Something Rhymes with Purple - Flenched

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

This week we’re having a rummage through the postbag and dedicating the whole episode to questions that you, the marvellous Purple People, send in each out.  We help people find out where all the different meanings of ‘mandarin’ came from, ponder whether there’s a word for the twilight of the morning, and we get to the bottom of a rather tricksy wordy riddle.   Also up for discussion are cauliflowers, rumours, ducks, and meadows.  If you have a question that you’d like us to look into then please email [e-mail]  A Somethin’ Else production.  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to sign up to Apple Subs please follow this link https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823 and make sure that you are running the most up-to-date IOS on your computer/device otherwise it won’t work.  If you would like to see Gyles and Susie LIVE and in person on our Something Rhymes With Purple UK Tour then please go to https://www.tiltedco.com/somethingrhymeswithpurple for tickets and more information. Susie’s Trio: Dumbledore – an old name for a bumble bee Melissa – honey bee Dysphemism – the opposite of a euphemism; an insult or unpleasant phrase deliberately used in place of a nicer one Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. Because something does rhyme with purple and this is a podcast all about words and language. I'm Susie Dent and with me across the airwaves is the brilliant Giles Brandreth. Hi Giles. Good to be with you again. Have you had a good week? I've had, yes, I've had a reasonable week.

I've been slightly puzzled by the weather and I've been using a word very often that I love. I'm sure I've mentioned it to you before. It's from Scots and Scots has this most amazing lexicon for all sorts of weather. But it's the adjective flenched. And flenched describes weather that looks as if it's going to improve, but actually never does. And so I've been contemplating weather words. It's been absolutely freezing where I am as well.

And it just never quite warms up. How about you? I've had a good week, a happy week, a very busy week, but also a week tinged with sadness because two good friends of mine have died this week in their 90s, having lived long and very full lives. The brilliant lyricist Leslie Brickus, a genius of a man who wrote all sorts of amazing shows, including the movie Dr. Dolittle. I talk with the animals. I walk with the animals. That's him. He also wrote the lyrics for Goldfinger. He was a genius and a really delightful human being. And he sadly died. And then another

remarkable man from the world of words passed away. And that was somebody called Morris Drake, Mo Drake. Have you heard of him? I haven't. No. Well, you will have heard, though, of one of the phrases that he introduced. It's often cited as the best-known, best-loved advertising slogan ever. Oh, yeah? Beans means heights. He was an ad man. He came up with all sorts of amazing telling phrases. I think, murry mints, murry mints, too good to hurry mints.

I think that was one of his as well. He was just one of those people who had an ability with words and language. And I think ad people are sometimes neglected. Do you know what we should do as a nation, as a world? We all celebrate Halloween now, the evening before All Hallows' Day, which is fine. But I think we should be celebrating All Hallows' Day itself, All Saints' Day, the 1st of November, because that's the day when we should remember good people who've gone before. That's a lovely idea.

We have lots of correspondence. This is going to be one of those episodes we're going to devote to the purple people who have been in touch with us. People do communicate. They simply send us emails. Occasionally, they try to text us or they Twitter us. I don't think they ever send us a letter by post that they could give it a go. Well, you never know.

I get quite a lot of letters from older viewers particularly of countdown so um i don't know i have to ask our producers yeah and actually people can come and meet us if you'd like to meet us because we're doing some live podcasts later in the year and in the spring we're in going to be in the uk inevitably we're going to be in bath in birmingham in new Newcastle and in London. And if you just simply go, the production company is called Tilted, T-I-L-T-E-D. So put into your sort of search engine Tilted and then something rhymes with purple and all the details should come up and you can come and meet us. Say hello and ask your questions in person. But people have been writing to us with questions. Who's been writing what and where do they come from?

