Something Rhymes with Purple - Furlong

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Hands and feet at the ready Purple People, today we are looking at the world of measurements.  We’ll find out how Oxens’ shaped our measurement system, why you would have a different weight village to village and how a stick was the object to rule(r) them all. Make sure you aren’t one over the eight for this episode as Susie will be testing your knowledge of some of the stranger units of measure before we jump into the mailbag for some Purple Post featuring the voices of two lovely Purple People. Susie’s trio and Gyles’ poem conclude another Purple plunge for this week.  A Somethin’ Else production.  We love answering your wordy questions on the show so please do keep sending them in to [e-mail]  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to join the Purple Plus Club on 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.  Susie's Trio:  Twindle: old dialect for a twin sibling Miscounsel: bad advice Champagne shoulders (19th century): the sloping kind, because of their resemblance to a champagne bottle. 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

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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 and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast about words, language, and just general witterings, I would say, Giles, of a lovely nature, because this is my favourite hour of the week when I get to look at you on my screen and hear your tales and share a few of my own, share a few of the secret lives, as I call them, of all the words that we pass by in our language without ever giving

them a second thought. How are you? Well, I'm very well. I'm drowning under post. Normally, I'm drowning under emails, but today it's post. I'm involved in a whole range of different societies, fun societies. One of them is the Oscar Wilde Society, of which I am president. And one of our journals, Intentions, arrived today, full of interesting stuff if you want life on the wild side. But another publication arrived that is very relevant to what I think we're going to talk about today. I get a publication on a bimonthly or maybe quarterly basis called Yardstick. And Yardstick is a publication for people who haven't quite gone along with metrication. And I don't quite know why.

I appear to be one of the supporters of this. I've got no objection to metrication and the changes that came along, but I'm a little bit old school. So I'm a long list of people who apparently support this. And so I get yardstick and it celebrates essentially the days before metrication. Oh, okay. So it's not full of disgruntlement and discombobulation asking for everything to be reversed. It's just sort of nostalgia. It's a bit of nostalgia, but it also, I think it celebrates the diversity of measurement. And it reminds us that we think in terms of imperial and metric, but in other parts of the world, there are other ways of doing things. And it's quite intriguing.

Do you still talk in terms of yards? dash, the 220, the 440, that's how they were measured. And so in your head, if you were brought up like that, I was brought up in the 1950s, you reflect your generation. How about you, Susie? I am pretty metric, I would say, apart from when I talk about height and weight, and then I am still with feet and stones for sure. Isn't that true? Babies are still born in pounds, aren't they? Yes, they are still still which is amazing yeah um yeah it's strange even really modern babies are born in pounds they are they absolutely are and um and so if somebody asks me how how tall i am in meters i have absolutely no idea um but that is as you say that's what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about the various bits of

vocabulary related to measurements and after the break in a little while, Giles, I'm going to test you with some of my favourite weird measurements. And boy, do they exist. But we will get to those. Should we start with some of the standards first? Yes, we are going to run a furlong during this podcast. Furlong is one of the oldest words in measurement, isn't it? I think you've told me that before. It is one of those. Yes, it's a unit of length that is um it's about 220 yards if you want to keep it that way and it comes from furrow long really it's a shortening of that and that was the length of a furrow that oxen can plow before they're rested and then turned again

oh i love that okay yeah lovely okay well take us shall we begin with with length sure and let's start with the smallest length that i know, which would be an inch. An inch. That comes from the Latin uncia, which meant a twelfth part. And that also gave us ounce, incidentally, because, of course, there's 12 ounces as well in a... In a pound, exactly. So it's all about division into 12, essentially. Do we know why it's 12 as opposed to 10? Because in some ways, the joke I always used to love

saying was, if God had meant us to go metric, he would hardly have given our Lord 12 disciples. Why is it 12 in the old money and 10 in the new? Yes, that is a really, really good point. Well, I think the Romans originally divided their feet into 16 parts, but then they later split it into 12 uncii, as they say. And that is, I think, because without pocket calculators, it was much easier to divide by 12. That's one of the theories. But then you would say it's much easier for us at least to divide by 10, which probably accounts for why we moved to that. But historically, the foot particularly was part of numerous measurement systems. And the length of a foot, honestly,

