Something Rhymes with Purple - Gongoozle

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

It’s time to bang-a-bonk because today, Susie and Gyles are exploring the wordy world of waterways.  With Gyles’ recently honed expertise on canals, he’ll take us on a tour to shaggy banks, babbling brooks and we’ll also have time to stop off for a game of Poohsticks. But don’t worry, you won’t be stuck up a certain creek without a paddle as Susie will masterfully take us down the river where we’ll visit some rivals along the way.  A Somethin’ Else production Don't forget about our live show, coming to a computer near you on Thursday 25th March- grab tickets here: https://bit.ly/3v6bc1O  If you have any questions for Susie and Gyles, get in contact by emailing [e-mail]. Susie’s Trio:  Ranty Pole - A wild unruly young person Cockalorum - A self-important man Milver - Someone who chats incessantly through a film Our fabulous new range of merchandise is now live at https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple PLUS for this first week we are giving you 10% off all items if you use the code purple2021. So whether you’re buying a treat for yourself or a gift for a Purple loved one then now is the time to do it. 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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skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Something else. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to the 101th episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. Thank you to all the purple people listening and tuning into a podcast that is essentially all about

words and includes lots of witterings from me Susie Dent and my co-presenter Giles. Hi Giles. I give the witterings you give the solid content but can I pick you up on this 101th? I know that sounds odd. It does. 101st that's that's why. Yes but you're completely right. This is a program all about words and correct language and I've just mucked it up with a very first, second. Except, no, who is to decide what is correct? You are the arbiter. Around the world, they think if Susie Dent says it, it must be right.

And if 100th is right, why is 101th not right? I know. It's got a first in it. That's unforgivable. I can only apologise and say that I need more coffee. No, I think this is a new way of speaking, the 101th, and then the 102th. That's agivable. I can only apologise and say that I need more coffee. No, I think this is a new way of speaking. The 101th and then the 102th. That's a bit difficult. Anyway. Numbers, honestly, I think we've had lots and lots of emails actually begging us to do

an episode about numbers. And I would love to, but they are so crazy and inconsistent and unpredictable that I think we would get ourselves completely tangled up. But maybe when we're brave and when I've had enough coffee, we can bring it on. Look, we've done episodes on deep sex and on chemistry. We can certainly do an episode on numbers. We have had, and I would like to thank people on our joint behalf, we've had messages literally from all over the world, from people who tune in each week to Something Rhymes with Purple. Thank you wherever you are.

And some people have said, we live in Melbourne. We can't get your live show, except you can, because the first live show we're doing this year is live on screen. It's on Thursday, the 25th of March.

It's for purple people everywhere. And we will be live and in colour coming to a screen near you. So please look out for it, book for it, be there. Exactly. Really, really looking forward to that. And as you said, it's going to be interactive, which will be lovely. So people can ask us pretty much anything they want, except please don't ask why it should be 101th and not 101st. I'll get over that in a minute. Today, though, we are talking about not waterworks, but waterways. And we just thought we would have a meander down some of the sort of wonderful waterways in English. And Giles, this is particularly

relevant for you because you have been doing a programme on great canal journeys, and we've heard bits and bobs about it along the way but i'd love to know what waterway facts that you have learned apart from of course your favorite word which you often cite which is gonguzel which is directly linked to canals in fact what does gonguzel mean remind us i do know so to gonguzel is to stare protractedly at a stretch of water and really to kind of also observe the hustle and bustle from a riverbank that's happening on the water itself. And it originated, in fact, amongst spectators of canal activity,

people who would happily bang a bonk, if you remember that. Bang a bonk is to sit idly on a riverbank, except they're doing it on the side of a canal and they are watching what goes on and just watching literally the world go by. But this has been an amazing experience for me and for Sheila. We are people in riper years. And we took over from, we couldn't replace because they're irreplaceable, two other actors, Timothy West and his wife Brunella Scales, who had been travelling on canals throughout Britain and indeed the world

