Something Rhymes with Purple - Galvanise

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

Did you know that every time you galvanise yourself to pick up the saxophone, or pop on a cardigan before sipping a glass of pasteurised milk, or you enjoy a Caesar salad and a play on a Rubik’s Cube you have someone in particular to thank for the pleasure?  This week we’re returning to the ever-rich world of eponyms. Join us to find out how everything from the Cyrillic alphabet to chauvinism can be traced back to one man or woman in history. A Somethin’ Else production.  We love answering your wordy questions on the show so please do keep sending them into [e-mail]  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 Amaranthine – undying and immortal; a beautiful purple/red colour  Brindle – streaked or spotted with a darker colour (especially in dogs)  Arcadian – idyllically simple and contented  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. Thank you so much for joining us. We are a podcast about words and language and we cover as many different themes as possible and chat and whittle quite a bit along the way and with me I'm Susie Dent is as always my fellow logophile Giles Brandreth. Hi Giles. It's good to be with you. Everybody when they send me an email now they always begin it with saying I hope you're having a good day or I hope you have they obviously have been instructed to do this with an email I want people just to get on with it.

But have you been having a good few days since we last spoke? Yes, I have, thank you. I think the worst one to start with is, how are you? Oh, yes. That's because I don't think actually they really want an answer. But I remember an Australian colleague when I worked at Oxford University Press, Tim, and it took me ages to work out why. I would be walking along the corridor passing him and he'd go, hi, how are you? And I would start to say, well, I'm fine, thank you.

And he was long gone. He was totally long gone. So I think it's just a throwaway, how are you? And if you really want the answer, I am absolutely fine, thank you. How about you? I'm well. As I've spent the week cutting out interesting things from the newspaper to share with you. The one that I cut out this week, this is newcomers to the podcast. One of the things that I've been doing recently is sort of scanning the papers for anything to do with words and language. And there's a story every day. This one struck a chord with me because we had a last podcast.

We had some young school kids inquiring about the use when signing off letters of yours faithfully and yours sincerely. And I commended them for their concern. And they clearly are not people who would be guilty of what I read about in the paper. The headline says typos spell disaster for job seekers as most CVs contain mistakes. A CV being a curriculum vitae, meaning, what does that mean? It means kind of the course of one's life, really. So curriculum goes back to the Latin carere, meaning to run, which is actually behind courier, career, chariot, car, cart, really productive word.

Well, when you apply for a job or, you know, want a promotion or something, you send in a CV, which is your curriculum vitae. I think in America they call it a resume rather than a CV. Yes, a summary, yes. Anyway, a jobs website did a survey and they discovered that almost two in three CVs contain spelling mistakes and one in three had at least five or more errors, which is not very good, is it? They studied 150,000 CVs and found that the three most commonly misspelt words were organisation, modelling and behaviour. Completing the list of top 10 spelling errors were judgment, transferable, labour, spelling it obviously the British way with O-U-R, equipment, practised, demeanour and liaising.

It's interesting with organisation. I'm hoping that they're not calling a typo the use of a Z in there instead of an S. They probably are. Yeah, well, that would be erroneous because, as you know, a lot of people assume that's American English, but actually for a lot of people, including Oxford, that is the standard way of spelling it and also closer to the Greek etymologically because their verbs end in I-Z-O.

So, yeah, I always spell it with a Z. They do make the point here. They actually look into American spellings because people sometimes are using a computer that does automatic American spellings. And they say, for example, if you spell analyze, A-N-A-L-Y-Z-E, which is the American version. Is that right? We all spell it with a Y. Everyone spells it with a Y. It's whether it's an S or a Z. Or an S or a Z. Anyway, they make the point, you're looking for a job. You want to make the person reading this feel that you are on top of

things, accessible, so that if you casually use American spellings and you're applying in the UK, maybe that's a mistake. Maybe you should think that through. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because in the dictionary, it also does give Z-E as a British spelling, albeit S-E being the one that's most frequently used in British spelling. But, you know, as always, Giles, I always say, yes, but if you look back to the 16th century, you will find that that is how we used to spell it. And such is the case for analyse. The very first instances of it are with a Z. Well, this survey also, they interviewed people who, as it were, were receiving these CVs, the employers.

