Something Rhymes with Purple - Flizzoms

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

This week Gyles and Susie share tea and crumpets as they tuck into some typically British words and phrases. From amazing etymologies to amusing anecdotes, join us as we explore the wonderful world of language.  We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Brabble: to argue stubbornly with another person often over trivial matters  Lychnobite: a person who works at night and sleeps all day Shirpings: the overgrown plants that grow at the side of a lake or river  Gyles' poem this week was by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. ‘God bless our good and gracious king Whose promise none relies on; He never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one.’ A 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

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amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience and the Purple people often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. It's presented by my friend Susie Dent, in my view, the world's leading lexicographer, and by me. We're both British and we're broadcasting from Great Britain. I'm in the capital city, London, and Susie is in what many people regard as the intellectual capital city, Oxford. Are you British? I am British through and through.

Well, I say that, though, because my name may have come from the Norman conquerors because dent, it may actually be the French dent, meaning tooth. So maybe they had a nickname to do with their teeth. Alternatively, it may just be a habitational reference because there is a dent in Yorkshire. How about you? Well, a lot of people think I'm German because I was born in Germany. But that doesn't make me German.

I was actually born in a British forces hospital in Germany after the war. At the end of the Second World War, the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Allied powers took over in Germany and it was divided into different quarters with different occupying countries. And I was born in the British sector because my father, who was a lawyer, was sent to Germany following his years in the army as a magistrate. And he was helping to administer justice and set up justice in Germany. So I was born in a British forces military hospital in Wuppertal. But when you have to say on your passport place of birth, I have to put Wuppertal, Germany. In fact,

it used to be Wuppertal, West Germany. But anyway, it's now Germany. So people think, oh, you must be German. I think I am very British, going back a long way. I certainly feel British, and I felt it particularly just a few days ago Susie because I went to Hampton Court Palace have you ever been to Hampton Court Palace I have but not for a long time people go when they're school children you go to school I remember it being haunted that was very exciting bits of it still feel haunted and I think one of the joys of being British in my view is the story of the British Isles goes back so many hundreds indeed so many thousands of years and one of the joys of being British, in my view, is the story of the British Isles goes back so many hundreds, indeed so many thousands of years. And one of my favourite places is Hampton Court Palace,

which was the home of King Henry VIII, the home of the Tudor court. And still it's there, the Great Hall of Henry VIII's day is still there. And then later, a sort of Baroque palace was developed and it was built as the home for William III and Queen Mary II. Anyway, it is beautiful. And I was there not just celebrating British history or an aspect of it, but also for a charity evening. I'm one of the trustees of something called the Queen's Reading Room.

Our new queen, Queen Camilla, loves the joy of reading, loves books, and during lockdown started her own, really, I suppose it was a kind of book club where she recommended online books that she was currently enjoying in case other people were interested. And it kind of took off. And so she developed this reading room so that other people had interest in books could recommend their favourite books. And it's grown, and it's now a charity called the Queen's Reading Room. And we had a literary festival at the weekend. And the day ended. It was amazing. And I know I like name-dropping, but one of the reasons I like being British is because of our heritage. And so it was

amazing to be at Hampton Court with Queen Camilla, and indeed King Charles III, he came along too. And I was on stage with my friend, the great British actress Dame Judi Dench, who was performing Shakespeare. Again, another reason to be so proud of being British. Sir Derek Jacoby, another great classic British actor, came on and did, oh, he ended the evening with a bit of The Tempest. Our revels now ended. And these are, you know, it was just, it was magic. So for me, being British is part of our heritage. But what do you think people think of as stereotypical British things?

Can we explore those maybe and unpack the language around them? I'd love to. I mean, for me, I always think that there is so much Britishness in the words that we use. I don't know, things like boffin, for example, for me is so, so British. And you remember, there are some false friends in the words that we tend to think of of being quintessentially um ours and uh things like stiff upper lip which if you remember um you know everyone says oh this is the this is the the the british characteristic the national characteristic is that they are um stoical and resilient but actually stiff upper lip was american so not all the words yes hold on yes stiff upper lip is an Americanism.

