Something Rhymes with Purple - (H)aitch

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Join Susie and Gyles this week as we unravel the captivating stories behind the letters 'E' to 'L,'  in the second installment of our alphabet journey. We explore the rich history and surprising connections that have shaped our language, and of course indulge in Gyles' infamous anecdotes. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW 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:  Timdoodle (Cornwall): An insult for a stupid fellow. Lab-dab: A profuse perspiration. Nickerers: New shoes that make a creaking noise. Gyles' poem this week was 'Happinness' by Colin Hinton - whoGyles met who took part Gyle's poetry together chatiry Happiness for me is my aim, Happiness for all others is my aim. This is what I will endeavour to attain, With all the thoughts within my brain. To all my family, I wish happiness, To all my friends, I wish happiness, To others I meet today, I wish happiness, To the whol world, I wish happiness. For this, I endeavour to do my best, To spread happiness, From east, To west. I will always smile, laugh and jest So that all that meet me, Will feel at rest. 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

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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to register in Canada. Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience and the Purple people often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language. And today we're returning to a subject that we thought we could cover in a single episode oh so foolishly, Giles, didn't we? And we ended up just doing a teeny tiny fraction of the entire

subject. Completely razor sharp on top of it. We got to A to E last time. We're going to go F onwards as far as we get today. I appreciate that's what's happening. And I learned this week that foreign students learning English are now being taught modern phrases and slang words such as beef, bear, and fam at schools and colleges. I read this and I thought, well, I don't know what beef, bear, and fam mean. And everybody said to me, oh, well, ask Susie. She's bound to know. And I thought, well, I don't know what beef, bear and fam mean. And everybody said to me, oh, well, ask Susie. She's bound to know. And I thought, I won't tell her that I'm going to ask her.

I'm going to throw it as a surprise. So I have. I've thrown it as a surprise, which is why you thought, oh, what's he doing? We're going through these. Oh, what's he up to now? And I wanted to know if you know what beef means in a modern use of the word. Well, my understanding of it is not too different to how you and I would understand it if someone said, oh, he's got beef with so-and-so. Or to, you know, to bear a grievance is to have a beef with someone. So I think how I've understood it in teen slang particularly is, so Giles and Susie have got beef.

In other words, they're sort of squabbling and fighting with each other. That's how I understand it. You're spot on. That is the correct answer, Susie Dent. This is why you are the world's leading lexicographer. Just give me the other two. Bear. Bear.

That's been around for a while. This is bear, B-A-R-E. Yeah. And this just means very. Like, yeah. How do you know all this stuff? Well, this one's been around for a while so this is bear b-a-r-e yeah and this just means very like yeah all this stuff well this this one's been around for a while well podcast with you for five years you never introduced me to bear before when i when i say bear you say move on and i used to have you remember i had a fozzie on a jumper and on the back yes paddington and you said why have you got that because i like to have a bear behind and you you said, oh, for goodness sake, man.

Okay. The third one I offered you was fam. F-A-M. Yeah. That's just your friends, isn't it? That's just your, you know, your bros. So, yeah. I sound so ridiculous.

Okay. So, one that I learned the other day was, this was the sentence that was delivered to me. Oh, mum, that's so long. Oh, that's so long. I don't know what that means at all. That means boring? It's incredibly annoying and irritating.

That's so long. So that's a new one for me. I think dead means boring. Oh, that's dead means that's boring. Okay. Which is quite nice. Been and gone. Yeah. Well, there we are.

Look, the truth is I'm gassed. That means I'm excited that I miss you. I'm not shook, which would mean that I'm scared. And I'm glad that we've linked up because we're meeting up. So now it's time for you to- I'm glad you didn't say hook up then. What does that mean? Well, hook up now. I think in our generations,

it was quite innocent, wasn't it? Let's hook up later. But actually there's a definite sexual sense to hooking up now. And of course, the most famous one that morphed in meaning, which a lot of purple people will already know is Netflix and chill.