over a period of 10 years. And they decided to hang up their windlass, we can come to that word in a moment, and hand over to us. And the difference between us and them is that we had never been on a canal boat, neither Sheila and I had ever been on a canal boat before. And I don't really like going on water. So I thought it has been a revelatory experience. And I have loved it being on the waterways. What I want to know from you is what water has contributed to our language. Obviously, we have waterways and watercourse, but give us your some free-flowing thoughts on water and words, Susie. Well, it actually goes to the very heart of quite a lot of everyday words in English that I think

would be entirely unexpected. So if you want to talk straight away about some of the words that are derived from rivers, for example, rival. The very sense of being a rival went back to people competing over the precious supply of water from the same river. To derive something meant originally to draw water from a river. To arrive was to arrive at a river. So, you know, so many incredibly essential words in our language actually are built upon water as a very precious, valuable commodity. And, you know know and the central value that it had in our lives in previous times and of course now of course because water is incredibly precious and there is genuine fear that we will run out of the resource at some point give me the source of the

the source of the word water and then come to the source of the word river please well water is simply from germanic uh vasa so it was you know english as i always say is essentially a germanic language even though we've been influenced by hundreds of other languages some more than others so yes it's a sibling of vasa as you would say in german and river is from latin so that's got the kind of romance connection and that is from the latin riparius which was the bank of a river as i say it's sibling very close sibling is rival gosh so river gives us rival derived all sorts of things water inevitably leads us to waterway and watercourse and waterfall and they're simply just building up over the years that's that's waterworks you just put two words together. Yes, absolutely. Those compound

words, very simple. But there are lots of different words for different stretches of water. And sometimes the distinction between them seems to be incredibly narrow. So you've got brooks, you've got creeks, you've got streams, you've got canals. And then up and down the land, you've got so many dialect words for these things as well again showing just how central they were to people's lives and livelihoods you know you've got bourns and becks and all sorts of wonderful words describing either tiny stretches of water or um you know very big ones can you unpack some of those can you tell me the difference between a creek and a stream and a canal start maybe with with the canal, because canals are man-made. They were, as it were, the motorways of, certainly in this country, you know, with the Industrial Revolution,

we had to get things from A to B. Canals were built because it was the simplest, cheapest, most effective way. And horses drew canal boats along the canals. Where does the word canal come from? Canal simply comes from a Latin for a pipe or a groove or a channel. And ultimately, that goes back to canna, C-A-N-N-A, meaning cane. So if you imagine sugar cane, that is like a sort of long, narrow tube. You've got the cannula that is used in hospitals, which people who've had cannulas, or any doctor will tell you it's one of the hardest things to learn as a medical student is to insert a cannula you've got cannon which actually came to us via the italian but again for a large tube you've got a canister you've got a channel you've got canaloni you've got canyon all of these are linked to canal goodness just as a little going down a little cul-de-sac for a moment,

canon and canon. The canon you fire and the canon in a church is spelt differently. Oh, yes. One has got two ends and one got one. That's right. The canon, which is a sort of collection of books or sacred books, that's very different. That's got nothing to do with channels. And that goes back to the Greek canon, meaning a rule. So canon originally were kind of prescribed text, if you like, or those that were considered to be sacred, genuine, and also, you know, set out the principles or the criteria by which something is judged. So that's the Greek canon, meaning rule or law. Canonical, as in canonical texts. And a clergy person who is a canon that's the same source is it that is exactly the same source whereas the canon that fires is this other

meaning of canon as in canal because it's long and tubular exactly very good exactly so the canal comes from something that is long and tubular in shape what is the difference between a canal and a stream well i suppose a canal is is man-made and a stream is made by nature. Yes, exactly. So a stream is a kind of small, narrow river, really. So it flows into a river. Of course, a river is a stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea or a lake or another river. Whereas a creek, for example, is a kind of sheltered waterway that's often an inlet. So it's an inlet in a shoreline or a channel, for example, is a kind of sheltered waterway that's often an inlet.

So it's an inlet in a shoreline or a channel, for example. So that's usually kind of self-contained. What else have we got? A brook is a small stream. But, you know, very often I think in our minds and in our language, we kind of conflate, you know, many of these. And as I say, on top of that, you've got all these wonderful local words for them. But a brook, I will brook no disobedience in my class. Is that the same thing as the babbling brook? No. So that is entirely different. So for example, if you, I think probably the most famous phrase

that you will find that in is brook no quarter, which means, you know, I won't put up with anything. And actually the original meaning was to enjoy, but then it went on to mean able to digest. And that comes from an old English word brookan, which has got nothing to do with the brook that babbles. Oh, ain't language wonderful? Yeah, it was an idea of kind of being able to endure or able to stomach, if you like.