And they, on the whole, said people tended to send them too much information. But they really did, when there were grammatical or spelling errors, they did notice them and they didn't like it. But what was particularly amusing is that quite a percentage on the CVs, they actually gave the telephone number wrong so that if you were going to phone them to say, come for an interview, you couldn't get through. Oh, no. Yes. That's basic yeah i would say also quite a lot of people doing the cv didn't update their email address so the point is attention to detail is everything i did just the very word of expression curriculum vitae or cv just makes me shudder actually it's just a horrible thing to have to sit down and do so i do have some sympathy there we're very lucky to be

self-employed people. Now, look, I was thinking today about my Adam's apple. I don't know why. I saw it in the mirror and I thought, oh dear, this looks grotesque. Is it very prominent? Well, today it seemed to be. I don't know.

Do you know what the adjective for that is? Just to throw that in. You are cock-throppled. No, there's a word for having a prominent Adam's apple. Yes, cock-throppled. Explain that to me. Analyse it. Well, it's because I think a cockerel, it's got such a scrawny neck and then it's got a little sort of, I don't know what you would call it technically, but that little sort of protuberance in its neck.

And the throuple bit, I suppose it just is to do with your throat. I'm going to look up throuple actually. Yes, the throat, the windpipe or the gullet it's related to throttle which is to squeeze someone's windpipe um so to be cock throttled is to have a neck or a windpipe or you know whatever that looks a bit like a cockerel and it's called the adam's apple of course is the common name for this projection of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx it's an eponym isn't it that's why that's why i brought it up, because tradition has it that the name derives from the belief that a piece of the apple from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, given to Adam by Eve, let's blame the woman right from the beginning,

stuck in his throat. Where actually the story comes from is a mystery, because there's no reference to it in the Bible. I think in Genesis, God says of the tree, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die. But I think the bit about it sticking in the throat is just a sort of romantic addition as the years go by. Not only that, but I don't think it was necessarily an apple either, because I think the fruit wasn't specified. And some people believe it was a grape, a fig. Some people think it was wheat. So yeah, the jury's out on that one as well. So Adam, we don't know whether he existed.

It probably wasn't an apple. And yet we call it Adam's apple. We're going to go into the world again of eponyms. What is an eponym exactly? An eponym is a thing or a place that is named after a particular person. And it goes back to the Greek for epi, upon, and nym, name. So that is an eponym. Well, there are literally thousands of them. We could do a complete A to Z from Atlas through to Zeppelin. We have done many before, actually. We had a whole program devoted to them. So this is kind of take two, isn't it? This is take two. But to be honest, that was two years ago. Two

years from now, we could do take three because there are so many. There are thousands of eponyms and I find them completely intriguing. I would love to be an eponym because it means you live in the language forever, which would be fantastic. A brandreth actually is an eponym, isn't it? There is a brandreth. As I've often said in the dictionary, it's defined as a sub... A rock formation, isn't it? Yes, a rock formation.

Also, it's a kind of trivet. Oh, OK. Like a tripod type thing. Yeah. One of the definitions in the OED is brandreth, a substructure of piles. That's it. It's piles of stone. I think if you look back to Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, then brand and brandreth, I'm not sure how they would have pronounced it, was a grate. So we can make all sorts of

bad puns about you being grating, but I wouldn't say that. Obviously, you did say in our previous episode that you would like to have the name brandreth mean a nice smell in the air. Oh, a lovely fragrance as opposed to bad breath Brandreth. It's sweet smelling Brandreth. I love that. Yes. And dent. Well, unfortunately, I'm already in there, but not named after.

It's not an eponym, obviously, but I'm in there as basically a kind of indentation or all sorts of different things. But I think I said that I would like a dent to be a word that fills a linguistic gap. Well, you're exactly that. You do fill so many linguistic gaps. Let's explore some more eponyms. And let's maybe make these ones, ones that are not obvious, like Adam's apple is obviously about Adam adam's apple it's obviously about adam atlas it's obviously about the character in greek mythology uh one of the titans who you know was part of the attempt to overthrow zeus i'm not sure quite why we get the atlas from that but anyway he gave his name to the atlas mountains why is an atlas called an atlas because of atlas uh because he held up the world didn't he so he was at was Atlas held the world above his head.