Netflix and chill, you know that one, don't you? I am familiar with that. But there has been a variation on the word that you have been talking about a lot i know over the christmas holidays which is a riz the word of the year last year possibly derived from charisma or possibly not because i heard that riz as well as meaning you know it's got riz you got charisma it's also mean could mean that you're good at chatting up good yeah so you raise someone up exactly so it's a definite it is i think is in my experience it's never actually been used directly to me um is that it is predominantly used on dating websites and dating apps and that

kind of thing so you raise someone up um and you are it means yeah you're really good at flirting so it's not i for me it's not quite as wide as sex appeal or charisma because it actually is predominantly again i think used of um men chatting up women i think well i want to tell you that this podcast today's episode as far as i'm concerned is peng oh peng yeah uh nang as they used to say yes paying it's all because it's funny adjectives of approval are the ones that seem to uh evolve and revolve most quickly and do you remember i said to you i think when we were talking about slang but also particularly about those words of the year that i think i mentioned that cool was

first recorded in 19th century public school slang so something is cool it's the opposite of hot it's so it's flipping as slang often does it's flipping the traditional meaning and that one I always assumed any generation can use but but now I can't use it because I just get an eye roll if I say that's cool but you can say that's peng which means that's good I think I'd look absolutely ridiculous if I say that's cool. But you can say that's peng, which means that's good. I think I'd look absolutely ridiculous if I start, well, sound it at least, if I started going around saying that's peng. I would be mortified to use it myself, I think. Basically, we're going through the alphabet and looking at words beginning with letters,

or that are the letters themselves. And I've always loved this because I loved the crossword puzzle clue that I remember from my childhood which was basically the letters h i j k l m n o and the answer was a five-letter word and of course the answer was water because that's h 2 o very good we haven't got quite to h yet we're at f aren't we we are we are anything We are at F. And does F mean anything in its own way? Does F mean anything? No, not on its own. It is, well, it began, as so many of these did, as an Egyptian hieroglyph, and it was a horned asp, whilst in the Phoenician alphabet, it was represented by a peg. So, all, I guess, about the, you know, the shape of the letter. But interestingly, I was asked the other day, just when we were talking shape of the lesser but interestingly I was asked the other day just when we're talking about a horned asp I was asked by a radio presenter is it a

horned viper or a horned viper and it seems that in taxonomic terms or in zoological terms horned is preferred over horned and I looked it up in the OED and actually horned is the first pronunciation given for this word, H-O-R-N-E-D. So I think it might be a horned aspect. Anyway, there you go. In poetry, I mean, I would have said horned. Yeah. But occasionally when you're reading a poem, you find an accent if they want to indicate because to give me make the meter right the hornet whatever it is they will put like a grave accent uh yes or some kind of diacritic um sometimes what's a diacritic that's a little a diacritic is pretty much an accent or something but it covers the whole gamut can i say with the reviews i've had over the years every critic i've met has been a dire critic um spelled slightly differently but we'll go with it thank you

very much so f there used to be an expression um f is written on his face and that's because the letter f which stood for felon um used to be branded near the nose of a criminal. And it was also used for anyone caught brawling in church, apparently. And this wasn't abolished until 1822. And I'm really hoping it wasn't an indelible, painful brand of the sort that might be used on Castle, which is bad enough. But yeah, F is written on his face meant this is a felon. I suspect it was written on his face. I suspect it was. What a hideous.

Indelible. It's extraordinary. I was with this morning a man who you're going to hear more about when I come to read my poem today, who's 91, who was telling me that his father, during the Second World War, was imprisoned for a month for stealing a pencil. He had worked, I think, for the railways in some capacity, and he used a pencil he had worked i think for the railways in some capacity and he used a pencil in his work and inadvertently he left the premises with the pencil in his pocket you're kidding me and he was stopped and charged with stealing this pencil good and he had to serve a month in prison

so there have been tough rough sentences wow not long. Not long ago. That's only 18 years. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's very sad. Branding people. F is written on his face. That is quite frightening.

And of course, now, if we just see an F, we automatically think it stands for the F word, really, regardless of whether it comes with asterisks, et cetera. Well, it does, doesn't it? I don't think, no. You think a felon. If I saw F, then with dash, dash, dash, I wouldn't do that. But if I thought F on its own, I would think of the note, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Nice.

