Something Rhymes with Purple - Garbelage

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

This week Susie and Gyles are talking dirty. No, not in that way, get your head out of the gutter... Literally. Join us as we explore where words such as 'trash', 'garbage', 'litter' and 'trash' originate from. So tune in and let's talk all kinds of rubbish together! We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our 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:  Rumptydooler: Something excellent. (rattlers, rippers, ripsnorters, roarers, clinkers, corkers, fizzers, screamers, sneezers, hummers, dingers, humdingers, and rumptydoolers Solivagant: Wandering alone. Nod-crafty: Having the knack of nodding the head with an air of great understanding, when you actually tuned out ages ago. Gyles' poem this week was 'If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking' by Emily Dickinson If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. 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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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello, welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple with me, Giles Brandreth, speaking to you from London, England, and my colleague and friend, Susanna Dent, known to us all as Susie Dent, who is speaking to us from Oxford. Susie, what do you think of the show so far? I think that sounds like there's some comedy routine where I should have a pat answer to that the pat answer to that is rubbish uh oh it's from more it's Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise one of their catchphrases or at least a word that came to their lips very easily Eric Morecambe's

line rubbish is on the agenda but before we get to, I want to ask you if you have ever discovered the novels by E. F. Benson about two characters called Miss Map and Lucia. Map and Lucia. No, is the answer. Do you know about these books? I don't. Tell us. Well, I want to spread the word about them. They were written, the books, in the 1920s and 1930s by a man called E. F. Benson, Fred Benson. He was a wonderful writer. He was the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Benson. He lived in Rye in East

Sussex. In fact, for a while, he was the mayor of Rye in East Sussex. In fact, for quite a while. He was a wonderful writer. And the reason he's at the top of my head today is that yesterday, I was in Rye in the house- Yes, you told me, with the Queen. Indeed, with Queen Camilla. And I was there because Lamb House, which is now a national trust house that people from all over the world can come and visit. It's open five days a week for most of the year. It's a wonderful building. And in that building, many a king from George I onwards has been visited, many a queen too. As you say, yesterday Queen Camilla was there.

But it's been the home of literary figures. Famously, the Anglo-American writer Henry James. I call him Anglo-American. A great novelist, a great English stylist. He became a British citizen right at the end of his life during the First World War. But he was American. He lived in the United Kingdom. He lived in a lamb house. And then later, he was lived in by this fellow, Fred Benson, E.F. Benson. And he wrote these delightful stories set in Rye, in the town where he lived, which he changed in the books to be called Tilling. in the books to be called Tilling. And I happen to be the president of the Friends of Tilling. We're admirers of these stories. There's also an E.F. Benson Society. And we were very lucky yesterday because, as you know, Queen Camilla is very keen on words and language and reading.

I'm a trustee of the Queen's reading room. She encourages people to, you know, to read more because it's good for us, whatever our age. Anyway, she was in East Sussex. She came to this historic house and she and her husband, King Charles III, they are very keen on this novelist. So we had a day celebrating Mapp and Lucia. And there's a television version, the two television versions of the books, one of which, both of which I recommend.

But the earlier one, made in the 1980s, two actresses playing mapper lucia lucia was played by the late geraldine mckeown and miss map was played by prunella scales and prunella scales who is now 91 years of age she came along and the thrill for us mapper luia fans to meet the original Miss Map at Lamb House, which is the house that features in the novels. It's called Mallards in the novels, in Tilling, in real life Rye. It was wonderful. It was exciting for all of us. It was exciting. The Queen said how excited she was.

And it was a very funny day because obviously people listening to this is a little while later. But on the day of this event, the torrential rain was unbelievable. Oh, it was terrible rain. And then literally, I mean, we were all under umbrellas. There was a hundred of us under umbrellas. And then the queen was due to arrive at two o'clock and literally, this is the advantage of being royal. As she arrived, the skies cleared, the clouds separated, sun beamed onto the garden. And I'd said earlier to the padre, one of the clergymen who was there, because there's a padre in the stories, I said, could you start praying for some clear weather? And he said, I have been praying. He said, I've been praying alone. It's time for you to join in.