Yeah, we've had the most fantastic ones that have had me, I have to say, scurrying all across the dictionary, which is, of course, my favourite pastime. I'm going to start with one from Annabel Nelson, who is in Melbourne, Australia. And she says, we've recently reopened after having the dubious honour of becoming the city with the most lockdown days in the world. I enjoy heading out into the park early in the morning in the dark. As I walk it becomes lighter and I love seeing the sun rise. I wondered as it became lighter this morning what is the name for the light before the sun comes up? In the evening we have twilight. Do you use the same word? Your podcast is one of the pleasures of my lockdown life. Thank you. Well, thank you, Annabelle. I'm going to start with twilight

itself because actually it is usually used to describe dusk. Devonians would say dimpsy, which is such a beautiful word. And twilight itself is actually a medieval combination of twi meaning two and light. And what significance two here isn't exactly clear, but perhaps and probably there's the idea of a half light that kind of hovers between two states, between day and night, if you like. There is also, if you look in the dictionary, twitter light, which means the same thing, which is lovely. And when I looked that up, it goes back to 1608, but it says it's a variation on twatterlight, which is not nearly so nice. But that's twilight. And then there are kind of words for dawn, I suppose, in English. I mean, we would normally say the dawn, wouldn't we? That sort of beginning

of the day. But I don't think there is a word for that exact state where it is, as I say, hovering and when things are just a little bit unclear before the light properly arrives. I do love words like Obad, though, and Obad, which is A-U-B-A-D-E, a song sung at dawn. So it's a dawn serenade, if you like. Did you get hooked on the Twilight Saga series of films, Susie? Oh, the vampire ones? I didn't, actually. Did you?

I can't imagine you did. Well, I'm a little bit into vampires because I've always been fascinated by Bram Stoker, the Victorian writer and theatre manager who created Dracula. And also, when he was a little boy, Robert Pattinson, who stars in the Twilight Saga films, lived locally and was in this local children's theatre group. So I knew him as a little boy. So I became intrigued to see what he was doing.

And in the film star, Kristen Stewart, whose film, I've just seen a film in which she appears this week called Spencer, which is about Diana, Princess of Wales, which is a pretty remarkable film, a remarkable performance. Have you seen it? I have seen it. It's supposed to be absolutely amazing. Well, it is certainly, it's beautifully made.

And as long as you don't think, it's not like The Crown. It's about Diana, Princess of Wales. But it says right at the beginning, this is a fable based on a true tragedy. And it's actually done rather like a Grimm's fairy tale. It's actually made by the makers of the film are German. And it's kind of big sort of really fairy tale feel to it. And they're kind of the ghost of Anne Boleyn appears. And it's a little bit weird, but it's certainly wonderful. Her performance is wonderful. But anyway, the Twilight Saga

films that if you like that sort of thing, you really like that sort of thing. And there isn't quite a word for Twilight beyond the moment before dawn. Rebecca Stockbridge has been in touch. I'm interested to know why the word Mandarin is applied to diplomats and civil servants. Only recently, thanks to an episode of the quiz show Only Connect, did I learn that other mandarins, such as ducks and citrus food, are named after the officials, not the other way around. Where did this come from? Certainly, we civil servants, oh clearly Rebecca is a civil servant, don't use it ourselves. And why does it seem to mainly be used in less than complimentary newspaper headlines?

Or perhaps that's just me being overworked and oversensitive. Very many thanks, Rebecca. Well, I assume Mandarin comes from Mandarin Chinese, but maybe I'm wrong. And the Mandarin class in China, the people who spoke Mandarin, but tell me more. Well, it's quite a word, isn't it, that can claim such different meanings as a language, a fruit and a civil servant. But Mandarin can, and in fact, they do all go back to the same thing. So yes, Mandarin was an official in a senior grade of the former Imperial Chinese Civil Service. came into English from Portuguese. So we're talking late 16th century. And it goes back to a term in Sanskrit, so different language again, meaning counsellor or minister. So that's fairly self-explanatory. And the use of Mandarin for a leading civil servant in Britain, as in Whitehall mandarins, goes back to the same idea. And I think the sort of slightly derogatory sense has just come from the idea that these people will kowtow to the current administration. And so the idea is that they are sort spoken form of Chinese, which describes the Chinese used by officials it looks back to that idea of the leading civil servant or the

leading official, a Mandarin. And then finally, Mandarin was applied to a citrus fruit and it was first applied actually in Swedish. So you can see all sorts of languages coming in here and we're not quite sure why, but our best guess is that it refers to the colour of Chinese officials' silk robes. Possibly it's because of the high quality of the oranges, which are quite delicious, but we think it actually does go back to their flowing robes. Oh, well, that's cleared that up. Fantastic. Another one here. This is a message from Geelong in Australia. Jacinta has been in touch. The word hardship came up while reading this morning. It got me to thinking about other words ending in S-H-I-P, ship. Penmanship, courtship, ownership.

