Something Rhymes with Purple - Firkytoodle

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

All the world’s a stage but how much of our language originates from the theatre? 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. Make your nights unforgettable

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, my name is Giles Branruth, and I'm sitting in the kitchen in Oxford of my friend... Susie Dent.

And we are a pair of people who love words and language. We adore words and language. And I first met Susie, oh, I don't know, 20, 25 years ago on Countdown. And we've been friends ever since. And she, of course, knows more about words, I think, than anybody in the world. And that's true. And we meet. With a mouthful of coffee, sorry.

We meet once a week, sometimes in our kitchen, sometimes in London. Sometimes we're going to go on location. Can we go to your house sometimes? I'd love you to come to my house. Or I thought sometimes we could go to places associated with people who are wordsmiths, like I love. Oh, this shows you we're coming from Susie Dent's kitchen because just something has flopped through the door.

I hope the noise is less boxed in the world. The noise is less boxed in the world. Anyway, here we are. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. It's our weekly chunter about words and language. I learn a lot from Susie about language and about life, it must be said. Today, we thought we'd talk about theatre because both of us have been on a theatre tour

and both of us are going on a theatre tour again either later in the year or next year. When are you next going? I'm just doing a few more in the autumn. So same show, just a few extra places. And what's it called? It's called The Secret Life of Words. Very good.

Have you been to the Roses at Tewksbury yet? No. Fascinating theatre. There was a hole in the stage when I went there, literally a hole in the stage with a white line around it and the man in the wings said, oh, don't miss the hole in the stage. I said, what's the point?

He said, oh, we're waiting for the grant to mend it. There was a hole in the stage. It was the theatre where Eric Morecambe died. Yeah, I died too, but in a different way. He didn't recover from his. In fact, it went very well. So I'm doing some more. It's interesting that, isn't it?

Because if you think about the language of comedians as well, very often it's quite apocalyptic and dark. So I died, you know, I blew the roof off, if they've done incredibly well. Yes, I died. In fact... Corpsed. Yeah, corpsed.

Well, we can talk about the language of theatre. We can. My show is called Break a Leg. Tell us where that came from. Well, now this is interesting. Break a leg, it's an expression meaning good luck in the theatre. Yeah. Nobody is quite sure where it comes from.

I think the explanation that seems to me to be most credible is this. In a theatre, if you picture the stage, either side of the stage there are black curtains and you're hidden when you're behind the black curtains. If you're in the wings, we'll come on to why they're called wings in a moment, but when you're in the wings, you're behind black curtains, and you're hidden when you're behind the black curtains. If you're in the wings, we'll come on to why they're called wings in a moment, but when you're in the wings, you're behind black curtains. They are known as legs.

They always have been. L-E-G-S. I suppose they're like legs. They hang down from the roof of the theatre. Yeah. And in the olden days, understudies were not paid unless they actually appeared in the show.

They got no money. And so they wanted, obviously, to appear because then they'd get paid. And on the nights when they did break a leg, they broke through the edge of the theatre. They passed those black curtains. They broke through the leg. That was a good event for them. They'd broken a leg. Well done. Good luck.

You've made some money. I'll just be the party pooper just for a second. I always am. But the only problem I have with that is that there are other idioms in other languages that express the same thing. And I don't know whether those curtains, for example, in a German theatre would be called Beine, B-E-I-N-E, But there is an expression in German, Hals und Beinbruch, meaning may you break your neck and your leg. Ah. And that came before we think break a leg. So you think it's a kind of inverse joke, meaning break a leg, meaning don't break a leg. Good luck.

Yeah, well, it's strange. I don't think we actually know where Hals und Beinbruch originated either. It's a very strange thing. But then the theatre is full of strange situations. And you mentioned that Understudy is not being paid. Have you heard the expression, the ghost walks? The ghost walks tonight? Yes, I have. century theatre company who hadn't been paid for over a month um and the player of hamlet because it was a production of hamlet refused to come on stage until all the salaries were paid and then the ghost would walk yeah i like that years ago when i played hamlet when i was very young and i wasn't very good it was not a success i admit it i was fascinated by the relationship between hamlet and ophelia how intimate were they because? Because sometimes in the Shakespeare text, it's opaque. There's clearly something been going on, but it's not stated exactly what's been going on. And I went to an older actor in the company who was then playing the part of Polonius,

but he'd played Hamlet himself many years before. And I said to this old actor, what do you think is going on? What is the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia? How intimate are they? How close are they? Are they lovers? And does Hamlet sleep with Ophelia? How intimate are they? How close are they? Are they lovers? Does Hamlet sleep with Ophelia? And the old actor replied, well, I don't know about the West End, laddie, but we always did on tour. Okay, moving swiftly on,

shall I give you some of the old terms of theatre? Because they're quite lovely. Well, today they know it's the factory quite often, don't they, I think. I think that's one of the terms that they would use. But throughout the century, it's just been known as the blood tub because of the violent melodramas that they used to have. Melodrama was hugely popular. It isn't now.