So we all joined in. That shows you the power of prayer. So the rain stopped, the sun came out, and we had some lovely readings from E.F. Benson's work by Timothy West, the husband of, who is himself going to be 90 this summer. He read delightfully. And the father of Sam West, the brilliant Sam West. The actress Hayley Mills, who was there because her sister, I think,

was a goddaughter of Noel Coward, and she knew Noel Coward when she was a little girl. And Noel Coward lived nearby. He's a famous British playwright, actor, entertainer. He was a great advocate of these novels of E.F. Benson. Mare Panuccia. So if you want entertaining English writing, possibly vaguely in the sort of mold of P.G. Woodhouse,

they're humorous novels, beautifully observed, set in an English country town, quite waspish about the relationship between these two very different ladies and the local townsfolk. I recommend Mare Pannuccia, the novels of E.F. Benson. The antithesis of what we're talking about today. Yes, absolutely. So far from rubbish, which is what we're going to concentrate on.

Did you think of this subject, rubbish? Yes, we have Naya, our wonderful producer, to thank for this one. Well, what does rubbish mean, actually, technically, and where does the word come from? Well, it is actually a legacy of the Normans, really, because originally it was just any kind of broken material, especially rubble from a building site, etc. And in Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman, which was the kind of hybrid that we came up with when the Norman conquerors came over and we tried to grapple with their language, it was called rubus. But we don't actually know its ultimate origin origin although it's quite possible that it's related to rubble in some way and over time of course it's meaning broadened to anything which is useless or pretty worthless we're giving but do you know what what we haven't actually done

we gave credit to naya but actually the real credit should have gone to one of our listeners because it absolutely naya received an email. We check all the emails. They go to Naya first. Because you'll find her at purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. So you've got to communicate with us. purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. And one of our international listeners, because we come from the United Kingdom,

but this communication comes from Ireland, from Eire, from Dublin, from Patrick, who wrote to us. Dear Susie and Giles, I am an anti-hoarder and love the simple life. My answer to the question, what do you get for the man who has everything, is a skip. And this has been my favourite birthday present over the years. My question is about the words we use for things we want to throw away and the things we put them in. Where did we get the beloved skip? Why don't we use that very satisfying sounding dumpster that they use in the new world? What is the history of rubbish, garbage, trash, litter and junk? And are they words for the same things or are there subtle differences?

and are they words for the same things or are there subtle differences? Why do we put a clutter or a mess in the bin? Thanks to all the team for running my favourite podcast, yours talking a load of rubbish, Patrick and Dublin. Well, shall we begin? Well, you've told us about rubbish. Take us on to the skip. Yes, so the skip into which we throw unwanted items or said rubbish isn't the same as the skip we make when we leap or hop.

So that is a Scandinavian word and it meant exactly the same thing, to kind of leap up in the air, often with joy. But the container meaning of skip, also Scandinavian, this time with the language of Old Norse that was spoken by the Vikings, of course. And a skepper was a basket. And in fact, it was called a skep as well for a while. So it was simply a receptacle, usually a basket. And obviously over time, it's got bigger. And indeed, I am thinking of Dickens. And there's a novel where there is, it may be a theatrical skip.

I think one of the families that is, he writes often about theatre folk, they have skips in which they keep their costumes and their props and they travel around with them. So a skip could also be, I think in old times, a kind of basket, an enclosed basket that you travelled bits and pieces in. You took your skip with you. Is that possible? Yes. I know it's possible. Yes, quite possible. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, interesting.

So you've got a skip. My wife has told me that she has the skip company on speed dial. The moment I go, the skip arrives, in go the jumpers, in go the memoirs, in goes all my memorabilia. Please if i if you pre-decease me which may not be the case uh please could i have some of the jumpers before she jettisons them all well all right i will wear them i thought we had an agreement to go together anyway that's by the by oh okay okay well you can have mine he mentioned uh patrick mentioned other lovely words uh rubbish he said garbage trash, trash, litter. Where does garbage come from? I think that is an Americanism.

Am I right? Am I wrong? Yes, and so often we tend to think of these kind of words, trash included, as being American. I'll actually start with trash because, you know, as you said, the trash can is the sort of, you know, typical North American word for a dustbin. Trash talking as well. But actually, it is probably, again, from a Scandinavian source.

