Something Rhymes with Purple - Gobelinus

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

Wooooooo, it’s our Halloween Special! Susie and Gyles go on the hunt for the spooky meanings lurking beneath our language. Featuring fairies, oafs, seeing gremlins, the origin of wicked, evil spirits eating the flesh of corpses, grave robbers, the origin of abracadabra, phalluses diverting the attention of the evil eye and haunted lemurs. A Somethin’ Else production. 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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Hello. This is the week of Halloween. I was going to say, what does Halloween mean to you, Susie, but what does Halloween mean? Well, it's a shortening, really, of Hallows-een, which itself is Hallows' evening. Hallow, an old English word for holy. And it's a time in the liturgical year, I guess, which is dedicated to remembering the dead. So saints and martyrs and all the faithfully departed. And that actually happens on All Hallows Day, which is the 1st of November, when we remember the dear departed,

the saints that went before us. But Halloween is the night before. That's right. Do you take part in Halloween? I mean, this trick or treating. I mean, the traditions of Halloween, these are American, aren't they? They've come over from America. You're obviously going to say you love it, but I'm not sure that we do love it. I have to say that in our house, we lie very, very low indeed. The lights are turned off. We're behind the sofa um because we don't want strange children coming to our house saying trick or treat definitely not coming around yours jars um i love trick or treating absolutely love it and yes um we know it through america but you know this idea of dressing up in a costume and going around houses it's been there since classical

times so it's definitely not just um a North American thing. And you think about mamas' plays in the past, people would dress in their mama costume and they would go around. I'm not sure about playing tricks on people, but definitely, you know, the idea, like carol singing, I guess, of going from house to house and performing perhaps some spooky play has been there for a while. So the Halloweeneen element has been as it were attached to something that already existed definitely and the phrase trick or treat must be an american phrase and the idea is that if you don't give us a treat yeah we're going to trick you in some unpleasant way but of course nobody expects a trick these days do they everyone just sort of dispenses sweets and what i love definitely around here as well is that if you don't have a pumpkin

outside your house you're not participating and no one bothers you oh that's really nice so where did the pumpkin come into it what's all that a really good question i have absolutely no idea about that maybe our listeners will know a pumpkin that's definitely american isn't it pumpkin pie absolutely thanksgiving and they put the pumpkin that has a kind of monstrous face put in it love it and english loves it too because there are so many words in english that um obviously we have words for all sorts of supernatural creatures which we need to talk about but also words where there is some kind of spooky element and you might not know about it tell me well which one should i go for should i start with the words in english for supernatural

creatures supernatural like like goblins and well goblins fairies. Fairies goes back to an old term that the Romans had for the three fates. And remember, the fates were those really powerful goddesses who held the thread of life and they were thought to control the destiny of every human being. So fairies had a huge amount of power. Whereas today we tend to think of them as little sprites hopping up and down the garden. Actually, we think of fairies as being delightful creatures. The Victorians were pretty keen on fairies. There are lots of Victorian fairy pictures. And hoaxes.

Remember that famous hoax? Oh, with Arthur Conan Doyle? Yes. The two girls. The black and white photos, the girls holding fairies. Clare Cochlan or something. Yes, I think he was persuaded to authenticate them, to say that they were legitimate.

But Victorians did love fairies. They were fairy painters who specialised in fairy painting. And there was a famous man who was actually a murderer who painted fairy pictures, and he painted them in Broadmoor. And they're now worth a huge fortune. Forgive me, I always thought of fairies as being lovely, sweet things. But I'm, I suppose, because of that late Victorian thing of people loving pretty fairies and in Peter Pan, there's Tinkerbell. Of course.

The fairy. Of course. No, but you're right, they could have malevolence about them. And likewise, elves. We think of Christmas elves who happily help Santa, as we know. But in fact, elves were once thought of as being quite evil little things.

Well, at least they had the potential for evil. And you know the word oaf in English, that's actually a variant on elf because it was thought that the elves would come occasionally and they would swap a human child for one of their own. That child became a changeling, and because they were often quite sort of dim-witted, Oph became somebody who's, you know, not particularly intelligent or a bit clumsy.

What's a changeling? Because in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the battle, which is full of fairies... Of course, Titania. The battle is about a changeling child. The battle between Titania and Oberon... Yes. ...is about a changeling. What does changeling Titania and Oberon is about a changeling.

What does changeling mean? Changeling just means a child that is left in place of the real one. So it's a kind of fake, not a fake child, obviously, it's a real child. You've swapped, you've taken away, as it were, the prince and left somebody else in the cradle. Yeah. There are fairies that are good or bad. There are sprites. Is that a version of the word spirit?