Yes. First mentioned in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. How interesting. What about boffin? You mentioned boffin. Yes, boffin. And no one knows where boffin came from, but you wouldn't find boffin in any other places, would you?

I mean, it's just such a British word. What does it mean? It means, is it a scientist? It means a person of learning? What is a boffin? I mean, I think I have been called a boffin in my time, but now it seems to be restricted mostly to scientists, as you say, I think, and sort of people who are involved in technology more, so scientific or technical research. But we don't know where it came from. I think it emerged during during the second world war and it was slang for an older officer um but we just don't know where it comes from and nothing to do with boffing someone in any shape or form so it's one of those words we don't know the

original like dog like dog um and then there are other words like oh you know all the wonderful dialects words that we have like mardi i mean Mardi just belongs so much to Leicestershire and Northern Britain as well, doesn't it, that you wouldn't find it anywhere else. So, for me, when you say… Well, I don't know about Mardi Gras. Is it a totally different word? Oh, that's totally different, yes. So, Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, and that's like Lent, Mardi, Mardi, Mardi in French.

Oh, my gosh, that's it. Mardi Gras. So, when they have, in New Orleans, when they celebrate Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, it's because it's Fat Tuesday. It's before Lent. It's when you're supposed to stock up. So the word Mardi that you're using, what you talk about as the English word Mardi, what does that mean and what is the origin of that? Mardi just means sulky and petulant.

And we think it comes from Mard, M-A-R-R-E-D, spoiled of a child. So they're being Mardi because they're spoiled. The most typical thing, maybe it's not true now, but it certainly was, I remember when I first went to America in my gap year between school and university in the 1960s, I went to America, spent a year there.

They, everywhere I went, they said, oh, you must love tea, you're British. I suppose that's because of the Boston Tea Party. Yeah. There was an association. Indeed, if you see films of the 1940s and 1950s, British people are always having a cup of tea. Yes, and fancy a cuppa.

You'd never hear that anywhere else, would you? Fancy a cuppa. Yeah, putting on a brew. Well, unpack these words. The word tea, where does it come from? T-E-A. Yes, so tea is actually, it was originally char for us so we we talk about a cup

of char don't we um we used to i don't think we do anymore uh i do i hear it sometimes um have a cup of char but that is directly from uh china uh which obviously has given us um a wonderful tea um it's from malay, actually, originally, but came to us from Chinese. And so it is for tea as well, because it's from Mandarin Chinese, cha, C-H-A. And through its entire journey, it has undergone many sort of slight mutations

that C-H-A became T-E-A. Goodness. So cha and T-A are the same things yeah and a char lady oh sorry what about a char lady who was she okay so this is this is um slightly different so this a char lady actually goes back to a char meaning a piece of work um so i can't quite remember let me see if i can look up where that itself comes from but i know it's nothing to do with tea uh used to be chair c-h-a-r-e and i think then that you will find this isn't in the dictionary but i think you will find that it then char as in char lady or

turn of work is related to charring cross to the char there because charring cross is at a turn of the river uh because char meant a sort of a turning or a coming around again um or some sort of movement that kind of goes round um and i also think that the word ajar as in the the i'm speaking off the cuff here, but as in the door is ajar, it began as a char, meaning it's on the turn. It's almost open, almost closed. How do you relate that to the cleaning ladies who used to be called char ladies?

They're not called that anymore. Because they're doing tons of work for you. Oh, my goodness. She's my char lady. She comes and does a turn of work. And of course you give her a cup of char at her elevenses, a little break. I love tea. And guess where I was when I, before I went to Hampton Court, I came to Hampton Court from another part of the country. I came to Hampton Court from a county that is the only county, the only British county, the only English county that features in

the Bible, where would that be? Yorkshire? It is in Yorkshire. Yorkshire isn't mentioned in the Bible, but the county within Yorkshire that is, is the East Riding. Oh, of course, the Riding. The East Riding. And the East Riding is the only county that features in the Bible. Do you know where it features? No, but i can tell you where riding comes from in a minute but no where does it feature it comes i think in the gospel according to saint john and lo three wise men came from the east riding on camels oh you are so bad but it's so real it's so true it really is in the bible It really is in the Bible. And I was in Bridlington. Yes, but there's a comma. I mean, that's just very misleading.