I mean, seriously, I think I would. Yeah. But if people say the F word, then I know what they are meaning. Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you also mentioned the musical note because just a minute ago i talked about the whole gamut when it came to diacritics and that is all about musical notes because it comes from the medieval latin gamma and then ut and so that was the name of the lowest note in the medieval scale and then it was applied to the whole range of notes used in medieval music.

So if it's the whole gamut, it's all the notes on a musical scale. But that gamma is, in fact, the letter C rather than the letter G, isn't it? Exactly. It brings us quite nicely, doesn't it, to the letter, well, gamma, really, to the letter G, which is where we've got to. But you say gamma because it isn't the letter G, or is it? Were the C and the G interchangeable at some stage? Well, it's a modification of C for Latin, but in Greek it was gamma. And the g and the k, the hard k sounds,

were both represented by the letter C originally. And when does that little extra line that turns a C into a G come? This is wonderful. We've reached the G spot. When did that come into play? I think around the fourth century, maybe a little bit before. But yeah, so I suppose fairly early on in alphabetical terms. So what have we got to say about the letter G that's interesting?

Well, not a huge amount, except that in the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets, it was the outline of a camel's head and neck, which I quite like. So, you know, it's quite often, obviously, as I said before, it is all about the shape, but quite often it also seems to be entirely random. But we don't always know what the motivation was in terms of the hieroglyphic illustrations. Can you quickly touch on the G-spot? Ah, well, the G-spot is named after, I think he was called Greifenberg, who was a physician.

Yeah, Ernst Greifenberg. And he was a gynaecologist that first described the G-spot. And this is a real thing, is it? Yeah, I think it is. Good. It's basically the highly erogenous zone, isn't it? Very good. What's the difference between, well, the G-spot is named after this man. What about the G-string? Yeah, we talked about that. And we honestly don't know where it comes from. So some people think it began with Native Americans who would wear loincloths or sort of coverings that were a little bit like songs behind.

Whereas others think that it was as thin as now. Oh, well, as thick as the G string of a violin, which I think is the thickest string, actually. But other people think it was named after the musical string. It's still not very thick, is it? It's pretty scanty. Exactly, exactly. So we're not entirely sure. You're not wearing much if you're wearing a G-string. No. Have you ever worn a G-string?

Have I ever worn a G-string? Yes. No. He's done lots of acting. Well, no. Well, I did appear. No, I have appeared in moments from the Rocky Horror Show, which did require, I think,

what I would best describe as a gold lame codpiece. Wow. A codpiece, so-called, because cod is that a euphemism for? No. Well, C-O-D-D was an old, very old word for the scrotum, I think. And so a codpiece was something that protected your genital area. So it was a gold lame scrotum protector, which I wore with fishnet tights no not tights stockings and suspenders uh and also hang on so was this in it was this on stage or was this in a film it was on

stage that off there's actually rather a good photograph of it online i say a good photograph it was taken by um i'm not sure i want to look up Giles Brand with in a g-string. What should I look up? You look up Giles Brand with maybe in fishnet tights. Or should I just look up Rocky Horror? Look up Rocky Horror. Try to remember what the name is. Oh my goodness, yes, I've gone straight to it. Oh my god. Am I sitting sideways? Wow.

Am I standing or sitting in the photograph you've got? You're standing and looking very happy. I'm sorry about that. And you've got your hands on your hips and you're strutting your strut. That is from Rocky Horror Show. There is a more distinguished looking picture taken by a Murdo MacLeod, I think his name was, a famous Scottish photographer, which has won awards. This photograph has won awards.

Well, I'm actually sitting with one knee raised in these fishnet tights. And I'm quite pleased with that. I haven't felt able to send the photograph to anyone, nor show it to my wife or children. Well, the entire purple community is now going to look it up. But this in The Guardian, the time reading here, says it was from Zip, your musical. It was.

Did you wear one for that too? Well, I have, yes, in that show. You see, it's all coming out now. That show, I have to say, there was a lot of camping around and dressing up. I did Hello Dolly and Mame simultaneously. So I went once across the stages in my Hello Dolly outfit, then I came back in my Mame outfit.