And I think Mercator, who was one of the early map makers, put a figure, it's coming back to me now, put a figure of Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders on the title page of his first collection of maps. First published around 1595. Well, there are so many lovely backstories behind eponyms. So quite often in the dictionary you'll find, for example, one of my favourites, saxophone. So you will find named after the Belgian musical instrument designer, Adolphe Sax. But actually, if you look into his life, you just see how lovely it is that he has a legacy at all, because he had a really tough time of it Giles he faced many brushes with death so this Agatha he as a child fell from a height of three floors and was believed dead he drank a bowl full of water with some kind of bleach or acid in it mistaking it for milk swallowed a pin was in a gunpowder explosion and avoided accidental poisoning from varnished furniture

where he was sleeping i mean honestly fell into a river you name it it happened to him i'm not sure whether any of these are apocryphal but clearly he had nine lives and his mother apparently said that he was a child condemned to misfortune and his neighbors called him little sax the ghost which is amazing so isn't it really nice that we have the saxophone in his name? I love it. Nine lives and ten brothers and sisters. That is fantastic. Because as you say, his story is pretty fraught. And I think he ended up, didn't he, dying literally in poverty, despite the enormous success of his instrument. I think this was before intellectual property got going. Do you like the

sound of the saxophone? I love, I would love to be able to play the saxophone. There's something very sexy about the saxophone, don't you think? I do. I love it. Well, we're raising our glasses to Adolf Sachs. Give us some more. Dip into your eponym grab bag. Okay. Well, as you know, I'm always trying to learn a new language and i was incredibly impressed that rachel who i work with on the british game show that you and i met on countdown i was very impressed that she learned russian because she has married a russian and pasha her husband's mum cannot understand english so she learned russian from a language learning app and she learned cyrillic obviously it's it's alphabet which looks very alien to a lot of our eyes. But did you know that Cyrillic

was named after a 9th century missionary called Saint Cyril? I think I did know this. I think Saint Cyril is big in Russia, but I know nothing more about him. It's Cyrillic. It's the script that they use. It's the script. Yes. It's the alphabet used by a lot of Slavic peoples, and especially those, I think, annexed to, historically at least, to the Orthodox Church. So it's used for Russian, it's used for Serbian, Ukrainian, and lots of other Slavic languages.

And Saint Cyril was one of two Byzantine brothers, Cyril and Methodius, and they actually created something called the glagolitic alphabet. The who alphabet? The glagolitic script. Now that comes from a Slavonic word meaning utterance, and that is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. And it is said that they wanted to translate liturgical books, which were often in Latin, into contemporary language that would be understandable to most Slavs. Because the words of their language couldn't easily be written using

the Greek or Latin alphabets, Cyril decided to invent a new script, which was called Glagolitic, which he based on the local dialect of Slavic tribes around him. So he was really noted for that. And a lot of other people then contributed to the Cyrillic alphabet that century. I mean, it begins really to mean exaggerated patriotism in the early days, but it's been modified. What would you say it means today? Well, today it is kind of excessive or prejudice support for a particular group. And it became particularly associated with male prejudice against women. So I was looking up in the OED the very first mention of, do you remember the MCP, the male chauvinist pig, which was a big term for a while. It was the first references in Playboy, believe it or not. And it says up

against the wall, male chauvinist pig. I don't know anything more than that. But yes, he was apparently extremely patriotic. And I think his name was then popularised in a play called Cocarde Tricolore. But after the fall of Napoleon, Chauvin was used to ridicule any old soldier of the empire who was still excessively admiring of the emperor and his acts. And that is how it came to mean something that was extreme and often quite prejudiced. He was devoted, Chauvin, to Napoleon. I mean, he really worshipped him. And I think in the Napoleonic Wars, in serving Napoleon, he was wounded many times.

And he was given a ceremonial sabre, which I once saw in a museum by Napoleon, and a pension. And he just loved Napoleon, even after Napoleon had gone into exile and died and all the rest of it. Chauvin was still bleating on about what a great man. So it's a kind of, he was an extremist in his devotion. That's how we get it. I think we still, I mean, we can see that so many ways today, but we wouldn't call them chauvinists because that has become so inextricable from, you know, from that sort of male prejudice against women, really. Very good. So that's the origin of chauvinism, Nicolas Chauvin. Give me another one, a word that we take for granted. We hardly know that it is an eponym.