Clearly, these words aren't related to the sea and ships. So, what is the origin of ship in these words? Well, this is a really linguistic question and I love these, but forgive me if I do go a little bit technical here. So it goes back to an old English word, sheep, spelt S-C-H-I-P-E. So there was a C in there. If you look back even further, you will find S-C-I-P, and it simply means a state or condition of being. And if you trace it back to its really ancient roots, I often mention to you, Giles, Proto-Indo-European, which is a sort of ancient family from which many, many of our languages descend. You will find Skepi, S-K-E-P-I, which then went into all sorts of different languages and actually gave us shape as well. So the idea always behind all of these is that it's a quality

or condition. It's a position or it's a relationship between things. And in English, it was adopted as a condition of being. So we add it quite often with a kind of concrete word to then create an abstract word. So friend, which is a concrete word, then becomes friendship, which is a little bit more abstract. And so nothing to do with the ships that we sail, because as I say, originally there was a sea in there. So they're not actually related, even though they look exactly the same these days. Very good. Thank you for that ship shape answer. You're very welcome. We have another question from Will Orme, who contacted us on Twitter. He said he was told when young that there are three words ending in shun, S-H-I-O-N, fashion, cushion, and big

question mark. He said, it drives me crazy trying to think of a third. Any help gratefully received? Now, normally this riddle, and it is a riddle, concerns the third common word ending in G-R-Y because everyone knows hungry and everyone knows angry. And then the question is, what's the third word? And everyone thinks, well, gosh, is there one? And if you look in the dictionary, you'll find some really obscure words, but none of them provide a satisfactory answer to the riddle. And it is probably all about the way that the riddle is phrased. Okay, so I'm going to use the G-R-Y example. This is usually how it works. Think of three words ending in G-R-Y. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word?

The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have listened carefully, I've already told you what it is. And because it is phrased in this way, including the sentence, there are only three words in the English language, the answer to the riddle is the word language. So I think, I'm pretty sure that this shun question is also part of a very similar riddle that goes round and round and round because I can't find any common word apart from cushion and fashion that ends in that S-H-I-O-N. And so I think it's part of a riddle and it's a trick question.

Thank you for unravelling the riddle. Quite complicated. It is, isn't it? Hi, Susie and Giles, comes the next letter. It's from Arnold Poon. I have been enjoying your podcast for nearly a year from the other side of the world, Hong Kong. Here's the question. I came across the phrase, sea green incorruptible. How and when did it come about? Anything to do with a dirty body of water that can't get greener? Just occurred to me

when I'm finishing this email. Sea green incorruptible. That has echoes to me, Susie, without looking it up, of Shakespeare's play Othello, where I feel it's a kind of phrase that could turn up in there. Actually, it comes after this, after Shakespeare. So we have to look back to the French Revolution for this one. And it was a history that was written by the historian Thomas Carlyle. And it was published in 1837, and it charts the course of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1795, which was the year that Carlyle

was born, incidentally. And it was a massive undertaking. And he described Maximilien Robespierre, key, key figure and character in the French Revolution, as the sea green incorruptible. Apparently, the incorruptible was a title that was given to Robespierre by his contemporaries. And most politicians would be proud to bear the name incorruptible, wouldn't they? But adding the epithet sea green has a slightly subversive effect. Now, in literal terms, we think it is doing no more than actually referring to the colour of Robespierre's favourite coat, which was green. It was a pea green coat or sea green coat. But adding that sea green incorruptible perhaps suggests something slightly slimy that's kind of

come, as I say, from the depths. And Robespierre obviously presided over a hugely bloodthirsty period of the French Revolution. So, you know, it's possible that he's adding a little bit of a question mark there. So not so much the decency of someone who couldn't be bribed or who was implacable, etc., but possibly also someone who had something slightly reptilian about him. But anyway, that is where it comes from. Thomas Colllyle's, it was a famous description of Robespierre during the French Revolution. And I think, going back to my Othello reference, it may be springing from, obviously, you're correct in what you say,