I was in frocks and suspenders throughout. And then the show ended with me as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz with emerald slippers. You know, we like to think the whole theatre exploded in excitement. This is lovely. I'm just going to read you this and then we'll get back to the alphabet. So this is from the same Guardian interview, Guardian being those purple people outside Britain. It's a broadsheet newspaper over here. And it says, Branders gets to do pocket-sized versions of the Rocky Horror Show, La Casual Fall,

and Starlight Express, shamelessly camping it up in suspenders and stockings like a real pro or the average Tory MP. This is from The Guardian, which I think tells you everything you need to know both about The Guardian and possibly about me as well. It was about a quarter of a century ago, but there we are.

And I think I, oh, I will tell you this story. Now we're talking about it. When I was doing, I began that show in Edinburgh, but it went on tour around the country, ended up in the West End. And it was a big hit in Edinburgh and you couldn't get tickets. And I was waiting out,

I was going to the theatre one day and I saw in the queue waiting to get returns, Sir Ian McKellen. Anyway, after the show, we met up for a cup of coffee. And we sat there, and I was back dressed in my normal clothes. And he said to me, Giles, tell me the truth. Are you still wearing your stockings and suspenders? And I said, well, since you asked me, Ian, I am.

Now, how did you know? He said, because I'm still wearing mine. Oh, how funny. So we're a couple of camp hole darlings, no matter. When did the word camp come to mean that sort of behaviour that I'm describing now, exaggerated theatrical behaviour? Yeah, I was asked this the other day, actually, and we're not entirely sure. So theatrical slang, almost certainly, but there was a verb in French, se camper, so to camp oneself,

which meant to behave in a very exaggerated manner and sort of, you know, as I say, very theatrical. But we actually don't know. And se camper in French also meant sort of being you know, as I say, very theatrical. But we actually don't know. And ce qu'on paie in French also meant sort of being slightly provocative, which is maybe what led to the idea of just sort of really hamming it up. But yeah, so we're not sure. And why ce qu'on paie exists in French? Because if you take it back far enough, it probably is all about Roman encampments. But maybe the idea was of being provocative,

sort of slightly, I don't know, bellicose. I'm not quite sure. It's an interesting one. We must explore further. We've reached H, which is the halfway mark. So why don't we take a quick break and then explore the letter H. Lovely.

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This is Something Rhymes with Purple. We're going through the alphabet, looking at the letters of the alphabet and where they lead us. And we had some fun with the G spot, the G string, if not the G force. Oh, I've heard of a G force. What does that mean? Yeah, G force. Oh, my goodness. I'm looking this up because my physics is not very good. So we talk about Gs, don't we?

Oh, it's simply an abbreviation of gravitational force. I should have known that. That's from the 1930s. And when people like Americans say G, that's actually a euphemism for Jesus, isn't it? For God, probably, or Jesus. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Good. Okay. H. Tell us all about the origin of the letter H. Well, this is another one that came from the Phoenician alphabet. And the form of R, capital H, went through Roman, Latin and Greek, the Roman language of Latin. And it had two crossbars instead of one.

And originally in the Phoenician alphabet, it represented a fence. But the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, believe it or not, was a sieve. And the Anglo-Saxon runes, so you can see just how far apart these were in terms of their pictorial representations. It was called hail, as in the hail that falls from the sky. So lots and lots of different conceptions, I suppose, of the letter H. But again, it's been around for a very long time. H. Is there, well there well of course there's the h bomb which people have used to refer to they don't any longer yeah i suppose no it's

this it was the high superseded isn't it hydrogen bomb horrors h yeah anything any any words i mean is h a word do you like people who drop their h's, that was what I was going to come on to, because that's always the big question, isn't it? Is it H or H? And like many sort of so-called new, or for those who hate it, aberrant pronunciations, it's usually used by the younger generation. So when I go to schools, H is predominantly used by the kids and indeed by some of the teachers as well. And the standard given in the dictionary at the moment is still H without. But the one thing I do always say to those people who complain bitterly about H making

not just an entrance, but, you know, hanging around, is that if you went to some Victorian grammar school, you might find that children are actually being told to say H because it was considered rude to drop your Hs. And H has drifted in and out of fashion according to its pronunciation. So, you know, we had an hotel, for example, and then we had a hotel. But hotel was considered to be the more polite and urbane form of it. So it's really quite circular in terms of, you know, what we prefer. I think it's valid to say H because the word does, you know, H is the letter H and rather good that it should begin with an H.