Farce continues to be popular. But melodrama in the Victorian theatre, it was the mainstay. In Paris, the main theatre street was called the Boulevard des Crimes, meaning the boulevard of crime, because there were these lurid melodramas. Now we get that on television and in the movies. Yeah, we do. Endless detective mysteries, movie. But you don't get it so much in the theatre. Theatre is more full of straight drama or musicals or light entertainment.

You don't get melodrama in theatre. But in Victorian times, melodrama was massive. Yeah. So it was called the bath, the blood bath. The blood tub. The blood tub. I'm going down to the blood tub. The bug house, because that was the theatrical equivalent of the flea pit.

The bug house? The bug house. This is because unclean people went to the theatre? Yeah, I think it was just, you know, house because that was the theatrical equivalent of the flea pit the bug house the bug house this is because unclean people went to the theater yeah i think it was just you know sometimes they would just be slightly down at heel so it was a free pit the venues rather than the people but maybe both um speaking of which we need to talk about the peanut gallery uh said to be the rowdiest section of the house where bad actors would i think we've talked a little bit about this, but would be pelted with peanuts,

which was a cheap snack available. There it goes, the peanut gallery. And the gods, of course, closest to the heavens. But anyway, going back to the theatres, the gaff, they were called, the honky-tonk, where the cheap musicals would be, and the grindhouse, that was for burlesque. Oh, because the girls were doing the,

they were grinding away, were they? I think possibly. In my book, which I'm looking at now where I did, I read a book about the jargon of particular tribes of people, including actors. I've just spotted the word fluffer. Oh, so it fluffs their lines? Not quite. Oh, what is a fluffer? A fluffer, a fluffer in the porn industry is, well, yes.

So a fluffer is a person employed to prepare or warm up an audience. Absolutely right. But in the porn industry, it's somebody who prepares an actor in a slightly different way. Oh, fluffs them up. Well, yes, so to speak. Anyway, I don't know. No, no, that's fascinating. I don't know why that.

No, but since you mentioned the fluffer years ago, years and years ago, I mean, 40, 50 years ago, I was sent to, when I was a journalist, young journalist, I was sent to write a report about the porn industry making movies. And I spent a day on the film set. And they were very cheaply made in those days. And one actress had to play several of the characters. And because in those days, people didn't shave their pubic hair, she was supplied with merkins. Yes, merkins. A merkin is a pubic wig, isn't it? It is. Spelled? M-E-R-K-I-N. Merkin. And she had different, she had a blonde merkin, a brunette merkin, a very dark merkin, and a ginger merkin for the comedy scenes. Isn't that extraordinary?

Yes. Yeah. And the makeup artist was the sort of fluffer, I suppose, who prepared... Who fluffed the merkin. Who fluffed the merkin. Why are we talking about this? Anyway.

You brought it up. It's in your book. I did. No, it's in my book in the kind of clean sense. Although it's not... Yeah, let's move on. Let's talk about some of the other jargon that's used in the theatre, shall we? And then I'd love to give you

my favourite theatrical origin of all time. T'pong. Do you know what t'pong is in the theatre? It's to give maximum projection to your lines. Oh, t'pong. This is opposed to pinging, which is speaking very softly. T'ping.

T'ping and pong. Will you pong that line? No, will you ping that? It's a very... I've never heard, I mean, I have to say, I've worked in the theatre off and on for 50 years and I've worked with some of the great directors. I've never heard these expressions used. Will you pong? Will you ping? But I get it. Pong and ping. Gagging is adding lines that aren't in the original text. So ad libing, in other words. I can believe that. Adlib from the Latin for pleasure, ad libitum.

Oh, ad libitum means for pleasure, not for free. For pleasure. So they're winging it, winging it also from the theatre because it would refer to people who would supply lines from the wings or people who were just brought on at such short notice, they were literally learning their lines in the wings. They were winging it.