I'm not quite sure why so many rubbishy words came from Scandinavia, where it referred to rags and tatters or fallen leaves and twigs. And trash is actually used in Shakespeare's Othello, believe it or not. And this always surprises people when they say, oh, it's such a horrible American word. So this is... Coming back to me, what's mine is his. It's about reputation. What's mine is his.

Exactly, Iago. Iago in Othello. Who steals my purse steals trash. Tis something, nothing. T'was mine, tis his, has been slave to thousands. But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed. Gosh, Shakespeare was extraordinary. Such a great play.

Anyway. So that's trash. Yep. So that's trash. And then garbage actually was first applied to especially sort of old food stuff. You will find it in early cookery books, a sort of waste material that was left over either from spices, because actually we get the word garble from removing the husks and thing from spices. Or actually, they could be the giblets, the waste parts of an animal. And so the whole idea of this kind of miscellaneous mess really gave us the garbage that we know today. But that dates back to the 16th century, believe it or not. And garbology now is quite interesting. You will find garbology as the study of waste.

So, you know, obviously it's incredibly important what we do with all our stuff, whether it goes into landfill or whatever. So you can actually be a garbologist. So those are serious people. I thought garbology was, you know, people, was a mock word for mocking people like me who talk too much. Like the sort of baffle gab idea no i think it is genuinely the study of a culture by analyzing its waste yeah um and actually there was a hopefully this is stopped but there was a horrible trend for a while of um rogue journalists

going through people's trash cans to try and sort of get a scoop do you remember on um another way you called a trash can i would still call it a dust bin. I do call it a dust bin. I don't know why. I'm still in America. And it's called a dust bin because it was literally a bin in which you get the dust and the ashes from your fire, I assume. Exactly. In the days when people had fires. Exactly right.

So that's where binning it comes from. What about litter? He mentions litter, Patrick, in his letter. I say litter's a really interesting one. So anyone who has a litter tray for their cat or other animal or other pet will understand that litter can be sort of, you know, stuff that is either animal waste or it can be sort of straw bedding. And ultimately that bedding is the key because it looks back to the French lit, meaning a bed, or in fact, litter did mean a bed for a little while. Or it could also be not just the straw that was used for that bedding, but the kind of disorderly, possibly soiled straw

that was left at the end of it. So yeah, but ultimately, weirdly, it goes back to the bed. And the litter is also, as well as being the litter that is rubbish you throw away, and stuff you put in the litter tray, a litter was like a bed that could be carried on people's shoulders. And I can see Roman emperors sitting on the litter being carried through the streets and being cheered. I'm not imagining this. That is what a litter is, isn't it? You're absolutely not. No, it's the same idea of a bed on which one sits or reposes.

And of course, animals have litters as well. They have offspring that are known as litters. And of course, they have been usually born in some kind of bed. So it's all related to the same. All related. Yeah. Well, waste not, want not. Where does waste come from?

W-A-S-T-E. Well, there was a Latin verb, vastare, which meant to lay waste. And it was based on the idea of being desolate or empty. So ultimately, its ancient root is all about abandoning something, giving, you know, going away from it and and just sort of giving it away. So that that is waste. When you are wasting away, you are also abandoning something, which is your strength and your health, really. You talked about clutter, Patrick. Clutter. Yeah, clutter is an interesting one. So that's probably related to clot.

So clutter is stuff that's in heaps, isn't it? And so it's almost like a clot of things, almost coagulated together. And is that a tautology? We talked about tautologies the other day. Can you coagulate together? Probably not, because coagulate is actually to come together in some sticky mess,

isn't it? Anyway, it is probably also clutter an example of how we familiarise a word by appropriating it to another one. So cluster was probably involved in some way here as well. Cluster and clutter. My wife is always telling me to junk the clutter. cluster and clutter. My wife is always telling me to junk the clutter. Junk is both a verb and a noun. Also, I felt it was some kind of a boat from the far east, a junk, but maybe I've got that wrong. No, lots of different things. So you're right, that's typical of China, isn't it, in the East Indies, a chunk. So it's a kind of flat-bottomed sailing vessel. And that probably came to us from a Malay word, meaning pretty well, it describes the same thing. And then it traveled through Portuguese, junco. But the junk that is, you know, stuff that we accumulate in our attic