Well, I think maybe a lot of people know this one, but I also like it. If you're wearing a cardie, are you a cardie person? I am a cardie person. I like anything to do with wool and knit, but I like a cardigan because you can undo the buttons and take it off. Oh yes, I am a cardigan person. Well, I think a lot of people know that it comes from the 7th Earl of Cardigan, this particular item of clothing. And he was the leader of the Charge of the Light Brigade.

And his troops are thought to have worn this type of garment. This was during the crimean war and i do remember that actually cravat which i think we covered in our last one or maybe when we were talking about items of clothing cravat goes back to the french cravat meaning a croat because cravats were worn by croatian mercenaries in the french army this was in the 17th century and they would wear this linen scarf around their necks, which then became really fashionable amongst the French. And that's where we get that from. But yeah, it goes back to Croatia. Of course, the charge of the light brigade took place at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Yes, we got that too. And so Balaclava,

that's not quite an eponym, or I suppose it is because Balaclava is a place. Yeah, toponym really. They had those hats and they sort of knitted woolen hat, which the soldiers wore to keep warm. So they were wearing cardigans to keep warm and Baraclavas to keep warm. Isn't that intriguing? I learned something very intriguing from you not long ago to do with eponyms. I assumed when I'd ordered a Caesar salad that it was named after Julius Caesar. And you said not so. You told me that I think the Caesarian operation, when you're delivering a baby via a section cut, is that Julius Caesar? Yeah, although, well, it was because we don't know for sure, but it's historians believe that he was, as Shakespeare or someone puts it, he was ripped untimely from the womb of his

mum which suggests that that kind of operation was performed so that's why it's called a cesarean but the caesar salad is named after the chef who invented it who was caesar cardini and he was an italian immigrant and he opened restaurants in mexico and the us and his daughter has said that her father invented the salad at his restaurant, which is also called Caesar's. This was in 1924, and there was a 4th of July rush. Everyone came in wanting to eat, and the restaurant didn't have any supplies left. So he had to make do with what he had. And apparently, he then just tossed the salad together because he had a lot of salad leaves and other bits and bobs, and kind of would go

to the tables and kind of toss them with great flair as if this was what he had always intended. And that was the original Caesar salad, which didn't, I'm really pleased to hear, include anchovy because I really don't like anchovies. So apparently the original didn't have anchovy in them. We add it with kind of Worcestershire sauce and things. And obviously he had some kind of anchovy taste in there, but not real anchovies apparently. When I next order a Caesar salad, I'll say, I want a proper Caesar salad, please. Hold the anchovies. Hold the anchovies. Absolutely. So I think there were coddled eggs in there because we don't usually have eggs in our Caesar salad, do we? I think that's a nice word for, I would think,

but anyway, lettuce, eggs, and Italian olive oil. So really, really simple. So yes, so that's where we get. But obviously Caesar also gave us Tsar and Kaiser. So his name has been quite productive in lots of different ways. Give me some more eponyms. Okay, galvanising someone into action. This is quite creepy, I always think, because it goes back to experiments that were held by Luigi Galvani. He was an Italian scientist. And basically, if you galvanize someone, you stimulate them into greater activity. But actually, originally, the scene was set in a

little bit like a laboratory, not unlike Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, because he would apply electrodes to a dead frog, switch the current on, and the frog would twitch in a really appallingly kind of lifelike way. And Galvani was the first to perform that experiment and demonstrate, you know, electricity that was created by kind of chemical action. But you can imagine this frog doing these really macabre kind of moves and that's where Galvanise comes from. Wow. And he is a kind of 18th century figure born in Bologna, 1737, died 1798. Galvanise. There we are. Luigi. Well done, Luigi. Give us another one. Knickers. You don't wear knickers. You might wear bloomers, though. Wear bloomers. I like that. Bloomers and knickers are both amusing words to me. Give me the origin of knickers. Bloomer, I'm'm sure we've done because that was amelia bloomer wasn't it amelia bloomer and she liked to wear knickerbockers or loose

trousers instead of a skirt but knickers are short for knickerbockers and i always remember brewer of brewer's phrase and fable i remember this fantastic line that he wrote in 1894 that bloomerism was becoming enough to young ladies in their teens but ridiculous for the fat and 40. But yeah, Knickers are short for Knickerbockers. And this goes back to a book published in 1809 by Washington Irving, who used the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, or Knickerbocker as it would be in German. And he published A History of New York, which was a satire. And it had lots of illustrations in it of Knickerbocker as it would be in german and he published a history of new york which was a satire and it had lots of illustrations in it of knickerbocker men and these were descendants