I mean, it's odd that we say F, which is the letter F, but actually, if you're speaking it, you speak with an E. E is F, isn't it yeah well the the h without the h has so often uh from french ash does not have a um an h at the beginning and you know there was that time as i always say when french was considered cool and fashionable and everybody wanted to follow follow it well is it not still the diplomatic language i mean i think still i don't know whether it still happens at court, but certainly until quite recently at court, the menus were always printed in French. I know from writing my biography of the late Queen Elizabeth II, that when she was a little girl, and as Princess Elizabeth with her sister moved into Buckingham

Palace, they, as children, they had food served to them up in the nursery and the menus in the nursery were in French. Wow. I suppose it was quite good for them to help learn that. Good practice, yeah. But isn't that amusing? I think there's always a big tussle in diplomatic circles between French and English, actually,

and a bit of resentment by the French that English is being seen as the lingua franca when, as you say, it was predominantly French. I know now in the European Union, now that Britain has left the European Union, that they mostly speak in English because I think Ireland is the only country within the European Union where the first language is.

So 27 or whatever it is countries in the European Union and only one has English as its main language. And yet that's the language in which they operate. Yeah. It is the world language, isn't it? What does lingua franca mean? People often use this. It's a Latin phrase, isn't it?

Yeah. So lingua franca is almost like a sort of free language. So franca actually is behind Frank, which also gave us the name of France. And the Franks, if you remember, were... Now, what was their relationship with the Gauls? It was quite a complicated one, wasn't it? So I think the Franks conquered the Gauls, if I'm right, and they considered everything of theirs to be highly superior. And so frank came to mean open and honest, and it also meant free from solitude. Frankincense is superior incense. That's the idea behind that.

So a lingua franca is really, in some ways, it's the language of the free people, which is quite interesting. But it's all linked up with, you know, with that history of the Franks and the Gauls. It literally means Frankish tongue. But it's really, I suppose, in its broadest definition, it's a common language between speakers who don't have the same first language. Yeah. And English really is the lingua franca because, as you've told me, there are now more people who speak English, not as their first language, but as a second language. Yeah, we're vastly outnumbered now. Wow.

There's native speakers. Yeah, I think that's really exciting. It is exciting. Not everyone would agree. It means the world can tune in to Something Rides With Purple and understand what we are saying. I hope so. What we're saying next, I want to know about,

is the letter I in relation to the letter J. Are they connected in any way? They look so similar in some ways. Yeah, they were interchangeable. So in Greek, the letter I was iota. And so, yes, the printed I and J were just essentially pronounced, well, represented exactly the same thing. It was only in the 19th century that they began to be treated as separate letters.

Really? So hold on. You're telling me that a word like join used in Shakespeare, the I and the J, it could be I-O-I-N, and that would mean join? Yes. I don't know whether they applied particular rules to the beginnings of words and that kind of thing.

But if you look at Samuel Johnson's dictionary in 1755, you will find iambic, beginning with an I, coming between jam and jangle. So yeah, it was an alphabetisation to modernise would seem to be slightly random. But I really like I. Well, first of all, I mentioned the Greek iota, okay? And when we say not an iota of respect we're talking about not even the tiniest amount and that was because i and j indeed us was considered small letters of the alphabet and the dot on the i and indeed the j was called a tittle and it's possible that when we describe someone as being polite to a t uh i'm sure i've mentioned this on the pod before that may be a shortening of to a tittle i.e to the tiniest degree possible

because we use the phrase or some people do jot or tittle not one jot yes not one jot is the same idea not one j because it goes back to that idea of the iota um and it could have been not one yacht now we did touch on this last time but it just explained to me about the capitalization because the capital i is one long line possibly with one at the top one at the bottom and a capital j may have a line across the top of the j but there's no dots there no why is that just i wish i could explain the, you know, the rationale behind certain things. So in Old English, there was no distinction between uppercase and lowercase, really. And sometimes they'd have decorated letters.