And then the quarter bit, if you want that, is probably the same quarters as barracks that soldiers live in. So in other words, I will give no place to this, is the idea. Lots of different meanings there, but very different brook. But isn't that curious? It's the same five letters, but it has a totally different meaning and a different source. So the babbling brook, the river brook, the stream brook, are you sure it's not the same? Because isn't it to do with the stopping of something babbling brook, the river brook, the stream brook, are you sure it's not the same? Because isn't it to do with the stopping of something? A brook is the part of a stream that stops something from going into the next bit of a stream?

No, so that goes back to the Old English brook. We don't actually know where that comes from, but again, lots of siblings in German brook and Dutch brook as well. But to bruch, as in to tolerate something, is a different old English word that is actually related to the German brauchen, which means to need. But yeah, that was all about kind of stomaching something and enduring it and putting up with. So very different etymologies. Good. Krieg. Well, as I say, I kind of tried to define what that is, but actually that's related to a Viking word, kriki, meaning a nook. So it's the idea of something kind of quite small, contained, narrow, sheltered. In North American, actually, English, and I think in Australian and New Zealand English as well, it can mean a stream or a minor tributary.

But we tend to use it for a kind of narrow inlet more often than not. Creaks don't creak because that's spelled differently, the creaking sound, but brooks do babble. Why do brooks babble, I wonder? I don't know. It's a really interesting one. I ought to look this up because maybe there was a very influential poem at some point where the poet, you know, used a little bit of onomatopoeia and alliteration for the babbling brook.

I'm not sure. In English, people like Alfred Lord Tennyson, in Victorian times, people learnt much more poetry by heart and they had these. And so you could, if you were a great poet, you could get a phrase into the language, the babbling brook. Oh, of course, there are babbling brooks in Shakespeare. I'm sure in Midsummer Night's Dream, there's a babbling brook of some kind. Well, you might be right. Do you want me to look this up in the OED? Why not? Since you've got the OED there.

And you've got the biggest OED in the world, I know. Size matters with you. I have. I have it online, so you can compute that as you like. So you recommend Midsummer Night's Dream, yes. Is this at the beginning where it's I know a bank where the world time grows? Is that what you're thinking? Ah, yes.

And I know a bank that's now a coffee shop. Babbling Brook. Well, it says here, oh, it's quite a nice poetic image, actually, but not Shakespeare. 1728 is the first one that they have here of Babbling Brook, which is most delight in unfrequented glooms or shaggy banks steep and divided by a babbling brook. So 1728. And then in Australian and New Zealand English, in slang at least, a babbling brook is an army cook or one who caters for a kind of party of, you know, maybe sheep shearers as well. Oh, is that a rhyming slang, do you think? An army cook? Babbling brook? Yeah, exactly. It's rhyming slang. Yeah. And I love the shaggy banks that's an

amusing description isn't it a little bit of it is just going back to shakespeare he did use babble as a kind of indistinct subdued murmuring sound and that was in titus andronicus the babbling echo mocks the hounds so there you go it is there good well give us some more i mean ebb and flow that obviously is a phrase that's come from somewhere. That's to do with water, is it? Ebb and flow? Yes, that's to do with water. So ebb is the tide going out and flow is the water rising again. So to ebb is Old English again. And the idea throughout Ibby Annas, it was moving away from something. And then the flow is obviously a or a tidal river moving towards the land. So obviously then it applied figurative uses of time passing, etc. Not just the reflux of

the tide, but also a flowing away or downward, that kind of thing. That goes back to the 15th century, in fact. Something that's much more modern with time passing is the watershed. Now they often refer to this, certainly in the UK, on television. They say, oh, is it after the watershed or before the watershed, which I think is supposed to be about nine o'clock, after which you can use bad language and all sorts of supposedly adult themes. But before the watershed, you're not supposed to be able to use them or show them. What is the origin of watershed in that context? And where does watershed come from? Well, watershed is simply an area or ridge of land, I mean, you know this obviously, that separates waters flowing to different rivers or different stretches of river,