it varied from place to place. And it was either divided by 16 or by 12. And it is roughly the length of a human foot, isn't it, a foot? Exactly right. And that's why it's so called. That's why it's so called. And speaking of foot as well, isn't it, a foot? Exactly right. And that's why it's so called. That's why it's so called. And speaking of foot as well, if you look at a mile, that comes from the Roman's word for a thousand, mile, because a mile was approximately a thousand paces. So again, that pace would have been pretty subjective. You know, how many feet would a pace have been? So obviously they needed to have some kind of standard and some

kind of regulation, but they would have literally had to stick their finger in the air and take a guess. Why do we measure horses in hands? Well, again, I think it's probably just goes back to a fairly sort of easy and I don't mean primitive in terms of unsophisticated, but just, you know, before all the technology that we have available to us today, it was just a very, like foot, it was just a very easy way of calculating height. Okay, so we've got an inch, which is, we're now clear what that is.

A foot is literally because of the length of a foot. Then we get up to a yard, three feet in a yard. Is that anything to do with the yard you might walk around? No, that's different. So the yard is a unit of length. That actually goes back to an old English word meaning a twig or a stick. And again, it must have been probably about a three feet stick because the standard English unit of a yard, measurement of a yard is three feet.

And that came about in the medieval period. So they must have had a stick of a particular length and thought we'll go with that, astick indeed and then the yard that is the American garden really that comes from another old English word meaning an enclosure as well as a home actually and it's related to garden and also to orchard and you'll find it in Russian as well I think the Russian for I'm not going to pronounce this properly but the Russian for a town is I thinkod, I think. So in Britain, where our yard is usually just a piece of ground near a building, isn't it? Whereas in the US, it is a garden of a house. And then in Jamaican English, yard also means a house or a home. And so among some expat Jamaicans, a yard is Jamaica. And yard, as in garden, the Y is simply a substitute for the G.

I mean, it's the same word. For the G in Old English, which could be soft. Yes, exactly. The G in Old English could be soft, like germane, as it were. As in the word we still pronounce with a spell with a G, germane. Yes, or it could also be pronounced like a Y. So, do you know what? I have put myself onto a course of Anglo-Saxon pronunciation

because after all this time, my old English pronunciation is not what it should be. So if you were to ask me even to read a text, a lovely passage from Bear Wolf, for example, I wouldn't be able to do it in a way that I would be proud of.

So yeah, that's one of my next ventures. I'm longing for you to do this. One of the great pleasures of my childhood was at school, a teacher called Mr. Gardner, who read us Chaucer. Now, that's probably Middle English rather than Old English. Yes, it is. He read us Chaucer, and he obviously had been on this course. He knew how to pronounce it.

And when he read it, A, it was beautiful. It was just wonderful to hear him speaking it. But B, we really understood it when he did it. A, it was beautiful. It was just wonderful to hear him speaking it. But B, we really understood it when he did it. So that's one accent or one way of pronouncing. And then even older than that is Old English. And that's what you're going to learn. And there are people who know about it who can teach you how that works. Yes. And I have to say, if anyone is interested, and this is for you as well, Giles, if you're interested in a book on old English there is a fantastic treasury of old English words called the word hoard which was written by Hannah Vidin so h-a-n-a and then v-i-d-e-e-n and it has some absolutely glorious things in it I really recommend it it's a lovely lovely read and she does give guidance on

pronunciation after the words as well but I think I need something sort of more kind of sophisticated so that I can actually try and read everything because I go to the OED and I'm faced with a bit of old English and it takes me quite a long time to decipher it and that shouldn't be the case given what I do so I'm one of my failings that I'm determined to to improve upon don't regard it as a failing it's just a gap i guess it's not a failing it's an opportunity as they say an opportunity exactly so we've done inch we've gone from inch to foot to yard yeah uh where do we next go before we get to mile i mean furlong is more than how many yards in a furlong i don't know how many yards oh 220 sorry i did know it's yeah 40 poles as well it was uh oh lord a pole i suppose A pole, I suppose, is like a foot.

I mean, it is literally the length of a pole. Or like the word for... Which one did you say was like a stick? I think it would be like 50 yards a pole. So the stick is the yard. So that goes back to the old English, yard, twig, stick or rod. This is why you've got to concentrate with this podcast. The yard, the yard that is the measurement,

comes from yard meaning a stick. Yes. Whereas the yard, as in your garden, or the backyard, or a prison yard, is a version of garden, when the G was said softly like ya. Yes. I've got it. Yes. Good. Okay, so furlong is 220, and still furlong is used really in relation to horse races.