And you'll find going right forward to medieval manuscripts, you know, the beginning letter was beautifully illustrated. But it was pretty haphazard for a while. illustrated. But it was pretty haphazard for a while, and it was only with the development of the printing press in Europe, thanks to William Caxton and others, that punctuation really, proper nouns and capitalisation really came into force. And printing began to favour, indeed, capitalisation of nouns in quite a Germanic style. So we used to capitalise nouns. And indeed, if you look at, I think, Swift who was talking about you know the sort of abuse of the English tongue etc it looks really odd to modern eyes because so many of his nouns are capitalised and then by the end of the 18th century when you started to have dictionaries that were kind of pretty prescriptive

then and style manuals that capitalisation of nouns faded away but the capitalization of um yeah the beginning of sentences etc really took off as to why we changed certain things you know why there was not a dot and why there was a um a straight line i actually don't know the answer to that maybe that some of our purple listeners will do but i'm not sure please let us if you do. I know we've touched on this before, but I love you reminding me. Uppercase and lowercase, it's not an urban myth, it's to do with printing. And the capital letters were up in an uppercase when they did hand printing with individual letters. I mean, is that correct? Absolutely correct, yeah.

So there were two type cases, typesetters and they were placed onto an angled stand it's sort of usually sort of being angled away from you and the case containing the capital letters was the higher and further away from the composite from the composter so the uppercase was the one that you had to reach up for amazing and the lowercase is the one that gave you the the everyday letters that were much more used but yeah brilliant okay okay k is next yes k so after the the c in latin was given the k sound uh the romans only used the k for abbreviated forms of a smattering of words from greek um and that was it. So, we just talked about how felons or criminals might have the letter F branded on their faces. Well, in Roman times, it was a K, and that was for calumnia, for calumny, really, which is pretty awful, isn't it?

K, we also have kilo, it's used for a thousand, etc and is there's a i think i probably should know this there's a drug reference with k isn't there have i completely no well this is your this is more your territory you're younger than me i should know this no i think i may have made it up um i'm just looking down here so it can mean kindergarten in North American English. It can mean a king in chess and card games. It can mean knit. In Mozart's works, it means kölschel, which is a catalogue, and so on and so on. Oh, and potassium as well. K is a name. Is that an abbreviation for Catherine, do you think? K? Oh, interesting. Yes, quite possibly. Quite possibly it was a pet name, but then became a name in its own right. Because it's funny, letters of the alphabet,

it's unusual to be a letter of the alphabet. I mean, no, there's nobody, I've never met anybody called H, either H. B. There's B, isn't there? There is B. B, short for Beatrice quite often. Yes. Yeah. If you're called K, we like the name. All right, let's do, I think we've got time for just one more letter. Okay. Could it be the letter L? Yeah, well, this is very simple. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, L was rather beautifully a lioness. And in the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabet, it was, I think, an ox.

But there's not much more to say about L, really. Twelfth letter of the alphabet. I mean, do you actually, you know how people have favourite numbers? Do you actually have a favourite letter of the alphabet? Because I really like L. Well, I really like Q because I think I write rather... Okay. Well, I think it's because I like the way I write my Q. Yeah. Which is nice. We're not going to cover Q this week. You're going to have to wait for that.

We'll have to wait. Why is L your favourite? I don't know. I quite like double L words in Scrabble and in, I've got a word game as well, and I just really like double Ls. I don't know. It's the Roman numeral for 50, of course, and that was complete coincidence. It was simply that the symbol that the Romans used for 50 looked a little bit like the L. It was similar in shape.