really. So that had a very simple geographical meaning, which then, of course, metaphorically was transferred to a turning point in a situation. So something that marks a transition of some kind. So that's simply water. And then shed in this sense is a ridge of high ground. And I think watershed came together because they have in German Wasser scheide, which means very much the same thing. So it's a different sense of shed. It goes back to an old Germanic word meaning to divide. Very good. So watershed moment is a dividing moment, a key moment. You mentioned the poetic shaggy banks, a phrase we're not familiar

with, but we are certainly familiar with river bank. Why is a bank called a bank i suppose it oh it's is it to do with as in banquette that which we've touched on before and banquet is somewhere something you sit on it's a bench essentially yes it's a bench so it's latin and then through french a bonce b-a-n-c so it is a bench that you sit on it's related to bench it's related to the bank into which you put your money you sit on it's related to bench it's related to the bank into which you put your money because do you remember the money lenders used to have tables or kind of low benches on which they did their trade it's linked to bankrupt because in italian banker rota meant a broken bench because when a money lender went out of business the bench was either figuratively or literally kind of broken to mark his demise or her demise, probably his.

So all of those are related to the riverbank. And the riverbank is simply somewhere where you might like to sit and gungoozle. Well, look, before we do that or even go up shit creek without a paddle, should we take a quick break? Let's do that. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Shrink the Box is a Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple. We're on the water, on the waterways. We're not being sold down the river. We're brooking no quarter. We're tidying ourselves over. There's water under the bridge. I mean, all these turns of phrase, I suppose the water and the river, in fact, I know this from the Canal series, once upon a time, the water works around the country

were like the main roads. They were absolutely central to people's lives. So perhaps it's also surprising that water is so frequently involved in phrases. Yeah, absolutely. And as you say, so many different sayings and so many different metaphors and idioms, etc. And some of them are really dark. So you talked there about selling someone down the river this is really awful in its beginnings because they were anything but figurative really

when they began so if you go back to the early half of the 19th century lewisville in kentucky was one of the largest slave trading posts in the country and slaves would be taken there to be sold on to cotton plantations further south and they'd be taken by the Mississippi or the Ohio rivers and obviously what awaited them was horrendous hardship brutal labor you know cruelty of the highest order so it was the worst fate of all and some took their own lives actually before they arrived. But the idea of being sold down the river is simply being sold by a slave's owners to a plantation owner who could be often particularly sadistic. So it's the sense of profound betrayal, really. And it's all about human treachery. But this is why I love language, because as we unpack these words and phrases, we are unpacking our heritage, both the dark side as well as the sunny side.

Yeah, it's awful. Water under the bridge, I suppose that's quite simple. It's, you know, what happens when you play pooh sticks. Yes, water under the bridge. There were lots of different forms of this. So there was water over the dam, water under dike water under the mill etc and it was all to do with the passing of time or the suggestion that past events have been forgotten and aren't worth bringing up anymore so i think it's probably around the 18 mid 1800s that it came about and there's actually there's a french expression which is very similar and i think that's how it appears

first much water will pass under the bridge. It's quite a lovely metaphor, really. We have listeners in France and in Canada, both are places where they speak French. I wonder how they play Poo Sticks and what they call it. For those of you who are not familiar with Poo Sticks, this is a game made famous in the Christopher Robin Winnie the Pooh books written by A.A. Milne in the 1920s. You drop a stick on one side of the bridge and rush to the other side. In fact, you drop two sticks and you see which one gets there first. Did you play Pooh sticks as a little girl? All the time, yeah.

No, I played it with my kids as well. But to my embarrassment, I actually can't remember where it appears in Winnie the Pooh. Where is it? Or does he play it all the time? No, he doesn't play it all the time. I think it's in the house at Pooh Corner. But if I've got it wrong, no doubt, purple people will put us right.

We like you to do that. It's purple at somethingelse.com if you want to get in touch. Upshit Creek without a paddle. Not a very nice turn of phrase. Before we go to that one, can we do Bridge Over Troubled Waters? Oh, please.