because in Shakespeare's play, there are lots of, there are phrases about corruption and the corruptible, and the phrase sea green occurs in that play and of course it's all about a world riddled with corruption the play othello and i think as it were it's to underscore the the contrast this is sea green incorruptible as opposed to um the murky green of the world of you know the world of jealousy and um anyway that is oth is full of. Anyway, that's by the way. I like the idea of the coat as well, because if you remember the word grog as in alcohol and feeling groggy as a result of too much alcohol, actually goes back to old grog, who was Admiral

Vernon. And he used to wear a coat made of grogrim, which is a thick, coarse coat to keep him worn on board ships. And he it was who ordered for sailors rum rations to be watered down because he felt like they were getting too intoxicated so he was called old grog on account of his coat and grog was eventually transferred to the um to the drink itself so yeah i like i like the reference to the coat um but i think there's more going on there than meets the eye should we take a quick break yes let, let's do that. 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.

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Shrink the Box is a Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, and this week we're delving into the postbag. Not a literal postbag, it's simply communication that has come our way from you across the world. Natasha Pelly has been in touch. My sister gave birth last night to a beautiful baby boy. Well, congratulations to the whole family. And yes, I agree, Natasha Giles is rather an attractive name. Anyway, it turns out he was born on call, E-N-C-A-U-L, which is apparently a one in 80,000 occurrence where the baby is born with its amniotic sac completely intact. At the time she told me this, I happened to be eating cauliflower cheese and

immediately joked about the connection. Even if there isn't one, I'd be really interested to know where each of these words come from. Oh my gosh. On call and cauliflower. On call. You, obviously, being a mother, would be more familiar with on call. Do you know what? I absolutely wasn't, Giles. So, thanks to Natasha for this because I had never heard of it. But again, it set me off on a very interesting path. Nothing to do with cauliflower, Natasha. So I'll start with that one first.

Cauliflower comes from the Italian cavoli fiori, which literally means cabbage flowers, which kind of makes sense. And the original, when it came into English, it was pronounced collie flory or coal flory and that again is a classic example and I mentioned this a lot on purple uh classic example of us not being able to pronounce the original cavoli fiore and so we put coal in there which meant cabbage already in English and thenory, we liked the idea of the flowers. So we kept the flower reference.

And then later the spelling changed a little bit to match, in fact, the original Latin root, which was caulis, C-A-U-L-I-S, meaning cabbage again. But it had quite a journey where we kind of mixed and matched it to suit our pronunciations. Nothing to do then with encoule, C-A-U-L, which actually goes back to the French cale, C-A-L-E. Again, we changed it a little bit, meaning a type of headdress. It was a close-fitting cap, like a net almost for the hair, and it wrapped around something. And it then took on lots of different meanings where the idea was wrapping around something. And that is what it is referring to, of course, in this case, the amnion or the inner membrane enclosing the fetus before birth. And actually, when it envelops the head of the child at birth, it was superstitiously

regarded once upon a time as being a really good luck sign. It was supposed to be a preservative against drowning. So it was thought to be a very, very good thing. But it all goes back to that idea of a close-fitting cap, something that envelops. Now, in fact, everyone on the programme chips in with ideas and we even get questions from our colleagues. And Harriet, one of our colleagues here, wants to know why awful in awful lot doesn't mean anything negative. No, and I think we've got Harriet listening to us actually today. Hi, Harriet.

And it's strange, I agree, that something awful should be used simply as an intensifier. But you have to remember the origin of awful itself, which was A-W-E-F-U-L, something that inspires wonder or awe. And it can be positive as well as negative. And we kind of keep this idea of an intensifier, something that kind of exceeds expectations to a sort of intense degree, something that might make you shudder or tremble in awe. And that's awfully, and if you think about it, we do the same in lots of different words as well, like terribly, dreadfully, frightfully, as we used to say. So originally,

we used to say awfully before something objectionable, something that was quite negative. But now we just use it, or some of us use it for anything really, meaning exceedingly. But it helps if you remember that original or something that inspires wonder or terror in equal measure. So that's awfully. And I think we also got a question from lawrence who's here maybe lawrence can actually ask the question himself um hello giles and suzy and hello people my question is a simple one i was doing a crossword the other day and when i'd sort of figured it out the answer had to be canard which i knew as as the french for duck but the definition in the clue was rumour.