It is, indeed. So sprites, again, come in many guises, I think, like naiads who are sort of water nymphs. There's a lot of Greek mythology that's, you know, wrapped up in all of these. And more recently, we have the goblins, and goblins were named after Gobelinus, and Gobelinus was a mischievous spirit or sprite

who was said to haunt Evre in northern France in the 12th century and loomed so large in the imagination that it sort of slipped into the languages as Goblin and a Hobgoblin the Hob part is a riff on Robin so it's a nickname for Robin and you think of Robin Goodfellow which of course brings us back to Midsummer Night's Dream with Puck. But Hob is simply a nickname for Robin. Goblin, your food is bad for your elf. A little gem there. Because I know we have younger listeners and I'm here to throw in the odd little bonbouche for them. For those younger listeners as well, we have to say elves are now supremely lovely, aren't they?

And they do bring Christmas gifts. Gremlins. We use it more loosely these days. So there's a gremlin in the works, or you might have a gremlin in your computer, etc. I think that's a combination of goblin and fremlins. And fremlins was a type of beer that was sold during the Second World War. And the idea perhaps is that gremlins were the sort of things that you saw when you'd had one too many. Where does witchcraft come in? Oh, gosh.

We need an expert on the history of witchcraft because it's absolutely fascinating. We had Susanna Lipscomb on Countdown quite recently, and this is one of her special subjects, witches and their treatment over the centuries. And, of course, horrible punishments were inflicted upon witches, as we know. Today, we tend to have the good witches

and the religion of Wicca. Are witches always female? Witches are pretty much the female equivalent of wizards. Wizard going back to wise or wisdom. But how interesting, because we think of wizards as being good characters. Yes. And witches we think of as bad characters.

Well, not so much these days, I think. Yeah, in the past, I think. That was traditionally. You can get male witches now, of course, you can. Can you? Yes, we think of as bad characters. Well, not so much these days, I think. Yeah, in the past. In that one, traditionally. You can get male witches now, of course, you can. Oh, can you? Yes, I think so, yes. I think the male practitioners of Wicca, for sure. I've just looked in the OED, which as regular listeners will know,

I always have at my fingertips. And quite interestingly, the male witch, well, sort of a male magician was the first meaning of witch back in the 9th century. And only 100 years later came along the female magician or the sorceress. So the witch began as a male character. Yes. The first witch was a bloke. Yes, you will find that so often.

Gender swapping throughout English, that's a whole different subject. But the first harlots were men. And it seems that right from the start, the sorcery had a sort of double-edged sword, so it could be for good or for bad. And then later, a witch became a woman who was supposedly having dealings with the devil or evil spirits, and so performed on their behalf. This all goes back, in fact, to the deity, doesn't it? In heaven, you get angels and good things going going on god and the angels and the archangels are up in heaven down below you have the devil and his henchmen people like beelzebub who are

all wicked characters so yeah that are and and what you're doing on halloween is you're conjuring up these spirits and most of the spirits that we appear to conjure up at halloween will be the bad ones will be the hobgoblins will be the skeletons walking again will be witches witches and i would just say just to continue with witches or to finish them off so to speak um wicked this will give you an example of how witches were perceived wicked goes back to that same wick uh the idea of um wickery almost which is magic and sorcer sorcery, which gave us witch and wizard. So you mean the word wicked as in being wicked, which can be both, you're a wicked, wicked, naughty person, or wicked, meaning fantastic.

That's really much more modern, obviously. But yes, wicked and witch are siblings. And the wicker man and this wicker religion, what is that all about? Yeah, so the wicca man is spelt differently, isn't it? But Wicca with a W-I-C-C-A is more the practices and cult of modern witchcraft. So that's only first recorded in the 1950s. So that's much more modern. Wicca man is another incarnation altogether, isn't it? Which I think is probably associated with pagan beliefs. Next on the list, the word ghoul.

Now that really is ghoulish. That comes from an Arabic word for an evil spirit which ate the dead flesh of corpses that were found in graveyards at night time. That's what a ghoul is, G-H-O-U-L. Yes, in Arabic. Ghoul is a different word is, G-H-O-U-L. Yes, in Arabic. A ghoul is a different word altogether, is it? Ghoul is entirely different, no H in that one and a double O. But ghoul later was applied to, think of Burke and Hare,

to grave robbers who would dig up corpses and then sell them to doctors for anatomical dissections. These are Victorian people again. Yeah, pretty much so ghouls is literally flesh eaters so you've got a ghoulish sense of humor it means you've got a dark sense of humor but it actually goes back to liking enjoying cadavers flesh eaters and remember that leads us right back to sarcasm and sarcophagus which we mentioned before so yes it, it's all linked. Bugaboos. Bugaboos were imaginary devils or spectres. They were kind of almost monstrous demons.