I was in Yorkshire. I was in the East Riding. I was in Bridlington, which is on the sea. Bridlington is so bracing. I was at Bridlington Spa, where they gave me Yorkshire tea. And they gave me some to bring home. And I also met there the lady who is one of this is interesting she's one of the CEOs of Betty's Tea Rooms and they have you heard of Betty's Tea Rooms oh yeah definitely these are wonderful exactly Harrogate, Ilkley they're all over Yorkshire uh it's wonderful traditional tea room serve, well, go to a Betty's Tea Room, you'll see what they serve. But they also serve Taylor's Tea. And in fact, they own Taylor's Tea.

And this lady who I met turned out to be a collaborative CEO. That's a company that has several chief executive officers. And they share the responsibility. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, that's very good. They do it as a team effort. And they find it works very well. A team effort. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, that's very good. They do it as a team effort and they find it works very well. A team effort.

I love that. And the lovely thing about Bettys is you can have, I mean, we can't not talk about Britishness without talking about all the amazing cakes and pastries that we create in this country, whether it is, I don't know, an Eccles cake to a bath bun.

I mean, ones that actually have their origin in there, but also things like crumpets and scones and all of those things. Crumpet, again, a word that we just don't know where that comes from. We don't know. Crumpet goes in our list with dog as a word we don't know its origin. It's a very long list. with dog as a word we don't know its origin oh it's a very long list um as it as it does with scone uh because at every show that i do no matter what part of the country i'm in when i ask for questions from the audience i am invariably asked is it scone or scone and what is that again it's

a very british question the answer is you can have either because it just depends where you are in the country and etymologically speaking although i I say scone, because scone to me sounds just a little bit like you're trying too hard. Scone is a bit closer to the origin, which is the German and Dutch schoenbrot, fine bread. We won't go into whether you put the cream or the jam on first. Let's not do that. It's such a British conundrum. You see, we are talking about Britishness, so it's all very relevant because we love tea we love tea i love a toasted tea cake oh with a little bit too much butter that's what i want and a muffin i mean i know they have they have muffins in america yes in america they don't know

really i think what a muffin is and i think they confuse they don't know what a crumpet is or a muffin i think they call them muffins and they're not quite muffins um i think they have a different thing as a muffin in america and there's a muffin well they have english muffins so they do they do have those and but then they also have the blueberry muffins what is the origin of the word we don't know no oh for goodness sake people are tuning into this podcast to find out okay what about biscuits we know where biscuit comes from you just can't leave't in the air like that i have to older listeners will remember muffin the mule dear old muffin muffin the mule dear old muffin playing the fool i loved muffing the mule never okay i don't remember muffin the mule

dobbing the donkey that was a different story entirely muffin also has a rude connotation or is it is it your your midriff can be your muffin if it's a bit oh muffin top yeah what does that yes your muffin top it just is it's like you know on a blueberry muffin you've got the um uh that the sort of paper container for the muffin that's that's sort of ruched around the edges and then at the top there's this overblown thing that's kind of, you know, like a sort of crest of the mountain at the top. And if you have a muffin top and you're wearing a very short cropped top

and there's a lot of stomach visible above your jeans, it looks like the top of a muffin. It's very neat. So when your stomach is exposed, it could be referred to as your muffin. Yes. But we don't know the origin of the word muffin in relation to the food.

No, but I can tell you about biscuits because do you dunk? I know that biscuit comes from the French biscuit, Christ cooked. Christ cooked. I do dunk. I have a weakness for dunking. Do you? What do you like to dunk? I like to dunk a ginger know. I used to like, when I was younger, I quite liked to dunk a chocolate hobnob because I liked the idea of the chocolate going all sort of glossy before I put it in my mouth. Oh, no, but it all ends up in the tea. It does. So I've abandoned it. Can I tell you what the word is? Yes.