of new york's dutch settlers and they wore very loose breeches that were then gathered at the knee and in fact it was men who wore knickerbockers for a long time particularly as sportswear and then women decided that they wanted these kind of big knickers for underwear and called them knickers for short even though they said they were anything but short really knickerbocker it's not great to have that as a surname i love it knickerbocker knickerbocker knickerbocker glory the ice cream i mean i love the idea of ordering a knickerbocker glory but i seem to remember that i'm disappointed with it it comes in a tall glass and it's got all sorts of interesting things in it oh it's lovely is it yeah i love those i don't want to be called knickerbockers unless it's a

nod to the different colors that you have on the different layers perhaps and if you remember that pants go back to the italian figure in their comedy their commedia dell'arte of pantaloni yeah and he would wear really bright coloured trousers. But yeah, I don't know why it's called the Knickerbocker Glory. Shall I look it up? Yeah, I'd like to do that, please. Hmm. It doesn't actually say.

1936 is the first reference. I'll tell you what I like. It doesn't say. I like a ball of chocolate ice cream, a ball of vanilla ice cream, and then a hot chocolate sauce poured over it. Ooh. What do you think? Vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate sauce poured over it. Ooh. What do you think? Vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate sauce is amazing. It is.

It is just amazing. But it's got to be a dark hot chocolate sauce. And then, I know this sounds disgusting, but you could add a blob of peanut butter. Good grief. Crunchy peanut butter. Oh, it's so good. Really?

Crunchy peanut butter and porridge is also really good. Yeah. Forgive me. Peanut butter. Now this podcast is getting interesting. People are moving. I mean, they're slowing. People are listening to this as they're running on their run.

They're stopping and thinking, what? Peanut? You're putting vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate sauce, and then adding peanut butter. Yes. I'm sure I told you that when I lived in New York, I always went to, I had ice cream parlours like I'd never seen before over here. And my favourite ice cream concoction was called Nutter Butter. But of course, I couldn't go in and say, could I have some Nutter Butter? Because

I would have been laughed out of town. So I kept trying to say Nutter Butter and I just couldn't get it right. So I made a complete fool of myself. But yes, nuts and ice cream, brilliant combo. I can see nuts and ice cream. I suppose, of course it is, but peanut butter. Wow. I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to live dangerously. But if you put the hot chocolate sauce over it, it kind of melts the peanut butter. Otherwise it does get a bit claggy. But yeah, no, I love it.

Anyway, where were we? We don't, as a result, want salmonella poisoning. Is salmonella named after salmon or is it named after a person? I think salmonella is actually named after a person, as far as I remember, who was called Daniel Salmon. And he was a vet. And he was actually looking into hog cholera, believe it or not, cholera in hogs. And in the course of this, together with, I have to say, he had a research

assistant who hasn't been honoured in language called Theobald Smith. And they discovered this microorganism or bacterium which they then managed to isolate when they were you know trying to treat the hogs for their cholera so yeah that goes back to to him and of course we've got louis pasteur as well he was doing quite i suppose similar things you know he was looking at i mean he's been called the father of microbiology hasn't he hasn't he but he demonstrated that heat would get rid of unwanted microorganisms. I think he was looking at wine in those days, but nowadays, obviously, it is mostly about milk. So he gave us pasteurization. Same period, scotch this rumor for me,

gaga, you know, someone's gaga. I've gone a bit gaga, you're a bit g Gaga. I've gone a bit Gaga, you're a bit Gaga. Somebody told me there's a connection. It's grown up since the time of the Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Same sort of period, I think, as Louis Pasteur, I don't really think of it. And there were signs of a sort of mental disturbance in Gauguin's work and life. And there's a theory that Gaga is eponymously derived from Gauguin. Is there anything in that? Not that I know of. It may be, if you look back in a French esprimological dictionary,

which I will do after this, and then we can come back to it on the next episode. But I know in French, Gaga literally just means someone who is considered senile. But whether or not behind that is Gauguin, I doubt it somehow. It sounds like one of those myths that is compelling, but untrue. But whether or not behind that is Gauguin, I doubt it somehow. It sounds like one of those myths that is compelling, but untrue. But we'll see. So you're thinking the English word Gaga comes from the French Gaga? Yeah. Meaning a senile person. Ah. Yeah. So, yeah. And it sounds to me as if it might predate Gauguin anyway.