I'd never heard this definition before and is it related to the French duck? Thanks Lauren. Yes the answer is it does actually. So the crucial thing about canard being a rumour is that it's an unfounded rumour. So the old canard that etc etc. So it's usually something that is swapped around and gossiped about but actually has no justice or no basis in reality. And they are related because it does mean duck in French, and canard in French also means a hoax. And the reason why is that canet in French, in old French at least, meant to quack. And we all know that if somebody quacks, they might well be pulling a fast one as well as possibly pretending to be a duck. So those two ideas of making a sound like a duck and basically being full of hot air or strange noises then developed into something

that was a bit unintelligible or at least unfounded in truth. And our international listeners will know, of course, that there is a French magazine, newspaper, that I think has been published since about 1915 called Le Canard Enchaîné, which is their satirical magazine. Oh, the chained up. So, you know, the chained up rumorungerer, Le Canard Enchaîné. I love that. Very good. Indeed. Have we got time for one more? Oh, yes. Come on. We've got time for lots more, I'm sure. Okay. This is someone who shares my surname, so I have to do this. I don't know him or her. So,

Joss Dent. Thanks, Joss, for writing in. I was interested, says Joss, if the word for the drink mead was at all connected with meadows, because that's where you'd find the bees that make the honey that's made into mead, uh so uh yes it's an interesting theory and it's not one i've ever looked at i have to say so mead the drink is very different from the mead that meant a meadow um i have to say so if you look them up in a dictionary there will be two entirely separate entries um and that is because they're not related if you look at mead in the meadow sense, you will find that that actually looks back to an old English word meaning to mow, go to mow a meadow.

So that accounts for that one. And I want to talk about aftermath, which is also about mowing, but I haven't got time. Oh, yes, you have. Go on, give us aftermath. Well, aftermath originally meant after the mowing. So it was the state of affairs after grass had been mown. Anyway, back to mead, the drink that is entirely different. That does go back to honey. It goes back to, again, an Indo-European, so ancient word meaning honey or sweet drink that might in turn look back to the ancient Greek for wine, but definitely not related to the meadow, I'm afraid, although the bee idea is a lovely one. Have I got time for one more, one quickie? Go for it. Because it does intrigue me. Danny got in touch via Twitter to talk about

plethora, the word plethora, and the word myriad, often used in the same way, meaning a lot of myriad examples, a plethora of examples. But what are their origins and what is the correct usage? How should one use plethora and myriad? Well, strictly speaking, a plethora is not just an abundance of something. It's an excessive amount. A plethora was too much. And it actually goes back to the Greek verb meaning to be full, to be full to bursting. But we use it in a much looser sense now.

And in fact, that has become part of standard English. So plethora now you will find in the dictionary defined as an extreme amount or a big amount simply. And that is quite similar to fulsome because fulsome for a while actually meant over the top. So if you issued fulsome praise to somebody, it was actually excessive. You were excessively flattering as though you were fawning. But now fulsome praise is used simply to mean a lot of praise. So, that's plethora. Myriad was originally

a Greek term for 10,000, and that's the way it was used in classical history, particularly classical military history. But again, today, it simply means countless or a large amount. So, in current English, I would say plethora and myriad are used in exactly the same way, but their etymologies are slightly different. So myriad is a thousand or ten thousand? Ten thousand. I love that. I love knowing that.

I'm going to try and use it correctly in future because I get irritated about people misusing the word decimate because they just now they say it was decimated, meaning it was sort of reduced, broken down into nothing. But in fact, it doesn't mean that quite, does it? What does decimate mean? Well, it didn't originally. I think it would be wrong to say people are misusing it because, of course, English evolves. And now the standard sense to decimate something is to annihilate it.