One of my favourite words that is just, it comes out far too rarely. You know when you have dunked a few too many biscuits and you have these little floating bits of crumbs in the top? They're called flisms. Flisms. Who has invented this word, flism? It's actually, flisms are in any solution or liquid. They are little pieces or particles floating around,

but I just applied it to biscuits. The other thing that is absolutely quintessentially British in terms of food is fish and chips. Oh, yes. Don't you think it's a very British thing? Totally. The word's there. Well, fish, I suppose, is a very old word.

But where does chips come from? Fish is from German. Fish. Yes, so they're not French fries, are they? It's from an old English word meaning to cut off, because chips are pieces cut off from a piece of potato. And that's also why we have a chip off the old block you have a chip on your shoulder which explain the chip on your shoulder because i know what it means it means you've got something that is sort of that it's a kind of

running saw that you can't stop you know you've got a chip on your shoulder yeah um but where does what why is it a chip on your shoulder uh well it's thought that back in the 19th century, much like throwing your hat into a ring, which if you were in a sort of group and a fight broke out and an imaginary sort of fighting boxing ring was sort of there on the grass, that people would throw their hat into this imaginary circle as a signal that they were ready to fight. And we think that in the 19th century, when two people, mostly boys, were determined to fight, then a chip of wood would be placed on the shoulder of one. And so, it's basically challenging the other boy to knock it off at his peril. That was the idea. Wow. That's interesting. What about it possibly being actually a physical chip? That's what it was, but not a French fry. No, but I mean like a blemish, like Richard III, when you tell the story of Richard III,

not the reality. Though, in fact, I think his skeleton, when it was uncovered, showed there was some deformity. But he had, in a sense, a chip on his shoulder because he was bitter at the world because of his deformity. Could it have been literally having a disfigurement on your shoulder that made you have this attitude to life? I'm throwing that in as a possibility. No evidence of that, I'm afraid. Okay.

Let's have one more bit of food before we go on to other characteristics of the british after the break the sunday roast oh yes oh yes i love the sunday roast even though i don't know about you i'm vegetarian but i still love all the trimming so if i go to a pub and it's a sunday lunch i will ask for a sunday roast without the meat which sometimes is a bit difficult because you can't have the gravy then because quite often it's got meat juices in but i don't care actually i'm very happy and also the roast potatoes often have been cooked in a animal fat i mean sometimes you can sometimes you can't but you can definitely make your own can't you i love it yeah now tell me

yorkshire pudding is part of the sundae roast and i suppose that originated in yorkshire simple as it did pudding is an interesting one because it is um actually goes back to the french boudin which means black pudding when puddings were very savory so it included the intestines of animals it included um pork and all kinds of meat and boudin also from the Roman word for a little sausage, botulus, also gave us botulism. So, yes, within the Yorkshire pudding are slight traces of botulism, linguistically speaking. What are the other aspects of a Sunday roast would you have? Well, I love all the condiments. That's my favourite thing.

So, I like the condiments, but I also like things like horseradish sauce. I mean, I don't have the beef, but I love horseradish. I love horseradish sauce. Mint sauce, I could have on anything. Anyway, condiment goes back to, again, an ancient word, the Latin condimentum, meaning pickled, essentially. Because anything that added flavour to the food was a condimentum. Brussels sprouts, which I'm very fond of. Do they come from Brussels?

I assume they don't come from Brussels. Or maybe they do. Why are they called Brussels sprouts? They probably did originally. Incredibly good for you. I also love them. A bit of cabbage. I actually don't know.

I'm just going to find out here because I don't know the answer to this. I think it was Mark Twain who described a cauliflower as a cabbage with a college education they are believed to have originated from brussels yes what what about cabbage and cauliflower do you have them ever uh every everything um because they are extremely good for you and they taste absolutely delicious yeah so i love all of those the only problem is fumigating the house afterwards because it lingers for ages, doesn't it? In my experience. I see them as being quite sort of Germanic, really, because they have coal, K-O-H-L.