There was a famous actor called John Junius Booth booth who was the father of john wilkes booth the man who assassinated president lincoln and john junius booth was a notorious drinker and night after night he was heard calling into the wings what's the line what's the line occasionally he could be heard calling into the wings what's the the play? What's the play? That's very Boris-like, isn't it? Did you read Jeremy Vine's account of Boris Johnson at various after-dinner speaking events where he would literally stumble in and say,

where are we? What's the event? He knew perfectly well. Well, then he would get on stage, say nothing about the actual occasion, but to blunder through this kind of tour de force of anecdotes, etc. Tell a joke for which he'd forgotten the punchline, etc, etc. And Jeremy just said, this is amazing. Having been so worried, he was mightily impressed by Boris's performance.

Ten years later, also, he's at another event. Exactly the same thing happens. Boris stumbles in, says, what's the event? Gets up on stage, absolute verbatim, the same speech as before, absolute verbatim, forgetting of the punchline. He knew exactly what he was doing. Well, that's quite reassuring, isn't it? Is it? Oh, yes, I think it is. It means that he's a star. I saw Ken Dodd 50 years apart.

He's a star without substance. Anyway, let's not get onto political views. No, let's not. You're giving me your favourite theatre expressions. Oh, my favourite origin of all time. Because it's so literal. So the thing about etymology is you very, very rarely get to pinpoint the exact moment that a phrase or a word was born. So if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, you'll find the very first record that we

can find to date. But it's very rare, particularly these days with slang and the internet, et cetera, it's very rare to get the exact moment. But we know with Stealing Someone's Thunder, we know where it comes from. And you have to go back to 1704 and London's Drury Lane Theatre and the actor-playwright called,

sorry, he was a playwright and a manager called John Dennis. And- What year is this? This is 1704, I think. Oh, wonderful. And he produced a play which, by all accounts, was rather turgid. But it had one thing going for it, which was a thunder-making machine. It was a machine that replicated the sound of thunder.

I think it was one of those sort of metal sheets that was then hit. No. Was it not? You know this. I do know this, and there is one i only reason i know this is there is one still on display at the theater royal in bristol okay it's a thunder machine and essentially what it is is it is metal is involved yeah there are like imagine a tube of metal cut in half. So it's like a scoop of metal, like a funnel of metal, and they roll like cannonballs down it. Amazing. And it's the rolling of the thunder that makes that thunder sound. Excellent. I don't know if his was the first, but it was very impressive in terms of

the sound that reverberated from the stage. Despite this, his play closed after a really short run. He was, according to accounts by contemporaries he was a very nice man he went along to the next play the next production that succeeded his which was Macbeth we can get on to Macbeth the Scottish play and he was sitting there quite happily until from the stage came the sound of his thunder making machine and two people of the time wrote records what he did at this moment which was he stood up and he shouted damn them they will not let my play run but they steal my thunder isn't that amazing very literal beginning i love that you mentioned macbeth why is it known they call it the scottish play and it's supposed to be bad luck to mention the play Macbeth by title

I'm assuming there is some tragedy associated with a production of Macbeth I think you will know this better than me I think there was one particular production where it seemed to be beset by troubles

but yeah more than that actually I don't know perhaps it's because of the witches the three witches oh that the play is cursed in some way because of three witches yeah but it's very much a rule you can if you're in the play say the name macbeth what about i say i always every night on my tour i tell the story of stealing someone's thunder and i mentioned the word macbeth is this the name mac Macbeth? Is this not good? Is this why life doesn't always go my way? It could be that you're bringing bad luck upon yourself. Okay. I'm not going to do that again. Oh, should we have a break?

Oh, now this is interesting. The interval you might think has been going on for years. The interval, because we're going to have an interval now, was introduced only in Victorian times. I think the father of the Interval was a man called Sir Augustus Harris, who ran Drury Lane Theatre. He was known as Old Drury Alanus. He put on famous pantomimes at Drury Lane Theatre, starring people like

Dan Lino and Murray Lloyd. Anyway, there's in fact a marvellous bust. If you ever go to Drury Lane, that huge theatre in Covent Garden, people don't see this bust. They go into the theatre and there's a wonderful statue of Sir Noel Coward. But outside the theatre, on the corner, there's a bust of this theatre manager, Sir Augustus Harris. He invented the interval.