Horse races. I think exclusively now really, isn't it? Unless they use it in farming, maybe the purple people can tell us. Very good. Well, that's the long and the short of it. That's the length of it. Well, let's do volume now. What do we begin with? Well, we've got the ounces in the fluid out, so we've covered that. We have a gill. Do you know about a gill? I sort of know about a gill because I feel sometimes when you go into a pub and ask for something,

you see them producing little things from the back counter and pouring into it and then into little vessels. And I think I've seen on the side of those vessels, they are a gill or something. Am I got that right? Yeah, well, possibly. This was new to me, actually. So i learned this one from harriet our producer um it's a unit of liquid measure and it's a quarter of a pint ah and it goes back to um again to latin late latin this one and it goes back to um gila which meant a water pot so it was actually used for water and for hydro pots which i like to call water drinkers or drinkers of soft beverages and then it was actually used for water and for hydro pots, which I like to call water drinkers or drinkers of soft beverages. And then it was transferred over to a measure or container for wine.

So me, not drinking alcohol, I'm a hydro pot. I like that. So we've had the fluid ounce. We've now had the gill, pronounced gill, not jill. I think it's the gill. Then we have a pint. Now, pint, we don't know where that comes from. Its origin is entirely unknown.

You're joking. No. Nobody knows the root of the word pint. No. Pick up a pint. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. In the Oxford English Dictionary, which is our primary source, what does it say?

It says origin unknown. I mean, how far back does it go? We took it from old french so we can take it back to probably the normans but then it's lost we have absolutely no idea and is it possible that one day it will be found i mean is oh yeah so it's like being on the beach with your machine trying to pick up an old coin you can actually be out there looking for the source of a word and suddenly you can come across an old manuscript or something that gives you the source. The archaeology will go on for sure. So I'm just looking down here to say it may come from a Latin, a similar word in Latin, but it says the form of the French word

is unexpected, so they can't quite work it out. Possible that the post-classical Latin word was borrowed from a vernacular language. Basically they don't know so yeah lots of suggestions but the jury is out pick up a pint uh well there we are what about the surname pinter do you think it's connected with it somebody who delivered pints was a painter yeah i think you might absolutely be right with that yeah harold pinter of course great british playwright nobel laureate uh not so well known was har Punter, author of The Misprint, a not very successful play. That's my joke.

Okay, on we go. Pint, you get a quart next. I'm so gullible. A quart is the unit of capacity. That's a quarter of a gallon. That comes from Old French and then ultimately again Latin. Quarter pars, the fourth part. Oh, so it's as simple as that.

Quart is short for a quarter. Yes. And how many pints in a quart? Oh, my goodness. A quarter of a gallon. So how many pints in a gallon? We're mixing it up here now, aren't we? I'm going to have to look this up.

No, because it's the same. These are all what we would call imperial measures. So called because they were the measures that were agreed to be used across i'm i assume the british empire and it's a day that's why they're called imperial measures that's absolutely right yes but okay so there's eight pints in a gallon good yeah i didn't know that eight pints in a gallon and a quart is a quarter of a gallon so there are two pints in a gallon and a quart is a quarter of a gallon. So there are two pints in a quart. In a quart. Yay!

And the gallon itself is from, guess what, the French gallon. And then from Latin, from a Latin word meaning a pail or a sort of bucket. And that became a liquid measure. You can tell it's a bit of a stab in the dark with what they used for measurements. But yeah, I love that. So it's like bit of a stab in the dark with what they used for measurements but yeah i love that so it's like a a pail a gallon is a like a sort of is it a word like ballon like balloon i'm not sure what i do know is that i have to race through the mass measurements because these are my absolute favorites and it's almost time for the break but can i quickly run through those okay

okay so the pound goes back as i think you probably know, to the Latin Libra Pondo, and that was a Roman weight equivalent to 12 ounces. Which is why the pound sign is that L with the two lines across it. Exactly right. And Libra, of course, meant scales or balance, and Pondo was by weight, and of course, we have the star sign Libra, which is a pair of scales. And then the money sense of a pound came about because the first pound in currency sense was literally a pound weight of silver. So we talked about ounces. That's a 12th part. And in imperial measurement, it would have been the 12th part of a pound.