I hope you might sing it. I love that song. No, I'm not going to sing it, but I do love it. But I've done a bit of research into the history of it. So I hope I've gone to the right sources because I didn't actually know. I knew it was a Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song, obviously. But it was created in the 60s when, you know, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King were gone. Racial tensions were everywhere.

It was the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was about and apparently paul simon he had these opening lines in his head for a while when you're weary feeling small when tears are in your eyes i will dry them all and he put them together i think was one of his favorite bach chorals but then he couldn't think of where to go from there and what ultimately inspired him to finish it with the bridge over troubled water was a song by a gospel group called The Swan Silvertones. And there's a quote from Paul Simon. He says, every time I came home, I put that record on.

I started to go to gospel chord changes and took the melody further. Then there was one song where the lead singer was scatting and he shouted out, I'll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in my name. And he said, well, I guess I stole it. And how brilliantly he did steal it because it's such an amazing song, isn't it? And it's kind of slipped into English as an idiom, you know, unto itself or because of those beginnings, which I love.

I love actually reading lyrics as though they were poetry. Yeah. You know, of course, a great song, you hear the music and you immediately think of the words or you hear the words and you immediately can imagine the music but some lyrics like those work well simply as poetry bridge over troubled water so well done simon and garfunkel there isn't an up shit creek song i hope but where does that where does that rather lurid phrase come from it's really interesting because i assumed that up shit creek was the kind of more modern version of up the creek.

But actually, it's the other way around. So up at the creek came a good few decades after up shit creek. And up shit creek, have a guess at when that originated. I don't know, 1930s? No, 1860s. Goodness. And actually, the first record in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the record of the US House of Representatives, where it says, our men put old Lincoln up shit creek and we'll put old

Dill up. I'm not sure who Dill was. I think our US listeners will know. And then Ernest Hemingway used it as well. The stuff is so tight and hard and everything hangs on everything else and it would all just be shot up shit creek. So yeah, it i mean it's a really vivid image isn't it it's a creek that's full of horrible stuff have you seen the tv series shits creek that netflix oh no you were talking about the other day and in fact someone just yesterday mentioned call my agent and i was saying how much you love that one as well because we thought we were out for a walk and we saw a dog, that apparently there is a dog character, is there not, in Call My Agent? Yeah, and we saw that. Call My Agent is a very superior French series.

Now it's come to an end on Netflix. Schitt's Creek is a very funny TV series now, and it's sort of sixth, seventh, eighth season. It's yet again won Golden Globes. I think it's very funny. It's a place called Schitt's Creek. That's the idea. Yeah, it's spelled S-C-H, right?

Yeah, exactly. S-C-H-I-T-T. That's how you spell it in German though, Schitter. Is that how you spell it? Yeah, what's the origin? Actually, it's not a very nice word, but since we've touched on it, and it is connected with water because we flush it away and we're in the creek now, what is the origin of the word Schitt? It's quite interesting because, you know, in our swearing episode,

we were talking about how everyone talks about, oh, those old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon words, which people use that as a byword for a swear word. But actually, more often than not, they came about in the Middle Ages. But shit is an exception. And it simply goes back to the old English shitter, meaning literally diarrhoea. And it's related to the german scheissen so you've got

scheissen schitten and all sorts of things but it was originally completely neutral so not used in a vulgar way at all it was only later that we put that taboo on it because we are slightly prudish aren't we about toilet habits i think quite rightly too we we've touched on words deriving from river like rival and derive and arrive, which I like. Are there, in the past, you've introduced me to words that have within them hidden words, as it were, where we don't realise. Are there words in our language that actually come from the water world that we wouldn't have known come from water? Yes, there are. I mean, to start start with stew i know we're both veggie you

know i love a good vegetarian stew but you might never guess that it actually went back to naked bathing um because when in the middle of today when there's a drought we might be urged to bathe with family or a friend pre-covid i guess um but in the middle ages baths were of course designed to fit multiple people and they were quite big events and you would be entertained with wine and food and music, etc. And the Crusaders apparently loved the Turkish baths that they encountered. And they brought the idea of hot baths and sweating rooms home with them. And these were known as stews. So they were huge public bathhouses that would open up beneath the sign of a Turk's head, which was the symbol of the

Crusaders. And in them, they could stew to their hearts content. And actually, it goes back to the Latin ultimately, estufare, which also gave a stove, but also is linked to the Greek toiphos, meaning vapor. And that word gave us typhoid because of the heat in the body that that horrible disease presents itself with. Anyway, a few years or so after the Crusades, stew had apparently been adopted by medieval chefs, possibly as a joke, but it was all about tenderizing meat and veg by simmering them in a little liquid, just as you might simmer yourself in a hot bath. So yeah, it was a really strange, strange journey from bathing in the nutty to having a good old-fashioned stew and dumplings. You know...