Until then, if people wanted to leave during a performance, they just got up and left. And he came up with the idea, shows were so long, of having an interval. And then they used to sell oranges for people to eat during the interval. In fact, Tommy Trinder, a great comedian, once said to me, I was talking about pantomime. I said, what do you remember of pantomime in the early days? He said, all I can remember of pantomime in the early days, girls, is the smell of oranges and wee-wee. But then they introduced things like ice creams when ice creams came along and then

alcohol and all of that began. So he invented the interval. We're going to have an interval now. And then after the interval, back to the theater. I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And this is Crunchyroll presents The Anime Effect. We are a new show breaking down the anime news, views, and shows you care about each and every week. I can't think of a better studio to bring something like this to life. Yeah, I agree. We're covering all the classics.

I don't know a lot about Godzilla, which I do, but I'm trying to pretend that I don't. Hold it in. And our current faves. Luffy must have his do. Tune in every week for the latest anime updates and possibly a few debates. I remember, what was that? Say what you're going to say and I'll circle back. You can listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. 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 Have we made a great mistake mentioning the word Macbeth? Well, we're not in the theatre We're not in the theatre.

We're not in the theatre. I think we're okay. Yes. Because if you're in the theatre, you know, you have to come out of your dressing room. Yes. Turn revolve three times, then go back in again. But you have to spit over your left shoulder as well.

Spit over your left shoulder, or maybe throw some salt over your left shoulder. Oh, interesting. I always steal sachets of salt from Starbucks for this very purpose, in case I want to tell one of my favourite Macbeth stories. Go on. What's the origin of the expression, though, Susie Dent? Well, nobody's quite sure, but some believe that it's because Shakespeare or his compositors or revisers are sort of used the spells of real witches in the text. And because of this, it angered the witches.

You mean Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble, these were real spells? I don't know if it was these ones or not, to honest i'm not quite sure i need to ask my friend charlotte who's a shakespearean expert but it purportedly angered the witches and caused them to curse the play so the play has been cursed yeah plus there have been numerous productions that were things have gone wrong yeah it's one of the shortest plays people often think there's a an act missing with it so things have been going wrong with macbeth over the years. For a long time. Interesting. Have you ever appeared in a play yourself?

Not a play. I've been in a couple of sitcoms, but not a play. Oh, sitcoms. As yourself. Apart from as a tree at school and, you know, the usual kind of stuff. You were a tree at school. I was a tree. And you got the school.

I was a tree and a librarian. What can I say? The school magazine wrote. Her performance was very wooden as the tree, did they? No, they resisted that. No, they should have done. And what, a librarian? No, no, I was a librarian at school when I really wanted to be, you know,

head of sport or something like that. But I was the chief librarian. You were actually the chief librarian? That's what you did at school? Of course you did. I was. And would you like me to just sit in the front row of the class? I sat in the middle of the front row with my hand permanently up.

No, I didn't. I just wish I'd been a bit naughtier. I'm making up for it now. Oh, God. Don't go there. Let's not go there. We need to talk about Polari as well, very briefly. Polari.

Polari. This is a theatrical language, isn't it? I knew Kenneth Williams quite well. You weren't doing Countdown. I didn't know anything about Julian and Sandy and Round the Horn. I didn't know anything about Julian and Sandy and Round the Horn. Kenneth Williams was a brilliant actor, entertainer, raconteur, writer, and a lovely human being.

He was in radio shows, firstly with Hancock's Half Hour, with Tony Hancock and Sid James. Tony Hancock didn't like him very much because Kenneth had a wonderful voice and got a lot of laughs. And then he did... Can you do a Kenneth Williams voice? No, no, no no i i morph very quickly into larry grace no no into frankie no this is not do you not he was in this program called beyond our ken later called also called round the horn starring kenneth horn yes and there was a sketch

in it with kenneth williams and hugh paddock julian and Hugh Paddock. Julian and Sandy. Julian and Sandy. And the Julian and Sandy... Spoke Polari. So Julian Slade and Sandy Wilson, they were two gay men, but at a time when being gay was against the law still. Yes, so they needed a tribal code or sort of banter, and Polari was it. And so the in-joke was, this was Julian. Hello, my name's Julian.

This is my friend Sandy. And so it was a camp gay in-joke. And they spoke this language, Polari, which you can now tell us more about. I can tell you a little bit about it. It was called Polari originally. And it goes back to Polari in Italian, meaning to talk. And it was originally a trader's lingo. parlare in Italian meaning to talk. And it was originally a trader's lingo. It's not really a language, but a lingo that was picked up or bought up by sailors as a kind of working pigeon in their, you know, on their trips abroad. But it's interesting because they then found when sailors

came back, quite often they would find work in fairs, circuses and theatres. So there is a reason why in theatres we talk about rigging a set or striking a set as a kind of nautical terms. But anyway, then it found a new home, this language in the gay community, as you say, because it was, you know, so marginalised that they really needed that kind of tribal language. And it was, it's just a giant game of wordplay, really. So there was zhuzhing the rear, fixing your hair or shaving the lallies. Your lallies were your legs. Now, zhuzh is probably the best legacy that we have.