And stone, I just love this. This was the imperial unit of weight. Now, this is recorded since the 14th century, and it's now 14 pounds. But once upon a time, it was all over the shop because it would have been just the weight of a particular rock used as a local measure. So each village might have had a different rock.

Isn't that great? That's fantastic. In the old days, villages also had different times during the day, didn't they? Yes, I remember you saying. Because there wasn't one unified. It's extraordinary. So the stone in one town would be different from another town because they were using a different stone as the core measurement. So if you want to... So a stone is called a stone.

Yes. Well, look, you've rattled us through that in order to get to the break. In fact, listeners may be intrigued to know that they are good, actually. We can have our break now. And we like a break. And I like the ads. to know that they were good, actually. We can have our break now, and we like a break, and I like the ads. But you could get all episodes ad-free if you wanted to sort of become one of our subscribers.

And you get discount codes as well on the merchandise ranges and access to the bonus episodes. And you've got quite a fun one on the nation's favourite bad language. And we're doing a more serious one, as you know, on our best-loved poets. Anyway.

And I would just add, Giles, that for those who can't afford it, and I know times are particularly tough at the moment, language and we're doing a more serious one as you know on our best loved poets anyway and i would just add just that for those who can't afford it and i know um times are particularly tough at the moment you can still get all the podcasts free so i guess we had a few people saying i can't you know i can't listen anymore because i can't subscribe actually you really really can this is just an extra should you want it this is a bonus bonus. This is just an extra for £1.89 a month. But the great original is there. All the backlist, all the future podcasts freely available. Freely, freely, freely available. But if you want to find out more about this Purple Club, and you can even start a seven day free trial, just follow the links in the programme description.

Okay, time to take a break. And then we're going into the weird as well as the wonderful units of measurement. I've got some surprises ahead, apparently. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches.

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We're covering the latest in film, video games, music, manga, and obviously, anime. Get the latest on the anime effect. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Welcome back to Something Wise with Purple, where I am leading Giles through the slightly, well, it's not heavy, nor is it weighty. It's actually quite light subject of measurements. I think the mathematical side of it is probably quite complicated, but we are gliding over the linguistic side of things. And Giles, I promised you that I would come up with some of the weirder measurements that have actually been formally accepted,

but that you may not ever have heard of. I'm sure I won't have heard of any of them. Because when it comes to things to do with weights and measures, science, mathematics, statistics, I look the other way. So surprise me. Okay. Have you heard of a beard second? A beard second? No, I have not.

All right. Can you guess what it might be? A beard second. Well, is it when you have had one over the eight, you've drunk too much, and you've made the foam from the beer has created a second beard around your original beard? I love that idea. Nothing to do with measurements,

but unless, as you say, it's the level of being drunk. No, it's actually the approximate length a man's beard grows in one second, which is five nanometres. How amazing! It's so so niche it's just fantastic it's extraordinary what just forgive me i know what a second is what's a nanosecond so nano means tiny you know when we talk about nanoparticles they are absolutely tiny and the official definition um is i'm going to look it up for you because I'm not a physicist. It is, okay, the prefix nano

means one billionth and therefore one nanometer is one billionth of a meter. And so one single sheet of paper is about a hundred thousand nanometers thick. That's incredible. So that's how tiny, there's a tiniest amount of growth in one second of your beard if you had one yeah well i when i mean i i do shave every day so there's something growing every night of course okay only on my chin why isn't it growing on the top of my head anyway that's by the way it's very old isn't it okay so um a smoot is another one that i love so a smoot So a Smoot is, I think, five foot seven, roughly. Okay. And this goes back to the chairman of the American National Standards Institute,

who was called Oliver Smoot. And in 1958, he attempted to gauge the length of the entire Harvard Bridge using his body as the measuring tape. Oh, hilarious. How tall are you, by the way? Well, when I stand up, A, I've shrunk. I was 5 foot 11 at my height, the height of it. But what's rather interesting is that we have at home on a wall

the measurements of ourselves and all the children over the years. My parents, did your parents do this at home? Yes, absolutely. And so you've seen me, as it were, at my height. It's 5 foot 11. the children over the years my parents did your parents do this at home absolutely um and so you've seen me as it were at my height it's five foot eleven as the years go by i i was going up one way and i'm now coming down the other way it's rather sad when i stand up if i stand up properly which i don't do as well as i should i'm five foot ten and a half what what are you well i started out at five seven and a half but I too have lost half an inch, which is a bit depressing. And I see it daily in the increases, just overnight increases. I mean,