And they gave us the word bugbear today. So bugbear today is simply a bit of a niggle, you know, sort of something that really gets on your wick, on your nerves. Is the wick anything to do with the wicker you were talking about? No, the wick there is a rhyming slang for prick. Sorry about that. No! Oh, I love this.

It's Hampton Wick prick. Really? Rhyming slang, yeah. Hampton... So when you say you're getting on my wick, it means you're getting on my prick. Getting on my prick, I'm afraid. Meaning what we think it means.

Exactly. You're Johnson. Life is full of surprises, isn't it? Wow. So should we come to all those words that have got hidden spooky meanings in a minute okay let's let's take a quick break i'm loving this episode really is spooktacular what's the origin of spooks i wonder it goes back to german it's a german word as does um nightmare as well yes which they call an alp traum and that alp incidentally,

is linked to Oath. You see, it's all circular. There we are. Das ist gut. After the break, we will have more. Bis bald. Tschüss.

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completely ad-free, subscribe now. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're also eating bananas, but in between mouthfuls, we've been talking about all the words that have some kind of spooky content, even though you might not know it. So the spookiness is kind of bubbling under. Because it's Halloween. Can I ask you something? Yes. Magic spells.

Yes. Have they got anything to do with spelling? They do. Because years and years and years ago, centuries and centuries ago, learning of the occult and the supernatural was seen as a really important part of learning and you can see that in the link between grammar and glamour so grammar was once all learning in the middle ages and it encompassed this learning of the magic art alchemy and all of that grammar sort of had these kind of magical qualities but because its meaning began to narrow into education and all of that. Grammar sort of had these kind of magical qualities, but because its meaning began to narrow into education

and then, of course, into the kind of linguistic side of things that we know today, we needed to separate out that magical element. And it was Sir Walter Scott, I think, who gave us the variant on grammar, which was glamour. But glamour is a spin-off from grammar, which I love, because I think grammar is essentially quite glamorous. Grammar, as in the nuts and bolts of the English language, the grammar you learn, is connected in some way with the word glamour.

It's totally connected. Which is all about beauty and attractiveness and excitement. It's the magical, the sort of magical qualities kind of broke off. And so grammar was changed slightly. I think it was Walter Scott, I will check this, and he made it into glamour, which is very close. So spells, yes, spell is related to spelling. The magical spell is related to spelling because spelling today is all about the sequence of letters.

But in the past, a spell was all about the sequence of words, an incantation, a sort of recital of words that could then summon up the occult. Abracadabra is possibly the most famous magical word. Yes. That's part of a spell. Yeah. And also it has the ABC in it. What's the origin of abracadabra? Well, it's really interesting and it's a very long story, abracadabra.

But we do know that it's probably rooted in Aramaic with a sort of Hebrew sense of a kind of blessing thrown into that as well. What we do know is that it was once written on amulets and it was written almost as a kind of triangle with A and then AB and then ABC, et cetera. Building up. And you would find that on amulets, which incidentally were occasionally called fascinum and they were phallic in shape this is it brings us right back to prick sorry about this um and so fascinate and penises are actually linked in english history if you see someone with a fascinator hat that's slightly phallic shaped at a wedding you'll know that they know their etymology let's put it this

way so when you say to somebody look wearing that wearing that hat, you look like a prick, it's actually spot on. Yeah, shall I tell you why? It's because phalluses were thought to divert the attention of the evil eye. In his sort of lust, he would start focusing on these phallus-shaped amulets rather than on anybody else and using his evil on them. on these phallus-shaped amulets rather than on anybody else and using his evil on them. But this is the sound of the word phallus, which is P-H-A-L-L-U-S for phallus as in phallic symbol

or the phallus itself. Fascinate is F-A-S-C-L-E-S. Yeah, so phallus itself is not linked etymology to fascinate, but the history is, if that makes sense. Have you ever been in touch with the dead no i would be terrified of going to a seance seance comes to the french for sitting um i yeah i i don't think i could bring myself when you were a school girl i feel that convent girls with nuns flitting about would have done this sort of in the bike sheds or in the basement where you got

together in a circle and you tried to get in touch with the other side and you had letters of the alphabet like a Ouija board that's the alphabet you'd spell out words and then the table would tap you never did any of that none of it no no you won't find me near there I have to say talking about Ouija boards which we don't they're ouija but we tend to call them ouija quite often don't we um but it's o u i j a and um i was just looking it up because i thought i genuinely don't know where that comes from apparently according to the oed various explanations for it one of them is the french oui and the german ja so yes yes board um and another suggestion is it comes from an ancient egyptian word for good luck or finally the name of i don't know how to pronounce this apologies but we the name of a city in morocco

so who knows but uh first recorded in the 1800s do you essentially believe in the possibility of fairies sprites goblins um getting in touch with the dead? Big question. I really hesitate to say no, because then I think someone will come and prove me wrong. I definitely believe in a spiritual world. I definitely believe that the sort of energy waves around us, so definitely, you know, they operate in ways that we have yet to discover.