From Polari. From Polari. Zhuzh. Zhuzh. It's onomatopoeic, sort of replicates maybe the sound of ruffling your fingers over velvet. And you can say, well, I like your zhuzh, meaning I like your outfit, I like the way you've dressed up, or you're all zhuzhed up. Zhuzhed up. No one knows how to spell it.

I think Oxford Dictionary gives three different spellings. But it's wonderful. And of course, it's not used anymore. In fact, I think it was seen as being a bit non-PC. Curiously, that's the odd thing now. A lot of Kenneth Williams material you couldn't do because somehow it's considered so. But in fact, most of my gay friends

love Julian and Sandy, loved everything that Kenneth did. I never heard it, I have to say, I need to listen in. Oh, can I say, they stand the test of time. Okay. Beyond our Ken, absolutely brilliant. Just around the horn, brilliant. Kenneth Williams was

a real actor and it was very frustrating to him. He felt, he told me that towards the end of his life, he felt he'd painted himself into a corner with funny voices and telling stories. His last entry in his diary says, oh, what's the point? And he may well, we don't know because the verdict was inconclusive of the coroner's report, he may well have taken his own life.

That's sad. And I rather suspect he did because he told me that he kept a stash of poison in the cupboard, as his father had done. He told me when we were writing his autobiography, or rather he was writing it and reading it to me, when he got to his father's death, he told me, I don't know if it's in the book,

he told me that his father had taken his own life. That was the sad end of a very funny man. And if you want to celebrate Polari, listen to Julian and Sandy on Round the Horn. Fantastic. Shall we have some letters from our listeners? Okay. And people are very, very kind.

Well, not very kind, because not everything they say is necessarily as nice as it should be. Here's somebody saying, Giles, for fuck's sake, shut up. We're tuning in to hear the woman, not you. I think you've just made that up. I have made that up.

I'm just quoting my wife. That was the note she gave me this morning before we left. Here, let me pass you a couple of letters. See whether there's one here that you'd like to answer. Gosh, we get lots of them. Oh, should I read you one from Canada? Okay. Because this is an international podcast.

Hello, world. Hello from Canada, says David Smith. I enjoy your podcast a great deal, especially the recent egg corn episode. What we try and do, by the way, this is me speaking, is pick a different theme every week, but we will come back to certain themes that are popular. We've only scratched the surface with the theatre,

so we must come back to that one day. It brought to mind a possible egg corn encounter my wife and I had several years ago. Perhaps you can help us decipher it. We were on a Mediterranean cruise and one day, while sitting near a couple in a public area of the ship, one of them sneezed and the other responded with a hearty

salty fish. At least that's what we thought we heard. We were wondering if you had any knowledge of the use of this phrase in response to a sneeze. We believe that the couple may have been Eastern European, judging from their accent. I've often wondered if salty may have been from the French santé,

for health, but I have no clue as to what the fish might be. Whatever it was, since that day, every sneeze in our household is followed by a hearty salty fish. Isn't that interesting? Santé is certainly what the French say. They say à tes souhaits, actually.

If you sneeze, they say à tes souhaits, meaning to your wishes. May your wishes come true. À tes souhaits. À tes souhaits. May your wishes come true. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I don't know about the fish part. It sounds like a Russian sauté fish.

Sauté fish. The Germans say gesundheit, don't they? They say health, yes. Does that mean good health? Yes, sauté in French is cheers. Ah, so they don't say sauté. No, they say à tes souhaits. So if you sneeze in France, theyuté in French is cheers. Ah, so they don't say sauté. No, they say à tes souhaits.

So if you sneeze in France, they say à tes souhaits. Yeah. And if you sneeze in German, they say gesundheit. Yeah. In Dutch, if you sneeze three times, they say morgen mooi weer, which translates to good weather tomorrow. What, in Dutch? Actually, I don't know Dutch, you know German, but morgen mooi weer, I think.

Morgen mooi weer, which means? It means the weather is good tomorrow. It looks good tomorrow. The weather is good tomorrow. I got to say it twice because I'm rather fond of double Dutch. Right, my question is. So have we found the origin of salty fish for David Smith from Canada? Absolutely not.