or loft was originally a name in the Middle Ages for old or pretty inferior rope. It was ropey, quite literally. And by the mid-1800s, really, the current sense of anything old and discarded had developed. And from there, we get the slang sense of heroin or other drugs, and a junkie, of of course became a sort of drug addict so it was always sort of looking down on on those drugs and then we have junk food which is also you know making us unwell and obese so yeah so the junk that's the flat bottom boat very different word but otherwise we're looking back to um on board a ship what about detritus

it's a word i'm often using actually oh all this detritus clear away all this detritus move the debris is debris and detritus are the same origin so debris um is straight from french um used to have an accent and it is from a word debris meaning to break down, which makes sense. And detritus is straight from, well, say straight from Latin. It didn't really get changed on its way to us. And it goes back to a verb meaning to wear away. It did have a spell in French before it came to us, but it kept its form pretty much. Very good. Okay. I think that's enough rubbish, don't you? I do. And I just say, before we finish rubbish, I've had this as one of my trios before, so I didn't want to use it again, although I do repeat myself. But there is a lovely word,

if you remember, an adjective that you can use if you want to describe something as being rubbish. But it sounds quite beautiful and it sounds the opposite. It's quisquillius. So I could be looking at a piece of work and say, you know, it would be a similar situation to when you've gone to see a friend in a play. And it's been absolutely awful. And I think it was you who told me of the friend who greeted their actor acquaintance with, you've done it again. You told me that one is just so brilliant. When inductors say, oh, you've done it again, which is brilliant.

Anyway. My other favourite, which I'm sure I've also shared with you, is you burst into the dressing room and say, boy, were you on that stage? That is a really good one. Well, you could also say that was positively Chris Quillius. Very good. Because it sounds beautiful, but it means utterly rubbish.

Before we leave, before we chuck him out, Patrick, we're so grateful to him. He said, feel free to chuck a few of them out. Chucking something, chucking it out. I mean, where does that come from, to chuck something out? So that's to chuck it kind of carelessly or casually. Actually, I'm not sure it's quite so casual anymore. But it's probably from an old French word shooky meaning to knock and uh you can also touch someone playfully under the chin when you chuck them oh yes very different meaning too also we haven't talked about crap no which has nothing to do with thomas crapper even though

a lot of people think it all began with toilets and it actually goes back to a very old word It all began with toilets. And it actually goes back to a very old word, crapper, with an A at the end, meaning chaff. So it was a residue from crops, essentially, and therefore something of kind of poor quality. But there genuinely was a man called Thomas Crapper who made water closets, lavatories. Absolutely, absolutely.

And perhaps he popularised it. Fine. Yeah, he did not give us the word crapper. Okay, well, that's enough crap from you, Susie Dent. I think we'll take a break. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic.

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is praying he'll get to star in. Or how Jamal Williams uses the mindset of Naruto for his NFL career. Listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, and we are so thrilled that people from around the world get in touch with us.

They communicate mostly by email, and sometimes we invite them to give us a voice note. And if you've got a question for Susie, or indeed for me, you just communicate with us by email. It's purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com. Purplepeople, all one word, at somethingrhymes.com. And your communication comescom, and your communication comes in, and we do our best to give you a good answer. Here's one for you, Susie. No voice note. I up, Susie and Giles. A up. Oh, is that what it is? A up. I think it's A up. Oh, you're right. It's spelt A-Y-U-P, Susie and Giles, but do you think that's what it is? A-yup?