Forget the dumplings, actually. I'm not sure I like that image. Yeah, that's where it goes from. The definition of a gentleman is someone who, when sharing the bath, sits with his back to the taps. Oh, that's a nice one. My father explained that to me. That's as close as we ever got to a discussion of the facts of life. Shall I give you another one? Yes. Obviously, as you get older, some people are affected by cataracts in the eye.

And of course, cataract still has a secondary meaning of a kind of floodgate or a sort of waterfall, if you like. And that is because for the Romans, cataracta could mean both a waterfall and a kind of portcullis so a heavy barrier lowered in front of a gateway and they explain the different uses of cataract today really so the first led to the sense of a large waterfall that tumbles over a precipice and then the medical meaning is because of the clouding of the lens of the eye with the idea that the person's vision is obstructed by this condition as though a portcullis has been lowered down over it so that's why they're called cataracts and as i say

they've got then water in their history albeit hidden well look i think we dived in at the deep end didn't we and i think that's enough those words will tide us over. It's so many expressions. Yes. It says... Yes, so tiding over is like sort of being carried over by the tide. So you're sort of, you know, swept up by the waves over an obstacle in your way. They say you cannot step into the same river twice, but I think this is a subject we'll come back to. Why do they say that?

That's quite interesting, that. Well, I, again, did a little bit of delving into that because I have to say, I didn't know this idiom, you cannot step into the same river twice. But it goes back to a philosopher, Heraclitus, who apparently was quite influential and who believed in a unity of harmony in the world, but also that he kind of saw the world as being in flux constantly. So everything is forever changing. And so that's the same idea, because you can't step into the same river twice, because the second time you will be a different person and it'll be a different river in that

sense of flux. Isn't that lovely? Well, we will come back to water. We'll step into this river twice, because we haven't actually talked about frozen water which is interesting oh ice no we haven't oh but maybe that will wait until winter and spring and then i want you to sing let it go and i want to sing we haven't done enough musical episodes with us both singing oh my goodness i sent you my vaccine song didn't i no i heard i heard dolly's one which was brilliant oh when maxine took the vaccine I haven't sent it to you. Not that I've seen. Well, look, I'll send it to Lawrence, our lovely producer, and maybe he and Jay and Gully and the team can put it in at the end of the episode.

It's going to be you against Dolly with vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. Exactly. Vaccine. I look forward to that. Good. Meanwhile, have people been writing to us? Oh, they have. As always, we love the emails from the purple people.

And there's one from Harrison Gookie. What a brilliant name. Apologies if it's Gookie. I'm not sure quite how to pronounce that. But he says that he refers back to our law episode in which we gave the meaning and origin of the word pettifogger, which reminded him of a particular quote in his favourite film, Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis. which reminded him of a particular quote in his favourite film Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis. And it's the scene where Mr Lincoln is meeting with his council who are in disagreement about pushing forth with the 13th amendment. And Mr Lincoln has had enough, gives a fantastic speech,

and then he refers to his council as petty fogging Tammany Hall hucksters. And he says he's always liked this insult but never quite knew what it meant. Unfortunately, your podcast has shed light on the term petty fogging. And I understand that Tammany Hall references a role Daniel Day-Lewis played in a previous film. And Lawrence, the aforesaid brilliant producer, tells us it was an 18th century New York City political organisation, which you'll find in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. So, wow, this podcast definitely takes us places. But he's wondering where Huckster

comes from, because that will complete his set. So, I can try and answer that one. Huckster, I mean, you know, they go with hawkers and peddlers and people who've been selling things out of the back of wagons for a very long time. Huckster simply goes back to a Dutch word, hoeken, meaning to pedal, simply. So, it came to us via Dutch, as so many words did, and it was first recorded in the 14th century. And in the sense of a hawker, it's been appearing in English since about the early 1500s. So there you go.

