats Sleep Anywhere. Cats sleep anywhere.

Any table, any chair. Top of piano, window ledge. In the middle, on the edge open drawer empty shoe anybody's lap will do fitted in a cardboard box in the cupboard with your frocks anywhere they don't care cats sleep anywhere so they do including on my head they do don't they they're marvelous we love nala we love bow we do we just love and we we love the purple people so much that for the summer we've got this amazing 20 off offer on our merchandise all the stock in our online store you just go to the link in the episode description and we've got t-shirts mugs totes available while stocks last

absolutely and thank you for listening to the show and if you do love it please keep following us please recommend us to your friends and if you would like to follow us on our new social media channels you can find us on at something rhymes on twitter and facebook or at something rhymes with on instagram and do consider joining the purple plus club if you would like for some bonus episodes on words and language thank you for listening something rhymes with purple this is something else production produced by lawrence bassett and harriet wells with additional production from chris skinner jen mystery jay beal josh and oh the sluggardizer himself oh my goodness it's gully