Yeah, A-yup. It can be spelt lots of different ways. E-Y, A-Y. But yeah, very, very popular up north and in Yorkshire. And that's what this letter is all about, in fact, isn't it? It is, yeah. A-yup, Susie and Giles. Absolutely love listening to this podcast. Never in a million years would my high school self entertain the idea of listening to something like this, which amazes me. But the older I get, the more of a genuine interest I have in the English language, accents, words, and sayings. This podcast is fascinating to me. Well, the very fact that he refers to his high school, am I right, suggests to me that he is not going to be British. But he doesn't reveal

what nationality is. Anyway, let's go on. One thing I would like to ask, out and nowt, O-W-T and nowt, N-O-W-T. I seem to have to explain what they mean, mainly to people not from the Northwest, for example. Do you want out from the shop? I'm doing nowt this weekend. I've tried thinking of a logical connection but i never can can you shed some light on this please and thank you keep up the incredible work love listening from connor also where do i up come from too so he wants i oh it's so funny trying to listen to you for on a yorkshire accent i. Ey up. Oh, ey up, lad. Ey up, child. I have forebears who came from Bradford.

I should get this right. There you go. I love Yorkshire. Ey up. Ey up. Ey up. Nowt. There's nowt so queer as folk.

There you go. Okay, I've got that bit right. So tell us, Susie. Tell us, my Susie Dent, about this out nowt and ey up. Lass, tell us. Okay, so out, meaning anything, is a variant of ought, A-U-G-H-T. So do you want ought from shops? Became out over time in wonderful regional language. And ought itself is made up of I, A-Y-E, and white, W-I-G-H-T, and I'll explain. So the I here is not the same as yes, as in I-I, that is actually a

variation on I myself. It's used here instead to mean always. And then the white bit um actually means um a specific thing or a person of a specific kind so it's um it's a bit strange but ought really came to mean anything uh always thing anything um which seems a bit daft but that's how it went and then now course, is not anything, nothing. So I want naut. I'm wanting for naut, that kind of thing. So that explains that. Then we've got eop, which is lovely. And that might, believe it or not, originate from an old Norse term. So again, the Vikings, meaning watch out, possibly.

So that's the guess of one professor. Explain that, though. How can eop come from one professor. Explain that though, how did Aeolus come from Watch Out? Yeah, well, it's very strange, but we do obviously take these words from many of our invaders and then mangle them hugely. So I read this in an article from, it was a lovely professor, and I would find out what university she was at, who said that it may well come from Old Norse. So it would be wonderful if that was true. I imagine that there are lots of different possibilities. But I'm just looking her up here.

She was Natalie Braber. She gave her her fair due. A linguist from Nottingham Trent University who specialises in regional dialect. university who specializes in regional dialect um and they also talk about ayotmiduk um where duck is just used um you know to show someone respect actually um originally and it's a very affectionate uh term of address isn't it ayotmiduk yes it is well i loved that question and now we have a different question giles from lorraine anderson in anguish shall i read that one out please do dear giles and susie i am a relatively new purple person and have signed up to be a we have a different question, Giles, from Lorraine Anderson in Angus. Shall I read that one out? Please do. Dear Giles and Susie, I am a relatively new Purple person and have signed up to be a member

of the club. Well, thank you, Lorraine. That is the Purple Plus Club. Actually, we're going to rename it imminently. But it is a lovely place to be and it would be wonderful to have other of the Purple people, the Purple listeners join us because it's where we kick back and talk a little bit more about some of our favourite subjects. Anyway, Lorraine says, I love listening while walking the dog and doing the housework. However, on today's walk, I listened to an up-to-date edition on the etymology of disease. And you mentioned in passing the word that I was going to ask about at some point, diphthong. Being of a nerdy nature and a reader of history since a child, I've always loved the A-E spelling in the word medieval. It

just feels right. The spelling of the word with A-E does seem to have disappeared from common usage, and I wonder why some diphthongs remain, but this one has gone. The link to diphthongs in this podcast was the word diphtheria, which I had forgotten has a PH in the middle, as has my beloved diphthong. Thank you so much for a wonderful podcast. All best wishes, Lorraine. Well, good question. Quite complicated. It is.

And I have, in the past, as the countdown viewers have ticked me off for not pronouncing medieval as medieval, which I totally understand. I would just say that the dictionary offers both pronunciations, but some people prefer that original pronunciation, which of course is preserved in the diphthong. And I will start with the word diphthong because that's a sound that's formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable. And the sound begins as one vowel and then very subtly sometimes moves towards another. So you will find it in loud, coin, and side. You can hear, I'm sort of stressing it a little bit. So those are the most common types of diphthongs that you will find. And it's interesting, actually. So, forgive me, the diphthong is the kind of allusion. You gave us the example of coin.