It's been around for an extremely long time. But I didn't know about Tammany Hall, so I've learned something from Harrison now. Good. And from Lawrence. This is an education in itself. And Harrison adds, congratulations on reaching 100 episodes. Thank you, Harrison. And we love you being called Gookie. It's a great, great name. Somebody else with an interesting name has written to us. Ayla Iridag, I think I hope I pronounced that correctly, currently listening

to episode 99 on legal language while working as a lawyer in Scotland. And they call them different things up there, I think. Some of the language up here is a little different. Ah, yes, says Ayla. We have advocates rather than barristers and 15 people in a jury rather than 12, for example, which is interesting. Still an odd number.

It's very strange. And given the population is smaller in Scotland. Anyway, however, my question is this. In Scotland, to become an advocate, you must undergo a period of shadowing, learning and assessment known as deviling, similar to pupillage. If you're a pupil, you have a pupil master. If you're being a barrister in England, it's called pupillage.

But in Scotland, it's called deviling. And the people are known as devils during that time. Where does this come from? Well, you know, I could not get to the bottom of this one. So thank you, Ayla, for setting me off on an adventure, really. I ended up messaging a friend of yours and mine, Giles, Judge Rob Rinder, because I thought if anyone knows, he will know. Rob Rinder, Judge Rinder, is a very, very popular character on British TV screens, is a very, very popular character on British TV screens, but also an absolute excellent barrister.

And his legal knowledge is phenomenal. And I have to say, he too was stumped. He said it's banned in some chambers. It must be in England, deviling. And we both surmised that actually, because it involves, certainly in its early days, getting other people to do your work and then you passing it off as your own, that it's called that way because it's a devilish thing to do. In other words, you know, it's basically stealing as it were, and perhaps not getting the credit until you attain, you know, full official status yourself. But I think that's where it began. Very good. Brilliant. Well, thanks to Rob for that one. Hi, Susie and Giles. Love the podcast, says James McFarlane, although I'm sure you're bored of hearing that by now. We are not. We are never, never. We're both insecure and I'm male. So, you know, between us, we really are

desperate for any kind of compliment that is going. Sat on the sofa with my girlfriend and she jokingly said she'd love a cup of joe. Ah, where does that come from? I've not heard of this expression, cup of joe. Cup of joe. It's, I think, mostly North American, but like so much American slang has slipped into British English as well. And we think it's a riff on Java. So we think joe is some kind of variation on Java, which itself in North American English is another word for coffee. And so-called because, of course, Java is the island in Indonesia

that actually produces a lot of coffee. So we think that's where that comes from. Very good. Joe also is a Scottish sweetheart, isn't it? A word popularised by Robert Burns. Oh, nice. So Cup of Joe could be, you know, anyway. Very good.

If you want to get in touch, you can get in touch with us it's purple at something else dot com and something without a g send us the email and we we look at them all and we include as many as possible and try to answer any queries well suzy answers them i just chip in suzy have you got a trio of words to broaden our minds i have i have well you mentioned homeschooling and the occasional frustrations that come about um certainly in the sort of hearts and minds of parents who are trying to juggle everything this one might be useful but only if you're in a bad mood because we love them really don't we but a ranty pole is a centuries old word for a, unruly young person.

A ranty pole. I like that. And, you know, understanding I'm going to sneeze. Excuse me. There must be a word for an inadvertent sneeze. And did I ever tell you, by the way, that sneeze, the S in sneeze at the beginning actually was a misprint, or at least a misunderstanding of the old-fashioned F. It was a phneser. We did talk about this, I'm sure. A phneser is much more of a sneeze,

I think, than a sneeze. But someone thought, oh, that must be an S when in fact it was an old-fashioned F. Absolutely. I do remember that because we were discussing how I used to, my father's edition of Shakespeare, where the S's all looks like Fs. So when we got to where the B sucks, there suck I. I thought that was terribly naughty and exciting. But yes, the F and the S were confusing. So a sneeze was a phoneser. It was a phoneser. But back to Rantipole. Yes, wild and really young person. There you go. My second one, I may possibly have used this one before, but I'm not sure whether you'll like this one, Giles, but I think, you know, they are around. but, and I'm not sure whether you'll like this one, Giles,

but I think, you know, they are around. Coquelorum. A coquelorum is a little man who thinks he's rather big. Oh, I think it's a good... In every sense, I think, you know, in... I know what you mean. In the sense of, you know, thinking that he's kind of strutting around and owns the world, but actually... A coquelorum, how do you spell that?