forget the beard seconds of my two girls, because they have far, far outreached me now. So yes, I'm going to become one of those grannies that just looks up to their grandchildren, I can tell. So that's a smoot. Now, there is also, and I love this, something called a warhol. Now, this comes from Andy Warhol's famous, famous statement that everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes. Okay. So a warhol is 15 minutes of fame and it can be used in multiples. So if you have one kilo Warhol, you are famous for 15,000 minutes. That's 10.42 days. A mega Warhol means famous for 15 million minutes or 28 and a half years. And you've definitely had more than a mega Warhol. I think that's completely brilliant. So do I. I love that one.

Now, some that you will have heard of, but they are just quite strange, but I thought I would mention them anyway, is the baker's dozen. Yes, I've heard of that. That's 13, isn't it? Why was it introduced? What is the meaning of it? Various suggestions for this. So some people think it was just not to shortchange the customer because you could actually be liable for severe punishment in medieval times if you were to do so and some people say oh this law that existed then in the 13th century meant that the authorities could take off cut off a hand by axe and other dire consequences so you could say understandably English bakers erred on the side of caution and then gave 13 loaves or 13 rolls or whatever. Others just say it was for tax reasons that actually you, I don't quite understand

the financial implications of it, but again, it would be to do with possibly shortchanging your customer and then having tax liability as a result. But yeah, isn't it incredible that we still talk about a baker's dozen? And of course, dozen goes back to the French douze, meaning 12, but the baker's dozen is 13. Another measurement thing that I always get wrong, speaking of dozens, and this you can see changing in real time if you look at the dictionary databases that I study, is talking 10 to the dozen, or I say, yeah, I say 10 to the dozen, which doesn't make sense at all, but actually it's 19 to the dozen, i say yeah i say 10 to the dozen which doesn't make sense at all but actually it's 19 to the dozen isn't it because you're talking so quickly that for every 12 words that you would

normally speak you're actually speaking 19 but it's moving towards 10 to the dozen which makes zero sense it makes zero sense at all it's like cheap at half the price i'm intrigued that though we've gone because of this dozen and ten thing though we've gone, because of this dozen and ten thing, though we've gone metric, eggs are still being sold in dozens, aren't they? They are. Well, we don't really have a word for 12, do we? A collection of 12. Except a dozen. I know, it's interesting, isn't it?

Another one is a hundred. Now, a hundred was in England. It was administrative area, really. It was larger than a village and smaller than a county. And it was around a 100 hides in size. Now hide was another one that you will find and a hide again nothing to do with the fur of an animal or the skin of an animal which you might suspect and simply another old English term which was used as a unit of measurement and I'm just trying to see exactly

what it was. Between 60 and 120 acres. But it was essentially the amount that would support a family and its dependents. And I think it probably goes back to a Germanic word meaning household members. So it was enough to feed a family, but that differed from county to county. You're brilliant. I've got nuts and more for you. Yes, far away. I'm loving it. A necum, syncum and swancum. Necum, syncum and swancum.

Yes. These are a form of measurements. Well, you're necking it, you're syncing it. I mean, this is, you're going to end up one over the eight. You can explain that in a moment. You're necum, pouring it down your neck. You're syncum, it sinks into your stomach. And then swancum, what does that mean?

You become boastful and start swanking, do you? No, it's interesting. So, swank is a dialect word that you'll find in a dictionary of 1721, I think that's the first reference we have, and it's defined as the remainder of liquor at the bottom of a tankard pot or cup, which is just sufficient for one draught, which it is not accounted good manners to divide with the left-hand man. And according to the quantity is called either a large or little swank. In other words, you can have it yourself because it's too little to be offered to your companion. And that might be a little bit insulting. So the necum, syncum and swancum were the three draughts into which a jug of beer was divided.

Gosh. I love that. This is very intriguing. Yes. Interesting. Clearly, drinking has been part and parcel of our culture for a long time. Yes. And you mentioned one over the eight. That was because it was once said that an average man, and it was man, should be able to consume eight pints of ale before appearing drunk. So if you're one over it, you were probably, you know,

pretty drunk. And it must have been small beer rather than strong beer because that's a gallon of ale of course a gallon of ale absolutely and you occasionally go into pubs and you see they've got a glass that is as it were the shape yeah into long glass and people do actually order a gallon of ale and attempt to drink it it can't be good for your health can it to drink No. To drink that much, that quickly. All those student initiation rites and things, yeah, managed to swerve those, I have to say. I did too.