Yeah. I don't know. There are great French etymological dictionaries out there, so I'll have a look. Good. Okay, give me some more if we've got time. Okay, well, shrapnel goes back to Henry S. Shrapnel, General Henry Shrapnel, who during the Peninsular War, so this is in the early 19th century, invented a shell that had bullets in it and a small bursting charge. So when it was fired, it would burst the shell and scatter bullets. So pretty horrible, really. It was called shrapnel shell and the bullets were called shrapnel shot or simply

shrapnel for short. But what I always find interesting is that shrapnel also took on a slang sense, meaning coins. So soldiers returning from the First World War would talk about shrapnel in their pocket, meaning loose change. Gosh, it's interesting how a number of these words have a military, several of the words we've already mentioned, have a sort of military connotation. I agree. I can take you on to sadism, if you like. Yes, introduce me to sadism. Okay, so we have the French writer, and he was a soldier too, I think, called the Marquis

de Sade, to thank for this. So he was imprisoned in the late 18th and early 19th century, I think, for writing pornographic books. I don't know if that was exactly why he was imprisoned. But anyway, we know that he wrote these books. And one perversion in particular really fascinated him, and that was inflicting pain on others and the arousal that came from that. So the French named it sadisme and we took on the word sadism. And it's contrasted with masochism, which is pleasure derived or sexual pleasure, particularly derived from experiencing that pain yourself. And that's another eponym. That's from the Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

And the German term was masochismus. That's really hard to say, masochismus. And then again, we adopted that as masochism. Wow. I used to live in Paris and I once saw a remarkable play about the Marquis de Sade. I felt embarrassed to be going to see it. It's extraordinary that, you know, all these years after he was born in 1740, so all these years later, his name is still very much part of the language. But I was very struck by how small the actor playing the Marquis de Sade was. And I met him afterwards in the bar. It was one of those little tiny theatres that they have in Paris,

which is really more of a bar. And you met the cast at the bar after the show. And he told me that he was taller than the Marquis de Sade. And this actor was only about five foot tall. The Marquis de Sade was around five foot tall, but he was supposed to be very good looking. And in the story, they told how at the age of 14, he joined the army and he married well. And his wife towered over him. And certainly part of the play was this contrast between his tall wife and this small man and the games they

got up to. Anyway, we don't need to go into all that. This is a family podcast. Oh, I've got a quotation here from Dessard. As for my vices, unrestrainable rages and extreme tendency and everything to lose control of myself, a disordered imagination in sexual matters such as had never been known in this world, an atheist to the point of fanaticism in two words that I am, Dessard once wrote. And so once again, kill me or take me like that because I shall never change. Oh dear, I don't like the sound of this fellow. Anyway, he died in 1814. Why are we talking about him? Let's raise our game. Let's talk about... What about the man who gave us Rubik's Cube? There was really a Rubik, I assume. Oh yeah, I don't know much about Erno Rubik's, do you? I don't really know how that came about, but I just know that I can't do it. Well, I can't do it either, but I do know the man who brought it, who was a

friend of Rubik's, who brought it to this country from Hungary and made a fortune and used that fortune to create a publishing house called Notting Hill Editions. So out of Rubik's Cube exists Notting Hill Editions. So there we are. Oh, OK. That's really interesting. Shall I tell you about the Stetson? Have you ever worn a cowboy hat? I have. I can't imagine that. A Dallas style.

Was this during your Dallas days? No, no. When I was a little boy, I had a Davy Crockett hat and I had a Lone Ranger mask. And I certainly had a cowboy hat, a big white Stetson. I think I thought I was a Cisco kid. Or the Milky Bar kid. One of the two. John B. Stetson. You will like the sound of him if you didn't like the Marquis de Sade, because he basically mass produced a hat like one that he had made for himself, which was born of necessity, really, because he was going on a long expedition a western like

sort of western style and he produced something called boss of the plains with a really high crown and a wide flat brim and it became essentially the prototype or the model for all other cowboy hat designs that have followed since but the reason you might like him is apparently he was quite paternalistic in the way that he looked after his workers. So he shared the profits. He gave Christmas bonuses. In difficult times, he would give more pay out. He added a library and a dentist and an auditorium and a hospital to his workplace. So he sounds like quite a nice man.