It's co and in, but together it becomes coin. And that almost alighted O and I are the diphthong. Yes, exactly. And it can be a ligature as well, because it can be a compound vowel character such as ligature, and that's the A-E as well. So that's another sense of it. Archaeologist has one in the middle, as does medieval. And in olden times, I feel I've seen books where those two letters would be adjoined if they're printed. So you'd have medieval. Absolutely. So it doesn't read media, eval.

It reads medieval. And the A and the E are literally combined. Yes. And it's a beautiful character, actually, that you don't see very much. Diphthong incidentally goes back to the Greek for twice voiced, which makes sense because you've got that double sound. As to why it is disappearing, well, I think it's for simplicity's sake. I think it will be the impact of new media and technology.

But actually, you begin to see the shift quite early on. So in the late 19th century even, I was reading that the US government printing office, the GPO, decided to eliminate the ligatured AE altogether. the GPO, decided to eliminate the ligatured AE altogether. And obviously, there was a huge drive in American English, particularly to simplify. There was a great effort to simplify spellings, which is why many American English spellings differ from British English ones. And so that AE diphthong was replaced by an E in pronunciation and spelling. And we have gone pretty much the same way with archaeology as well. So just to say medieval is from the Latin medium avum or avum, middle age. So you will find that there. And archaeology is from a Greek word meaning ancient history. Archaeos means ancient. So, yeah, so you will find,

I mean, I think the modern British spelling is still with the A-E, but we don't pronounce it as a diphthong so much. We just say archaeology. And the pronunciation is the diphthong, but when you were talking about the letters joined together, you used the word there, ligature. Ligature.

And ligature is something where two things are tied together? Absolutely right. They are bound together tightly. So ligature in surgery is a cord or thread that's used to tie up an artery, for example. And then, yes, two letters bound together, joins adjacent letters are bound in the same way. I can listen to you all day, you know so much. And the joy of being a purple person is that you can listen to Susie all day because you could listen to episode after episode.

There are hundreds of episodes in our back catalogue. And if you are like me and you can't remember much that you've heard, feel free to dip into old ones and hear it all again because it's wonderful stuff that she

gives us and wonderful stuff that you give us to talk about. So please keep your letters coming. And we love your letters so much. When you discover our newly refurbished Purple People Club, you will find that we are very much basing what we're going to talk about in future on what you want us to talk about. It's a club where actually the members decide what we as the hosts of the club are going to talk about. So please do become members of the Purple People Club. It doesn't cost a great deal. You get ad free listening and lots of bonuses of different kinds. What everybody gets every week for free and with love are three interesting words from Susie Dent.

What have you come up with for your trio this week? We use this word to describe either because it is rumpty-dooler. Oh, I love it. Rumpty-dooler. Great word. Rumpty-dooler. What does it mean? Which joins the lexicon that includes rippers, ripsnorters, corkers, fizzers, screamers, hummers, dingers, humdingers.

And then rumpty-dooler, it's simply something excellent. Oh. It's brilliant, isn't iters, and then rumpty-dooler. It's simply something excellent. It's brilliant, isn't it? That's a rumpty-dooler. I love it. It's a celebratory word. I like it very much. It is. The next one is, I love going for walks, as I know you do, Giles. And I also love the solitude of going for walks. Sometimes going out for a walk on one's own can just be the perfect resetter. And in that case, you are soli vagant. You are wandering alone. William Wertus was when he was wandering through the clouds.

What was he doing? He was wandering through a field of daffodils, I think. Yes, but didn't he call it wandering through the clouds? When he came across a field of daffodils. Does think. Yes, but did he call it wandering through the clouds? When he came across a field of daffodils. Does he use the word? Is that why you were thinking of words? No, I was just thinking he would have been wandering lonely. He would have been solely vagant.