They have sauerkraut, which is, you know, that wonderful pickle cabbage. But cauliflower itself is actually from the French. It goes back to the French choux fleurie, flowered cabbage, which is quite well let's have a quick pudding before we have our break what is you think the quintessential british pudding is it bread and butter pudding oh i've got some of that in my fridge i just need to tell you about cabbage though yes good because it's from the latin caput meaning head because

it looks like a giant head which of course gave us capitals in a capital letter it gave us okay what yeah sorry what's your favorite pudding i want to hear it all what's your favorite pudding It looks like a giant head, which of course gave us capitals in a capital letter. It gave us... Okay. Yeah, sorry. My favourite pudding. I want to hear it all. What's your favourite pudding? Blackberry and apple crumble and ice cream. Very good.

Possibly custard. How about you? Crumble. That is good. And I suppose that's simply because the... Is it breadcrumbs that are crumbled on the... I don't know. What makes a crumble? Yeah, it's savoury.

You can have oats, can't you? It's just essentially the flour and the sugar. Crumble, of course, related to the crumb with the silent B. The B was added in the 16th century. It didn't have one originally. I think it followed dumb where we have the final B, but again, don't pronounce it anymore. But yeah, crumble's always all about crumbs.

So we added the letter B to crumb for some reason. Why did we add it when we don't pronounce it? Well, we have so many silent letters in English, quite often in order to show off the classical heritage of a word. So if you remember, the B was added to doubt by Renaissance monks who thought, oh, D-O-W-T or D-O-U-T, well, that won't do because this word goes back to the Latin dubitum. So, we're going to stick a B in there, but we won't pronounce it, which is what happened there. And dumb, I don't think, because I think crumb followed dumb. The history of pronunciation and letters is always very, very weird.

But that actually came from German, from dum, as in dummkopf, stupid. So I don't quite know why we put the B in there, to be honest. Maybe to go with thumb. Who knows? It was probably following a whole long chain of silent Bs. I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President.

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You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. This is something rhymes with purple, where occasionally we speak over each other, which we shouldn't do. And the reason that happens is that I'm in London, England, and Susie Dent is in Oxford, England. Normally, I like to think that we as British people are very polite. Do you think good manners is part of people's view of what is being British? I'd love to think that people still thought that, but I fear that thanks to the i hope an abiding sense that we have a very dry sense of humor and that um yes most of us hopefully are courteous well let's not talk about etiquette today because i think we could do a whole episode about yes etiquette i don't

that etiquette i mean if we were self-consciously polite, etiquette, the rules we might be applying. But of course, etiquette, it must be a French word, etiquette. What does it mean? Etiquette. Yes, it was a ticket that gave you all the rules of court. So it was a sort of piece of paper that said, oh, you must get this when you go to Buckingham Palace. You must address the monarch as such. You may not do this.

You must wear this, that and the other. That was the etiquette, the ticket. They're very relaxed nowadays. You don't have to do any of those things. Some people do still bow and curtsy and some people like using the traditional forms of address to royalty because they quite like

the tradition of it and they feel it shows respect but everybody is much more relaxed than they used to be a politeness uh used to be what punctuality used to be the politeness of kings you had to be on time didn't it where does the word polite come from oh polite is from uh the french um it's from french origin to us and then originally from latin polire meaning to polish so if you're polite you are refined um puts it that way and punctual as you might guess uh lots of associations with things like punctuation or puncture it's all about being to the point um because it is um from the latin

meaning to prick well sometimes you prick the balloon of people's pomposity with a touch of sarcasm. Oh, yes. One of my favourites. Do you think sarcasm is a British characteristic? I find irony, even as a linguist, I find it incredibly hard to define. And we all say what it's not. So, famously, Alanis Morissette's Isn't It Ironic doesn't really contain very much irony at all. In all the examples that she gives, you know, it's like rain on your wedding day. Well, that's not irony. Janice Morissette's Isn't It Ironic doesn't really contain very much irony at all in all the examples that she gives. You know, it's like rain on your wedding day. Well, that's not irony.