That's quite clear to me. But I'm not sure about beyond the grave. What about you? That's clear to me. What you've just said is quite clear to me but i'm not sure about beyond the grave what about you that's clear to me what you've just said is totally clear to me and that's exactly what i have felt since my sister died and i felt the energy leave the room i thought where has that energy gone yeah it can't just have disappeared so i do think you know also you have days it's going completely off the point but you have days where people who are not connected in any way whatsoever will get in touch with you because obviously you are somehow in their thoughts.

And then you have days where absolutely nobody does. It just seems to be sort of different energy flows between, you know, to and from. At a mundane level, I have to say, I have noticed that you and I text one another almost simultaneously. Yes, we do. It's true, isn't it? So there you are. So there is something going on there. Walter Scott was the origin of the word? It was. I just checked that.

What was the word? Glamour. Glamour. Yeah. So Walter Scott turned... Grammar. Into glamour. Yeah.

Amazing. Other famous Victorian writers, because he was from the 19th century, we think of an association with spooky things. Mary Shelley, who gave us... Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein. Yeah. People often confuse the association with spooky things. Mary Shelley, who gave us... Frankenstein. Dr Frankenstein. People often confuse the monster with the creator. That's very true.

And they talk about Frankenstein as though it were the monster. Dr Frankenstein is the hero of the story. I've never read it. Oh, I just used to see all those old black and white movies because my mum loves old films. So I enjoyed many a matinee where you saw sort of Frankenstein. As you said, you're absolutely right. It's misused as a typical name for the monster when in fact it was the creator.

Where she got the name of Viktor Frankenstein from, I'm not sure. But of course, it's reverberating still through language because we have Frankenfood, don't we? That entered the dictionary quite recently. So sort of, you know, monstrous food. And didn't we have a Frankenberg for the horrible fat birds? And did she simply invent the name Frankenstein? She may have done. Or was it a Germanic name that she used?

Yeah, I genuinely don't know. What is obviously Germanic? I'm going to have to look this up. Fine. Yeah, leave that one with me. You know I like to do a bit of name dropping? Yes. And I will since we've talked horror movies for a moment.

Yes. I have been privileged to know peter cushing vincent price and christopher lee amazing and i have to tell you that peter cushing was one of the sweetest people i ever met really and he played all these monsters vincent price was possibly the most charming human being i've ever met yeah what a voice well christopher lee I interviewed him once for radio and I've asked the first question at 12 noon and at a quarter past one he was still answering it. I said, I'm so sorry, Mr Lee, I've got to go now. So I've met some of the monsters. That is fantastic. Can I finish off with just a couple more words where you might

not know that there are spooks hiding behind them. One is that, you know, the beautiful animal, the lemur. The lemur actually goes... Oh, L-E-M-U-R. Yes. That goes back to a Roman word for the people who would return to haunt the world of the living at night time. And I think because it was Carl Linnaeus who gave us so much in terms of sort of scientific... And I think he gave them the name because he saw lemurs, the animals,

as, well, first of all, they've got that slightly startling face, but also they used to wander silently around the tropical rainforest. So it seemed a perfect word for him. So he sort of went back to ancient history. I'm blown away by all this. I'm blown away by your ghosties, your goblins, your ghoulies. I think we need some listeners questions now before we do get to them do you still with your daughters do you dress up

and do all that yes yes yes i was saying you know definitely wigs on uh outfits on uh face paint on i love it it's good uh okay listeners questions um shall i kick off you please kick off i have one from helen atkinson, who contacted us on Twitter. She said she's curious to know the origins of kibosh. She uses it often and it always seems to attract a wry smile. Well, Helen's chosen one of the big etymological mysteries of our time. We'd actually know completely where it comes from. It turned up, if you trace the history, it's quite interesting

because it turned up in a number of London newspapers. It was about 1834. And it followed a case of two chimney sweeps who were convicted of touting for business publicly, which they were not allowed to do. And one of the newspapers reported that the judge put a kibosh on their plans. But quite what it is, we think it may have been a form of kosh one idea is that it was the name for a clog makers tool which was a heated hot iron a heated iron rather used to soften leather could also be used as a weapon so if you put the kibosh on it you might just sort of beat it down but we're not completely sure it sounds japanese it sounds it's it's or it could sound