He was a very religious man. And there was apparently this very welcome event every year, which I think was around the Christmas holiday. And he'd have a celebration where he would give awards out and gifts. Men would receive a Christmas turkey, women would receive gloves, and unmarried men were given his cowboy hat. So I like the sound of John B. Stetson. I like the sound of him. Let's take a break. And when we come back, of John B. Stetson. I like the sound of him. Let's take a break.

And when we come back, thinking of that Knickerbocker glory, let me celebrate my favorite, favorite puddings. One is the Peach Melba, named after Nellie Melba. And the other, of course, is the Pavlova. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson,

host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done

was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, why do you want to be comfortable? Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over.

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

visit amex.ca slash ymx benefits vary by card terms apply i want to know more about the marquis de sade but i feel ashamed to be wanting to know more about him so i'm going to stick to people whose contribution to the world has been lighter happier like anna pavlova 1881 to 1931, the great Russian ballet dancer revered throughout the world, born in St. Petersburg, but she literally became a huge international star. And to mark her performances in Australia and New Zealand, chefs there popularized a dish named in her honor consisting of a meringue filled with tropical fruits and covered in cream a pavlova is not the pavlova one of your favorite favorite foods oh it is and the eaten mess is another one which is quite similar but yeah the pavlova is in layers isn't it made in a mold that looks like a tutu

really clever and do you know the peach melba i don don't know anything about it. Now, Dame Nellie Melba was an opera singer, wasn't she? She was. That's as much as I know. Dame Nellie Melba, born Helen Porter Mitchell, Australian. Born in 1861, she became a world-famous prima donna. And in the days, I think, when it was good to have an Italian-sounding name, because it made you... She came from Melbourne.

I think that's why she called herself Melba. You know, it sounds as, I'm going to sing Tosca. So I am Melba from Melbourne. And at the sort of height of her career, Dame Nelly, she became Dame Nelly in 1918. She consulted the famous chef Escoffier, who worked for Ritz, César Ritz, over the menu for a dinner party she was planning. And for dessert, she asked for a pêche flambée. But Ritz insisted that ice would be preferable. And Escoffier settled the dispute by creating a new dish, which combined both peaches and ice together with a raspberry sauce and whipped cream. Pesh Melba was born. Sounds very good. Gosh, so many eponyms to cover and so little time. I think it's time for our correspondence. Yeah, exactly. And see how people have been in touch and what they would like to say. We have one here, Giles, from Kenny Graham, who says, Dear SRWP, There is an expression used often by Scottish sports journalists

when footballers or their managers have transgressed and are called to face disciplinary charges at the football authority offices as having been carpeted or being on the carpet. Where did it originate? This is not obvious to me. I don't even know if this use is peculiar to Scotland. Kind regards, Kenny from Glasgow.

Do you know the answer to this one? I have no idea. Tell me. Okay. Well, it sounds like my neighbour's dog does, if you can hear a bit of barking going on. Because carpets originally covered not floors, but tables or beds. So they were like tablecloths or eiderdowns really in some ways. And it was that early tablecloth meaning that is behind the expression on the carpet. And it was that early tablecloth meaning that is behind the expression on the carpet. And it means to be severely reprimanded by someone in authority. And the idea is that if something was on the carpet, it was under consideration or discussion because it was like someone's file was on the table, like a council table where there

were official documents for discussion and they were placed. If that was on the carpet, it was on the table and ready to be discussed formally. So it was a mass up for discussion really, which is why we might say on the table these days, but on the carpet originally referred to that. That's most intriguing. Very good. Thank you, Kenny from Glasgow. Who else has been in touch? Well, we have a lovely voice note from, and I love this addition to the podcast, that we actually hear from the purple people. This is from Ray Alpsu. I hope I pronounced that right, Ray. Oh, well, let's listen. Hello, Susie and Giles. Enormous thanks for your lovely podcast. I listen to you each week while walking my dog, and I've enjoyed learning something new each time. Last night, I was reading a novel and came across

the term hue and cry. I've read it many times, but I'm curious about the origin of the phrase. With kindest thanks from Ray Alpsu in Fort Worth, Texas. I love the fact that we have such a global audience. It is such a privilege for us, frankly, to be heard in Fort Worth, Texas. Thank you so much, Ray, for being in touch. What's the answer? Human cry. Well, human cry is really an outcry, isn't it? If you raise a human cry, you are up in arms about something. And actually, in early times, if you were witnessing a criminal committing a crime, that's when you could raise a human cry because you'd be calling for others