But it's really hard to say, or that's… What is the dictionary definition of the word irony? What does… I think it's lacking, you see. It says the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite. Which I don't…'t, that for me doesn't encompass it at all. It's more subtle, it's more nuanced than that irony, isn't it? The sub-definition is a state of affairs or event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often riley amusing.

The irony is I went to him for help and he ended up shuffling me. And he was useless, yes. But I think it's, i do think it's broader than that and i wonder if it's loosened its uh shackles just a little bit but sarcasm i can tell you because you will recognize instantly one of my favorite etymologies it goes back to the greek for biting flesh literally tearing flesh um and it was applied to remarks considered so caustic that they metaphorically ate the flesh of the recipient. And sarcasm and sarcophagus are actually linked relatives because sarcophagus in ancient times was often made of a particular kind of limestone that was thought to rapidly decompose the bodies lying within it. Gosh. Well, I'm glad then that sarcasm is not

what we're known for. I don't know, I accept. You mentioned earlier the idea of a dry sense of humour. I certainly think we have a lot of writers who are droll from Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, B.G. Woodhouse. These can be writers who are very amusing. What is a dry sense of humour? What do you mean by that and why is it dry as opposed to wet very very good point uh yes so obviously dry means free from uh from moisture and i suspect if i look it up in the oeds i will now um it'll it'll give us the journey but i suspect it will be very very long um so yes free from moisture um in medieval physiology one of the fundamental qualities of humors planets etc you talk about a sense of humor that goes back to the medieval belief in the well the ancient belief in our

bodily humors which were fluids in the body said to determine our disposition then we have thirsty um understandably not yielding water um of bread without butter or the like of wines free from sweetness maybe that's the idea it's free from sweetness and hence it's not schmaltzy um to use a different food metaphor because schmaltz is goose fat isn't it it's in um yiddish culture but i think it if you're dry also you're quite impassive you're not sort of soft and sweet and tender um so it's it's a kind of very restrained um held back humor which is often you know very matter of fact but much funnier as a Well, if there are people listening around the world, and we're lucky enough that there are, and you think we've not touched on any of the characteristics that you think are essentially British from your perspective, wherever you may be, North America, South America,

the Far East, get in touch with us and tell us, actually, I think the most quintessential British thing is this, and we'll explore the language that you, your view of Britain gives us. If you want to get in touch, we have a new email address. Please use this one, purplepeople, because it is simply purplepeople at something, with a G, somethingrhymes.com. Purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com is the way to send us an email. on. Purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com is the way to send us an email. Jack Healy has been in touch. Hi, Susie and Jazz. Thanks for a brilliant podcast. We love this. I haven't been here since the start, but I've enjoyed rooting through the history. Yes, there are more than 200 episodes you can go back on. My question, though, says Jack, concerns the prefix para, P-A-R-A. It crops up in many words, covering a lot of contexts. There are the roles people have,

like paramedic, paralegal, paramilitary. There are things like parachutes and parables. There are intangibles like parables, paragons, paradigms, and paradoxes. I know what paradoxes, they're two medical people, aren't they? Anyway, what does the prefix para mean? And by the way, is virtue the only thing to have a paragon? Thanks a lot, Jack Healy. I wish I had a simple answer to this one. This is such a good example of how versatile English is, because para has many, many meanings. So, one of them is side by side, so by the side of. is side by side, so by the side of. So, a paradigm is something that is shown side by side with another thing, setting a typical example or pattern. So, a paradigm is a pattern or a model of something else. A parable is, it started as, I think it was the Greek parabola,

and that is a story that is an allegory that sits alongside the truth, if you like, because you're making a comparison. You are placing a simple story side by side with reality in order to illustrate a moral or a spiritual lesson. And so, that's one of the meanings. Parachute actually means protected. It's a kind of protection there. So the para is much like parasol, which is protecting you from the sun. It is all about something that is protecting you or warding off something. It's a shield or a defence.