I don't, I don't think they had, well, they avoided me, they knew I wasn't my sort of thing. A friend of mine, you know, didn't invite me to it. He said, I'm having a stag do, but I'm not asking you. I don't think you'd enjoy it very much,

but I want you to know I'm still a friend. And I would invite you, but I don't think it's your thing and he was right he's totally right i have to say i have avoided hen nights i just know that i would be rubbish i love yeah i'll be very happily get one over the eight with just a small group of friends i know really well just around the table but the thought of going out in pink suspenders and balloon bras and chaining them to a lamppost is just, yeah, I don't think that's very surprising. I don't think any purple person would be surprised that we say that. But I tell you-

Oh, forgive me, one more question. You mentioned stone, okay? The weight. Stoned, getting stoned, we're now talking about alcohol. Is that anything to do with the weight, the stone? Oh yeah, not alcohol. This is kind of drugs, isn't it? Oh, oh, I thought you got stoned on alcohol as well you don't no I mean turn off now if you don't want to listen to an old fuddy duddy I have never done well I've taken the odd aspirin but I've never taken drugs of any kind so I wouldn't know that I thought you could be stoned on alcohol no you just get drunk on alcohol do you get stoned on drugs and is that to do with the weight you've taken so much I think it's just that you're so kind of knocked think it's just that you're so

kind of knocked out it's almost like you've been sort of knocked down by a stone that's my guess we've had some lovely letters in from our purple people and i think we also have the voice notes which i'm really enjoying it's so lovely to actually hear their voices um it's interesting you call them voice notes i mean that's a nice thing to describe i mean they're just sort of voice messages aren't they why are they why do we call them the same? I mean, that's a nice thing to describe. I mean, they're just sort of voice messages, aren't they? Why do we call them notes? Same thing. I'm not sure really. Just a modern phrase. Yeah. A voice message, given that it's being sent to someone else, might be a nice thing. But anyway, whatever it is, we're really happy to hear from you. And our first one came from Gemma Thompson. Dear Giles and Susie, thank you so much for

your wonderful podcast. I was wondering if you could shed some light on something that has always puzzled me. Why, when we pay homage to something, do we pronounce it homage, but pronounce it differently when we say that something is an homage? Are there any other words that are used differently in this manner? Warmest wishes and many thanks, Gemma Thompson. That's interesting, isn't it? You pay homage to something, but you might regard as a tribute, an homage. I think that is intriguing. What do you think about that? It is. And it set me thinking about was it pronounced differently according to their part of speech. And I would love to hear from the purple people because I was just thinking, gosh, I can't think of many actually that would fit that bill my instinct is that if you pay homage to someone is part of a fixed phrase that we have known for a very long time and it's kind of got that linguistic apparatus that makes it okay but when you say oh it was an homage to someone I think we've become just a little bit perhaps more

pretentious possibly but in a in a fashionable way and decided to pronounce it the French way and of course as you know Jaz sound just has kind of pronunciation just took off a long time ago divorced itself from spelling and it's got a mind of its own really so we love to muck around with the sound I mean homage itself if you remember goes back to the Latin homo and homin man because the original use of it was to describe the ceremony by which a vassal declared himself to be his lord's man in other words the servant of his lord but i suspect that's why we go for the french is that the context in which we use homage homage now is is less to do with paying homage as as the fixed phrase and much more to do with

just oh yes we we did it as an homage or an homage or a homage i think homage just sounds a bit in for a dig and we always try it's the same process at work when we say oh he gave the invitation to giles and myself and we put myself in there because me just sounds a little bit too colloquial and it doesn't sound correct but actually it is or you know it's just um him and me for example yes it's that kind of thing where i think we kind of slightly over correct ourselves i think that's probably what's happening there what is graham manton written to us about hi suzy i have a question for you is there any relationship between sledge being a means of transport on snow and to sledge being to verbally 1500s and that comes from Dutch and it's related to sled and sleigh and slide and slither so lots and lots of kind of relatives in the same family but the sort of use in cricketing and it is essentially cricketing isn't it that we talk

about sledging an opponent that came about in the 1970s and it was actually Australian cricketers who started to use the word for making really needling remarks to try and put their opponents off and break their concentration. And the idea behind this is not the sledge that you use on snow, but the sledge hammer and the kind of lack of subtlety involved in using it. In other words, it's a really kind of blunt instrument, but it, I mean, it works for sure, but it's heavy handed and it's not particularly, as I say, nuanced or sophisticated, but that's where that one comes from. Nothing to do with the snow sled. Very good. Yeah. That's very good. So we've got a snow sled and we've got a sledgehammer, completely different. And we've now got three special words.