to join in that felon's pursuit and capture. And it's interesting because in law, the cry had to be raised by the inhabitants of that particular district or that particular village in which the crime was being committed. Otherwise, anyone following this felon would be liable if he or she fell over and hurt themselves, for example, they would be liable for any damages. So there's quite sophisticated law around it. But it came to us in legal French. So eucry, it really means outcry and a cry. So the hue, H-U-E in English,

has nothing to do with the shade of a colour, for example, that we might use it with. That has a different derivation. So from the French, hue, H-U, eucry, outcry and cry. So it's basically a bit of a tautology, meaning lots of clamour. Have you been to Texas? I haven't. Oh, I've been to Texas.

One of the most wonderful places in the world. The whole state is extraordinary. Oh, we might do a whole Texan episode. They've got the biggest and the best of everything in Texas. We should do that. Absolutely. Now, give me your three special words for this week, Susie. Okay. Well, long ago, poets, and we're going to hear your poem in a minute,

they basically imagined a flower that never faded and they called it amaranth. And it goes back to the Greek amaranthos, meaning immortal or unfading. And amaranth is a real plant or a herb, really. It's got really colourful leaves and spikes of flowers. But amaranthine I love because it can mean both undying, immortal, as well as this beautiful purple-red colour, amaranthine. I think it just sounds beautiful. So that's my first one. My second, I should have done this in our dogs episode actually, which we did last week because Brindle was the name of my mum's dog. And it goes back to an old word, brindled, meaning streaked or spotted with a darker colour, which is exactly what this beautiful spring spaniel was. And I just love the word for that reason, brindled, streaked or spotted with a darker colour. And finally,

because things are a bit of a, well, should we say a bit of a mess and, you know, in many different ways around us at the moment, I offer you Arcadian. Arcadian, idyllically simple and contented. And of course, Arcadia was a mountain district in ancient Greece and it was, in pastoral poems, it was full of peace, tranqu tranquility shepherds singing to their sheep just bucolic bliss really so Arcadian is a world that we can all aspire to well I think we must have been in the same mood as you chose that word when I chose the poem because I was looking for a poem that had was about names because we were going to be talking about names. And I thought, is there an eponymous poem? And then I remembered a poem by one of my favourite poets, not as popular as maybe he should be, Lee Hunt, 1784 to 1859.

And the poem is called Abu Ben Adam. Does that name ring a bell for you at all? No. Abu Ben Adam. This is a poem that, as it were, our grandparents would have learned at school. It was once upon a time a very famous poem. And Abu bin Adam, this poem, it recounts a story about Ibrahim im Adam, who was one of the most prominent of the early Sufi saints.

And he lived in the 8th century and, according to legend, had been a prince until he renounced his throne in favour of a life of asceticism and devotion to God and his fellow men. So this is a poem about Abu Ben-Adam. And I think his name only lives because of this poem. Abu Ben-Adam, may his tribe increase,awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, "'and saw, within the moonlight in his room, "'making it rich and like a lily in bloom, "'an angel writing in a book of gold.

"'Exceeding peace had made Ben-Adam bold, "'and to the presence in the room he said, "'What writest thou?' "'The vision raised its head, and with a look made of all sweet accord answered, The names of those who love the Lord. And is mine one, said Abu? Nay, not so, replied the angel. Abu spoke more low, but cheerily still, and said, I pray thee then,

write me as one that loves his fellow men. The angel wrote and vanished. The next night it came again with a great wakening light and showed the names whom love of God had blessed, and lo, Ben-Adam's name led all the rest. That's beautiful. What a story. That is more a story, isn't it? It is a story. It is a story.

But it's a story that packs a punch by a poet who I think still packs a punch and whose life and work is not as well known as it ought to be. No, I agree. I agree. Thank you for that. And thank you to everybody, of of course who has listened to us today please do recommend us to friends if you have liked it and more importantly get in touch via purple at something else.com because something rides with purple is a something else production

produced by lawrence bassett and harriet wells with additional production from chris skinner jen mystery jay beal and goody goody galley gumdrop knickerbocker glory oh mine's a pavlova