faintly yiddish i mean there's just so many possibilities so we don't know still don't know we are stumped by kibosh so if you know definitively do let us know it's purple at something else dot com any other queries yes tron the first hi tron i'm not sure this is your twitter handle obviously i'm not completely sure this is how you wanted to be named but you didn't give me your name. So I'm sorry about that. But you ask, which came first when it comes to orange, the colour or the fruit? Very easily answered this one. The fruit definitely came first. It was recorded about the 14th century when it kind of began to be imported into Britain. Orange came after. Before the colour orange was named,

people borrowed terms and mixed them together like yellow and gold and brown and red and things. They didn't actually have a word for that colour. Or amber, as in the traffic lights. Red, amber, green. And they were called Belisha beacons. No, that's something else. Those are the crossings, aren't they? Belisha beacons at crossings were named after Leslie Hoare Belisha, who was the Minister of Transport when they were introduced in the 1930s. And they, do they still have them? They were on sort of striped poles,

and it was a kind of flashing orange light at the top. Yeah, you still get them at pedestrian crossings. Don't you get them at zebra crossings sometimes? Correct. So orange the fruit came before orange the colour. Yes, and orange is quite interesting for linguists because it's an example of what is boringly called metanalysis, in which the first letter of a word

shifts to the end of the preceding word. So these are quite famous in English. Slow us down. OK. Meta-what? Meta-analysis. You don't need to remember that. Well, I'd like to.

But I'll give you some examples. M-E-T-A. Yeah, meta-analysis. So an apron used to be a napron, a napron from the Frenchron, from the French nap, which also meant a tablecloth. An umpire used to be a numpere, which was a non-pere.

Oh, I love it. It wasn't somebody who was on the same level as the players. An adder used to be a nadir. And an orange... What does nadir mean? Do you know, I was thinking that as i was saying it i actually genuinely can't remember n-a-d-d-e-r is what an adder was before yeah i think it's

just an old english word for an adder but where that comes from but this is riveting going to let you know and then an orange was a naranja it comes from the sanskrit um and eventually the N just fell off. Well, it kind of joined the A. Does that make sense? Can I say this is completely fascinating, which leads us to your trio of words this week. Okay. Did you find out what an adder was, by the way? Oh, yes, it does go back to an old English word and it's Germanic and in German still a nutter. N-A-T-T-E-R is an adder, not a nutter, but a nutter. A nutter? Yes.

Okay. Susie Dent, your trio of words. Okay, my trio of words for this week. Well, I'm going to start with the German one, actually, speaking of German. Fernweh. Fernweh, I just love. So it's about F-E-R-N-W-E-H

and it's simply the longing for faraway places. And can we call that an English word? No. But it's come into our language. You're just giving us a German word. Well, I just love it. And there are so many. I mean, we know Schadenfreude, Wanderlust and things like that.

So Fernweh. Fernweh. I know not many people are going to use it, but I just thought. F-E-R-N-W-E-H. W-E-H. Fernweh. And what does it mean? It means the longing for faraway places.

Ah. And the longing to travel and the sort of crazy passion to travel, if you want me to throw an extra one in, is dromomania. It means wandering fever, really. Dromomania. Yeah. Suffering from dromomania. Yes.

And talking about sort of dreaminess there's one that I tweeted quite recently which is Nuddle. Nuddle, speaking of dreaminess with Fanve is to walk in a sort of daydreamy state with your head down totally preoccupied to Nuddle. I like that. It's good isn't it? Nuddling free. Yes. And one more? Okay, just to make you laugh. And I don't think I've done this one before. A thorough cough. You know what a thorough cough is? I don't know.

Clearing your throat. No, it's to cough and break wind at the same time. Oh, no. The complete thing. A thorough cough. How amusing. A cough at both ends. Yes.

I love it. What a wonderful way to end. Well, there we are. We've broken wind. Let's stop there. Let's stop there. Let's stop there. What fun it's been. Thank you.

I've loved nuddling with you again. And we've had a little, this has been our Halloween special. We hope you found it as spooktacular as we have. If you've got a question you'd like us to answer or you want to get in touch, the email is purple at something else. That's something without a G, somethingelse.com. Yes, we can't answer every question, but I promise we will try our best.

Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Paul Smith, with additional production from Lawrence Bassett, who's here with us today, Steve Ackerman, and Gully. I think I'm about to thotter cough. Uh-oh.