That actually goes back to an Italian word, parare, meaning to defend or to shield. It's interesting to me how we have parasol, as in the French parasol, but we don't have parapluie, we have umbrella. Why have we got an umbrella, not a parapluie? Parapluie is lovely, isn't it? Actually, the umbrella was all about shade, if you remember, because it was all about... Ombre, of course it is, ombre. Yeah. Meaning shade. Exactly. Very good us did you give us paragon uh so paragon so my next para is um words

that are how can i put it they're kind of beyond so they're sort of over the they kind of they're separate from and they go beyond uh something else So you'll find this used in medicine quite a lot. So you'll find things like paraplegia, which we know about. It's something that is, it kind of goes too far, if you like. And in medicines, there are many, many, many, many, many para things in that sense. And a paragon is something which sits above or beyond something else it's a perfect example as of a particular quality and that is probably the idea is that it's something that is sort of outside and actually its first application was as a touchstone that basically

tested gold so the Italian paragone was a touchstone that was used to to test good gold as opposed to bad gold and it kind of was um a model again it's something that is sort of set apart so you can see you've got side by side you've got set apart and you've got something that wards off i've just given you three examples of it. And it's really flexible, but it's almost impossible to say about this prefix that it means this and that's it. Paradox, I think, is mentioned here as well. That is para, again, beyond or separated from, and a paradox is distinct from popular opinion, doxa meaning opinion. So, it's something that combines contradictory features really so a paramedic is distinct from an actual medic it's something else well it's it could be you see that

a paramedic was originally one who delivered medical supplies by parachute um so a bit like a paratrooper um and i think those were the first paramedics let me just check yeah a person trained to be dropped by parachute to get medical aid yeah 1950s how amazing because now would you call the person who comes in the ambulance to rescue you from the side of the road when you've broken your arm yeah me last year that i could refer to them as paramedics they didn't they came by ambulance but the original paramedics would have dropped on me from a parachute. Well, yeah, and they might,

you know, they might actually come by air ambulance, might they? So, yeah, it's a really, really brilliant prefix, but not easy to nail down, as you can tell from that. But it's a great question. Thank you.

And it's, the paramedics is what led to paralegals. That's just a derivative of paramedics. I think it is. Yeah, I absolutely think it is. Although, again, it could fit into so many of the meanings of the other powers. But yeah, I think that is exactly how it started. Some people send us emails. Other people send us what are now called voice notes. Hello, I'm Geoff Ward from Melbourne, Australia. Although I grew up in England on a diet of carry

on films and Sid James. And I thought about the word core, as in an appreciation of the human body. And I wonder whether or not that could be related to the French word for body, core, C-O-R-P-S. Is there any link between the two? Thank you, Giles, core. And Susie, core. I love the way, Susie,

you get a slightly longer Cor. I will just say Cor is in the dictionary as well. For those that don't know, the Carry On films were made in the 1950s,

1960s, and there were some later ones with the same group of actors. And the early ones particularly gave you a real picture, a comic picture of British life.

And Sid James was one of the leading players in many of these films. And it was, he was, I think, South African, but he sounded like a cockney and he would say, in an appreciative way. What is the origin of this expression? Well, you'd like to think it was a bit on a mass of it, like, but actually it was a minced oath. So remember, we've talked about this

in our euphemism uh episodes um so essentially it's an alteration of god believe it or not it sounds a bit strange but you would find gore blimey and then core blimey uh so we think it's an extension of that nothing to do with care or core sadly but it's a lovely lovely idea thank you jim for getting in touch suzy yes you're here and you've got three interesting words for us i hope i have um one i think we just see a bit too much of in politics and a few degree uh jars but brabblement uh to brabble is to argue stubbornly with another person um you know about all sorts sometimes about incredibly trivial things um That is brabbelment and that is to brabble. The next one is a lichnobite.

This is how you pronounce it. L-Y-C-H-N-O-B-I-T-E. Oh, difficult word to spell. It is, isn't it? Lichnobite. Lichnobite. And it is a person who essentially works at night and sleeps all day. Well, indeed, like a night nurse or a night doctor.

Well, in the old Oxford English dictionary, it's described as one who turns night into day. So it could also mean that you're a fast liver at night time, but I think that's quite a nice one. And then this one caught my eye. To sherp. Now, to sherp is to cut or trim, particularly plants, hedges and things.