We haven't, but we think you might be right that the salty could be like sante except no it isn't salty we've just met we've dismissed salty so you're thinking it could be a russian turn of phrase i genuinely don't know if people know send in the answer uh it's simply to um purple at something else.com have you got a letter what's the letter you do uh peter jones peter jones could be the actor could be dragon's den anyway whoever you are thank you um whilst watching channel 4 documentary moon launch live i heard the studio commentator of the day describe the crowds awaiting the launch as lollygagging i haven't heard this before

um i'd be interested to hear more um lolly gagging? Lolly gagging or lally gagging. It is US. Lally. We had lallys when we were talking about Polari. Your lallys were your legs. They were. A lolly is a lollipop. So what is lolly gagging?

I think lolly gagging is a variation on lally gagging, which was the original. It simply means to dawdle, to fool around. It can, I think, sort of be necking in the old sense of the word as well what the victorians wonderfully called furky toodling um give us that word again furky toodling is um a bit of hugging bit of kissing but not going too far too far you know groucho marx said uh whoever called it necking had a very poor sense of anatomy i like that as for its origin well the oxford mishitshmi says unknown uh because they haven't quite ascertained it yet but some people think it might go back to dialect lolly meaning

the tongue hence the lollies that we eat the lollipops goodness um i didn't know that the dialect word for your tongue is a lolly lolly and gag meaning to deceive or trick so maybe it was just due to sort of um you know clever talk clever speak why that then translated into dawdling and dallying i'm not sure maybe you just talk around the point well done i'm fascinated the lollipop that's i've learned something there the lollipop. That's, I've learned something there. The lollipop is to do with a sort of a show, pop, pop, what's the pop part? The pop part is maybe when you take it out of your mouth

when you're sucking, it goes pop. That's my guess anyway. How amazing. The tongue and the pop. That's my guess. Gives you a lollipop. That's my guess. Okay.

What are your three words of the week? These are new words, old words, fun words, words we haven't heard before, words we have heard before before but we don't really know the meaning of or the original okay so well this one you will have heard of uh you pratt thank you pratt pratt p-r-a-t yep um it was an old term for a single buttock believe it or not um and a prat fall in the theatre which is why i bring this is of course a comedy fall onto your buttocks how interesting yes so both buttocks is a pair of prats originally yeah a couple of prats couple of prats so as it were it's like saying it's like when you call someone a prat it's just rude because it means bottom yes that's the origin

of that expression but a prat fall is when you fall on your backside. Yes, it's what sort of clowns and, you know, farsighted. I love it. A pratfall. Oh, I think it's great. Have you got two more? Then I have something I really hope we are not. Somnificators.

What is a somnificator? It's what Amon Shea, he wrote a great book about reading OED, says is the human equivalent of a cup of herbal tea. It's somebody who induces sleep in someone else. But actually, the human equivalent of drinking a cup of herbal tea is rather charming. Somebody whose company is so soothing. Say the word again. Somnificator.

She was my perfect somnificator. It's not usually used in a particularly pleasant way, I think. Oh, somnificator means somebody who induces sleep. They say, boring, boring, boring. Yes. So the third one is something that I hope none of our listeners are going to do to us, which is to exsibilate. To exsibilate is to hiss a poor performer off the stage.

And it's linked to, in some ways, to exploding. Because the very first meaning of exploding in the roman theatre was to slow hand clap poor actors off the stage and the plode is linked to plod as in applaud it's from the latin plodere meaning to clap so to explode first meant to make such a loud noise with your hands that the performer would be booed off stage um and so the as an explosion that explode originates as it were loud detonation goes back to that horrible expulsion or the so if you're a bad actor so a slow hand clap is an explosion you're exploding them yes and uh how interesting yeah but exsibilate is when you're...

Yes. It's to give them the goose is another way of putting it. Oh, that's because the noise that geese make. The noise of an angry goose, yeah. Oh. It is time to wrap up. And one week we'll talk about rap words, but we've been talking a bit about theatre words.

I'd love to hear jazz rap. We haven't really begun to scratch the surfaceapp. We haven't really begun to scratch the surface here. We haven't talked about playing to the gallery or who the fat lady is and why she didn't sing. But anyway, that's for another time. So, no, we haven't got time for that. Look, if you enjoyed the podcast, do review us, rate us to help spread the word.

If you've got a question you'd like to answer, just get in touch. You can email us at purple at something something with R-O-G, else, dot com. And as you know, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Paul Smith with additional production from Lawrence Passett, Steve Ackerman, and... Gully.

Oh, no, no. Oh, Mrs. No, no. Oh, titter ye not.