Very good. And one which, well, I don't really make an apology for having used it again and again, because it is just so useful and it's incredibly old it goes back to the 1600s do you remember what nod crafty means and i hope you're not it today well not crafty means not nodding off i imagine no it means nodding your head as if you understand everything that someone's saying and you're taking it all in when you actually tuned out ages ago is oh very good you've got a knack of looking as if you're right right alongside the the speaker but actually your

mind is totally well great for zoom meetings in it's great in life i've recently reissued my political diaries i was a member of parliament i should explain this to younger listeners and international listeners i was a member of the brit Parliament in the 1990s, and I kept a diary. And my publishers, Biteback, decided to reissue these political diaries called Breaking the Code because they saw so many echoes in British politics in the 2020s of what was going on in the 1990s. But in these diaries, I was a government whip. And for the first time, I wrote about life in the government whip's office, which is why the diaries were considered a bit sort of scandalous and why the book is called Breaking the Code, because I broke the whip's code. But the head of the whip's office

when I was an MP was a lovely man, is a lovely man called Alistair Goodlad. And he was a master of this art that you've just described. What's the word? Nodcrafty. Nodcrafty. He was a master of nodcrafting, if you can say that. Craftiness, yeah, absolutely. Because whenever anybody asked him a question, you know, on the doorstep, he was an MP himself, go round, he would simply sort of nod and gobble. I mean, he really gobbled at the same time.

Mm, mm, mm. Which is a very good way of acknowledging that he was listening and absorbing what they were saying, but without having to commit himself to anything. So nobody knew what his views were, what any subject at all. And he was, yes. So that can be useful to be a nod crafter. Oh, it's definitely useful.

And yeah, it's, as I say, particularly useful in Zooms because, you know, let's face it, when you're one of 16 people on the kind of Brady Bunch screen in front of you, no one really cares if you're listening or not. Well, not always anyway. So those are my three. And as I say, if you've heard any of them before, I apologise, but I do think they bear repeating. And Giles, do you have a new poem for us or is it an older one?

I've got an old poem for you. And I want to show you a book. You, Susie, can see this, but obviously our listeners can't. Does this not look like a very thick book? It looks very thick. It is a very thick book. And it runs to 767 pages. It is, as you can see, Oh, she's amazing of Emily Dickinson. And I'm so thrilled to have this book, I decided I wanted to treat myself to it as a bedside book. There are 1,775 poems in this book, and I'm going to read a very short one to you. It's one of the simplest poems. Her poems are fascinating to read. They're always quite simple with language that is easily understood, though the content of the

poems is sometimes difficult to understand. But she had a remarkable mind. Do you love her poems? My favourite is Hope is the Thing with Feathers, which is so beautiful. You know the one, Hope is the Thing with Feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. And so on. It's beautiful. It is a very beautiful poem. And I think you'll probably find it in my anthology, Dancing by the Light of the Moon,

Poems to Learn by Heart, and well done you learning it by heart. I'm going to read a poem that's also short. And it's called If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking by Emily Dickinson. And I chose this because we talked a lot about rubbish, and Emily Dickinson is the reverse of rubbish. You don't want to throw out anything that she says. She's wise and wonderful. If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

That is just absolutely gorgeous. Really, really beautiful. I think I could quite happily spend a whole afternoon with that anthology that you have. And remember that the word anthology began with a Greek word for a posy of flowers, because that's what verse is. Oh, that's nice.

Just a colourful, varied arrangement. It's lovely, isn't it? I think it's a very good book to have at a bedside, either the pre-works of Emily Dickinson or any anthology of poetry. It's just a short poem to read before you turn out the light.

It's a lovely way to make sure you go to sleep with lovely things in your mind. Okay, that's it, isn't it? It's gorgeous. I hope people will join us in what used to be called the Purple Plus Club. Don't worry, your subscription still applies. Even though we're changing the name,

we love our existing members and we're going to welcome some more ones. That's where you get ad-free listening and exclusive bonus episodes all about words and language. That's us for this week.

Tell me, who makes this program, this podcast, Susie? This is a Sony Music Entertainment production, Giles. We have our wonderful producer, Naya Dio, and help from Jennifer Mystery and Ollie Wilson. And behind the scenes, but equally beautifully bearded as Gully,

is the brilliant Richie. Richie Lee.