A little in every way. Coquelorum, L-O-R-U-M. And it's as in, you know, the sort of the cock on the heap. The cockerel. Cock on the heap. Yes. Thinking is, yeah, strutting. Oh, what a cock-a-little cockalorum. I like it. Exactly.

No, it's a good word. Strutting huff snuff. It's a good one. It's a good one. And then my last one, we don't always look to words that have been created by one particular person, especially if they don't get in the dictionary, but I love this one. And again, I think we will all recognise the phenomenon if during the pandemic, during lockdown, you've been watching a lot of Netflix, as we have, sitting on the sofa, there will always be somebody who chats the entire way through a movie. That, according to the columnist Joel Achenbach, I'm pronouncing it the German way, but he might say Achenbach,

I'm not sure, is a milver, M-I-L-V-E-R, someone who chats incessantly through a film. I'm afraid I am the guilty party. Is that you? I am the guilty party. I've been doing a television series in the UK called Celebrity Gogglebox, where I sit on a sofa either with my friend Sheila Hancock or with my friend Maureen Lipman, and we watch TV. And of course, they encourage us to chatter, but it's not a problem because I do chat. And Maureen is forever saying, oh, shut up, for God's sake, shut up. Trying to follow this. I've not seen this before. Shut up. I'm clearly a, is it a milverer? Somebody who mil... No, a milverer. You're a milverer. I'm a... M-I-L-V-E-R.

Milverer. Somebody who doesn't stop talking. Yes. In a film, specifically. Specifically. Somebody who's, oh dear me. I'm so sorry. I just got into the habit of it. That's why watching anything takes us twice as long. In fact, it usually takes us three times as long because A, we have to replay everything because of our age, we didn't quite hear what they were saying. And then because I talk through the scene, my wife says, please play that again. I miss that. So every hour-long programme actually takes three hours to view. That's because I'm a milver.

Yes. I think you have just proved the point. I've got a nice short poem for you this week because I was looking for a poem that was connected with water because I knew we were going to talk about canals and rivers and, you know, things that go splash in the night. And I then set to wonder why it was that the rain looks like rain. Why does it come down in the way it does?

Why doesn't it come down as bubbles or in buckets? Why does it come down as it does? And then I remember this lovely little poem by Spike Milligan. There are holes in the sky where the rain gets in, but they're ever so small. That's why the rain is thin. I like that. It's like having a giant colander in the sky. That's lovely. Thank you to everyone for listening to us and for supporting us through 101 episodes. We are incredibly grateful. I'm going to go and chastise myself forever

thinking that 101th was the correct way of putting things. But meanwhile, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Harriet Wells, Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale, and whereabouts unknown, Gully. No cock-a-lort-um-hee. And whereabouts unknown?

Gully. No cock-a-lorum he. Maxine was scared to death. You hear such awful tales. People are dying from Winnipeg to Wales. but now she's a different lady. Her life's changed overnight. Where there once was darkness, she can see some light. Since Maxine took the vaccine, everything is fine.

So fine. Her life is so much better. And so is mine. She feels like she's been locked in a lion's den. But since Maxine took the vaccine, she can breathe again. Maxine was so careful, she never made a fuss. She kept her distance and never took the bus. her distance and never took the bus. She sang happy birthday every time she washed her hands.

When you're in isolation it messes with your plans. Since Maxine took the vaccine, everything is fine, fine, fine, fine. Her life is so much better, and so is mine. She feels like she's been locked in a lion's den. But since Maxine took the vaccine, she can breathe again. She can breathe. She can breathe again. Oh, Maxine, darling, thank you for taking that vaccine.

It's made all the difference to us both.