And sherpings is a word applied specifically to the overgrown plants that grow on the side of a river or a lake. You know, the ones that are just sort of leaning over into the water. Never knew they had a name. That's a lovely word. It is, isn't it?

For a lovely phenomenon. Yes. Well, I love your trio of words, which people can find on the notes that go with each programme. And if you come to one of our live shows, we play a special game with those three words. Susie gives us the word, and then the audience chooses what they think

would be the ideal definition for the word before Susie reveals what it is. And the best one, or the one that the audience and I seem to think is the best, we give them, amazingly, a Something Rhymes with Purple t-shirt, which is pretty damn exciting. If you want the opportunity to play this game, I think our next show is on the 6th of July at the Bristol Old Vic. The tickets are on sale. Do come along if you can get there. I mean, if you're in the United Kingdom, you can get there, even if you're on the British Isles.

One of our shows, somebody flew in for the day, you know, from Dublin, just to come to our show. Oh, I know, it was so lovely. Lots of birthday presents were given. Birthday recipients are given tickets. So it's a really nice idea. Do you have a poem for us as well? I do have a poem.

I certainly have a poem. And funnily enough, I thought of it. I thought of the poem I would do during the course of the program because I began talking about the king and the queen. And I'm very conscious, of course, that not everybody is in favor of the idea of a king or a queen. We have people listening to this show who live in republics from the idea of a poem which was written in an impromptu. It was just done off the cuff about Charles II. And it's a famous poem, a controversial poem, written by somebody called John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester. And I reached for a copy of one of my favourite books, which is a poem for every day of the year,

edited by Ali Desiri. And I found this poem in it. And this is every day of the year. And this was a poem chosen for the 8th of May, because it was on the 8th of May in 1660 that the English Parliament met to restore King Charles II to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. And he, as you know, Susie, but not everybody will remember this, was known as the Merry Monarch because he loved the arts and he loved wine and he was a bit of a ladies' man. Anyway, John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, often simply known as Rochester, was a controversial writer of poetry and a favourite of Charles.

However, it can be risky being a favourite, and he pushed his luck too far with this poem that I'm going to read you now. It's only four lines long, which we are told he handed to the king himself. And when the king had read this poem, he was furious, and Rochester, the poet, was banned from the court of King Charles. And this is John Wilmot trying to be amusing, but going too far. Just four lines, an impromptu poem. God bless our good and gracious king, whose promise none relies on, who never said a foolish thing, nor ever did a wise one.

I think I've heard that. Yeah, you have heard that. It's a famous, notorious poem. Epigram, yeah. But be warned, you know, you can, impromptu is risky, like surprise parties are risky. That's very true, actually.

They can go horribly wrong, which I really hope we haven't today, because I really enjoyed that situation. Situation? very true, actually. They can go horribly wrong, which I really hope we haven't today because I really enjoyed that situation. Well, I'd like to be in any situation with you, Susie Dent. I very much enjoyed that conversation. I hope our listeners, well, I've just said, didn't I? Well, I hope nothing went wrong and then promptly delivered the mistake, a mistake, one of many. But if you did love the show and you will forgive me my mistakes, then please keep following us wherever you get your podcasts and on social media. And for more Purple, you can consider the Purple Plus Club,

where you can listen ad-free and get some exclusive bonus episodes on words and language, including, I think, on this one. If you live in the United Kingdom or have access to a machine that can give you TV shows in the United Kingdom, you can see Susie Dent and me popping up on a TV show that we have here made by Channel 4 called Celebrity Gogglebox. Yes, you can watch it or stream it on Channel 4 on Friday evenings. I think it's at 9pm. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Deo with additional production from Hannah Newton,

Naomi Oiku, Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, Rishi, who is our mastermind today at the keyboard, because where on earth is he? He's eating some muffins somewhere. Yeah, the muffin king himself, gully. And our next live show is on the 16th of July at the Bristol Old Vic.

Tickets have gone on sale.