We do. Susie's Trio, what have you got? I just came across this one the other day. I'm often asked if there's a collective noun for nieces and nephews, just as we have siblings. And you will have heard this, Giles, nibblings. Nibblings, I love it, nibblings. Definitely gaining traction.

But I came across a twindle. And a twindle was old dialect for a twin sibling. I just really like that, me and my twindle. Well, but you couldn't be anything else. But if you're twins, you will be siblings, won't you? By definition. So you don't, I mean, but a twin is a twindle. I mean, a twin is a sibling.

You don't need the word. It's a redundant word for you. But if you are talking about your sibling, so it's not, it wouldn't be used by anyone other than a person who is a twin. Fine. You'd say, oh, I was saying to my twindle yes that's quite sweet exactly or my twindles if there's more than one of you but then you would then you'd be triplets you'd be triplets and it would be a yes i don't know what that would be i'm not sure about this word i'm i mean i'll let it pass because it's you but um i just thought it sounded cute it does sound cute sounding cute

just very obvious. You can see exactly where this one is coming from, but it's just quite pithy. If you've been given a bad piece of advice or information, you can just say, I have been miscounselled or miscounselled itself is a really bad piece of advice. I just quite like that one.

No, but I think that's rather good. I have been miscounselled on this. Yes. Very good. Yes. And the last one, 19th century, champagne shoulders. Came across this one the other day. And that's if you've got really sloping shoulders because then you look like a champagne bottle.

Oh, I like that. He's got champagne shoulders. No one's ever going to use this, but I just quite liked it. I think it's wonderful. People should. People should be talking like you, Susie. You're brilliant. Oh, thank you. You've got a poem? Well, I'm rather pleased with the poem I've chosen this week. It's one of my favourites, but I don't think I've done it before.

Some of the best bit of advice I was ever given when I had some awful problem, somebody said to me, you know, the best way out is through the door. Obviously, the obvious solution, you're trying to get out of the window, trying to get to the roof. Actually, the best way out is through the door. And that's why I think this poem, which is by a Czech scientist, I think he was an immunologist.

Anyway, he's also a poet, Miroslav Holub. I think it's one of the most useful and inspiring that I know. It's simply called The Door by Miroslav Holub. Born 1923, died 1998. Go and open the door. Maybe outside there's a tree, or a wood, a garden, or a magic city. Go and open the door. Maybe a dog's rummaging. Maybe you'll see a face, or an eye, or the picture of a picture. Go and open the door. If there's a fog, it will clear.

Go and open the door, even if there's only the darkness ticking, even if there's a fog it will clear go and open the door even if there's only the darkness ticking even if there's only the hollow wind even if nothing is there go and open the door at least there'll be a draft oh that's excellent it's good poem isn't it it is i always learn stuff and i just love the the kind of cadence of that one i learned so much stuff being with you suzy dent you are amazing and i mean i hope the people who subscribe to yardstick will have heard you and learned things that they didn't know oh well yeah it's been a fun one don't forget the beard second um and thank you to everyone who's listened today i hope that you've enjoyed it as much as Giles and I have. And do please keep getting in touch.

Purple at somethingelse.com. Something Rhymes with Purple is, what is it, Giles? Well, it's a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells with additional production from Steve Ackerman,

Jen Mystery, Jay Beely, and the man who really does have champagne shoulders. Oh, yes. Gully, but not Teddy I have to say we have to thank Teddy as well

he's been he's been on hand today because Gully quite frankly has just clearly had some miscounsel and just taken off oh can

can we do an episode all about Teddies and Teddy Bears and toys have we done a toy episode oh I would love that rocking horses oh please

oh we have loads to say. Okay, let's do that. Okay. We'll play around with toys quite soon.