And there's no sense of the one in ten that it used to relate to from the Latin for ten. And the idea is that in Roman military history, if a Roman legion was decimated, then one in ten of the soldiers was killed as a punishment meted out to the entire army for some kind of wrongdoing. So really brutal. But as I say, I think it would be wrong to say that we're misusing it. We're just forgetting the etymology of it. There's one more letter we'll come to it. We're just forgetting the etymology of it. There's one more letter we'll come to in a moment. If you want to be in touch with us, you've got queries of any kind, it's purple at somethingelse.com.

That's how you communicate with us by email. Something is spelt without a G, just a bit perverse. Purple at somethingelse.com. Every week, Susie Dent gives us a trio of words, three special words that she loves or finds intriguing and she hopes we will too. What are your words for this week? Well, this is not because there is a link of surname here, but Joss Dent mentioned mead and bees. And so I thought I'd focus on bees for now.

Do you remember, Joss, that I told you that Dumbledore, a key character in Harry Potter, obviously, Dumbledore is actually an old name for a bumblebee, which is gorgeous. And I think we possibly mentioned that J.K. Rowling liked to imagine the character of Dumbledore moving around and just humming gently to himself. So I think that's lovely. Dumbledore, an old name for a bumblebee. And staying with bees, did you know that the name Melissa

actually meant honeybee in Greek? No, I love that. Yes, it's great, isn't it? It's a sweet name, literally. It is. And my third one today is dysphemism. Now, dysphemism is the opposite of a euphemism. So, a dysphemism is an insult or unpleasant turn of phrase that's deliberately used in place of a nicer one. And just in case you think that Melissa isn't really a word, I mean, it is a word, it's a name, I will give you a fourth just for good measure. And it's onomatomania. And onomatomania is the annoyance of not being able to come up with the right word at the right time.

Oh, that's happening to me all the time. Me too. And indeed, often when I'm wanting to name drop, I would would except I can't bring the name I want to drop to mind in fact that reminds me I had such a good story to tell you my name drop of the week would have been but we've run out of time guess who I met this week the man of the moment have you been watching succession do you know I have to watch this because my friend Nicky Campbell always talks about a succession and how amazing it is and how he just wasn't sure whether to start the next series without his wife because she loved it too.

And no, I haven't seen it. I have to. This is the third series going out. And I spent some time this week with Brian Cox, the great actor. Oh, amazing. Yeah, exactly. It's all right for some. There we are.

And I also, of course, I'll tell you about that next time. And I'll have more poetry of you next time. I love poetry. I love celebrating poetry. And for me, this is a special week in the world of poetry because my Poetry Together project, where young people and old people get together over tea and cake and perform poems,

it's coming to a head. We're having a special tea party. And again, I'll tell you about that next time we get together. Meanwhile, here's a poem by the great Roger McGough, simply called Let's Hear It for Poetry. Let's hear it for poetry, the learning and the writing of it, the reading and the telling. For who led us there? Parents, friends, lovers, teachers, the loan of a book, the ticket for a gig, a big hand for landscape, first frost of winter, full moon and rainbows, the heart that leaps, the eyes that behold. For suburbia, mown lawns and wisteria, pink and fully blown, let us celebrate the desire to escape.

Thumbs up for the city, its excitement and excesses, the late hours it keeps, the history beneath its feet. Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, that's the end of our correspondence episode. And we would just like to thank you again for getting in touch with us because I particularly love these questions because I just have hours

of fantastic research and delving to do. And Giles lost them because it just, clearly it prompts other questions in your mind, Giles, which is great. So please keep them coming.

Purple at somethingelse.com. Before we go, we've got time for one final question from Amore Brisson. I don't know there's an answer to this one. Do you want to read the question from Amore Brisson, Susie? Yes, I've only just noticed this one. I love listening to your podcast every Tuesday, to your podcast every Tuesday, but each week I'm left with the same question. Who is Gully? Well, that's something we've asked ourselves many, many times, Amore, I have to say, because Something Rides With Purple does involve someone called Gully. It's a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells, with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Gem Mystery, Jay Beale, and, well, the Mystery Man.

The Mystery Man who, to be honest, without whom there would be no podcast because he presses the button, pulls the levers, makes the steam rise and actually records all this so that it can be podcasted to the world. It is our good friend Gully. We love you really, Gully.