And then in ancient Roman notation, L with a stroke above it was 50,000. And we also have LB, don't we, for pounds, if we're talking in old money. And LB is short for Libra, which was a pound in Roman terms and then represented, of course, by a set of scales because it was used for weighing, which is why the symbol for Libra in the horoscope is a pair of scales. And which alphabet is L for leather? You know, there's one of those, there are lots of alphabets, aren't there? Where to, you know, A is alpha, A alpha, B. It's Lima, it's Lima in the NATO alphabet.

I'm not sure, actually. I feel L for leather is an expression that I'm. Well, there's hell for leather, isn't there? She's going hell for leather. Yes, all right. She went hell for leather I feel hell for leather is an expression that I'm... Well, there's hell for leather, isn't there? She's going hell for leather. Yes, all right. She went hell for leather. Going hell for leather. And what was that about?

Yeah. If you go hell for leather, I think the idea is that you are on your horse and you are wearing out the saddle. So it's hell for leather. You're heading like a bat out of hell and you're wearing out the leather of your horse's saddle. That's the idea. Do you still get letters sent to you through the post?

Very rarely, but sometimes the Countdown team gets some wonderful letters written, handwritten from some of our older viewers. And those are always really special. I've got quite a few of them. Look, I've got one here on my desk because they just really make me happy. Well, I got a letter this morning. Do you know who I mean by the actress Penelope Keith, now Dainby? Of course. To the man of Bourne. To the man of Bourne, and before that, the good life. A great actress and a lovely human being.

She sent me an email the other day, and then this morning a letter came. And she said, I sent you an email, but I thought I'd send you a letter as well because I like getting letters. I hope you like getting letters. That Penny. That's all it said. And she just liked the idea of sending a letter. It made me think this weekend, I must send a few letters to people, even shortly. Send her one back. Send her a little postcard or something nice.

I will. I'll send her a note. And I'll say you encourage me to do so. When people can write to us, sending a letter may be difficult because this is an international show. We now have the benefit of being able to get in touch over the World Wide Web. So it's purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com. We'll come back to the rest of the alphabet. We'll take you from M through to Z or Z at a later date.

But today, shall we deal with our correspondents? Who have we heard from this week, Susie? So the first one is, well, we have voice notes from Charlie. Dear Susie and Giles, I'm, well, we have voice notes from Charlie. Dear Susie and Giles, I'm a long-time fan and first-time correspondent. At my inner London comprehensive, the Jamaican English or multicultural London English word, cotch, was used as a verb, noun and adjective to mean to hang out or good place for hanging out. I then attended a boarding sixth form in South Wales, where Welsh people would use a very similar word, very similarly, to convey that friendliness. Cotch, with a W.

Are they etymologically related? A cursory Google suggests not, but it seems too big a coincidence not to be the case. Ever yours, Charlie. God, what a brilliant question. I like Charlie's voice. I like the way he spells Charlie, C-H-A-R-L-E-Y. I like his sign off, ever yours.

That has an old school charm about it. I would have pronounced the Welsh word quetch, because it's spelt like that, but is it not pronounced that way? No, it's definitely cutch. To rhyme with butch, butch, essentially. So, well, I can start with that one, if you like you like because coach is regularly voted the favorite word of the Welsh nation because it's more than a hug it's a kind of embrace but it's a sort of embrace that fills someone with a sense of belonging and for home and that kind of thing and actually it's a sibling of the word couch where you are sort of wrapped up and comfortable um in French we have coucher so coucher you go to bed but also where you are sort of wrapped up and comfortable. In French, we have coucher,

so coucher, you go to bed, but also you are just sort of almost... Snuggling up. Yeah, snuggling up and finding that area of comfort. And that is what is in the couch, the Welsh couch, and it is an absolutely beautiful word. Now, the Jamaican Multicultural London English word. So, this one is a little bit evasive when I was looking up the origin of this. Do you mean elusive rather than evasive? Oh, yes, elusive. Thank you.

Well, it probably was trying to evade me as well with my little magnifying glass. But yeah, it was elusive. Thank you. You see, this is really good that you picked me up because people always say, I'm so worried about emailing you because in case, you know, I might make a mistake. And I just say, no, I make them all the time as I just have. Okay. So I am looking this up now and I'm looking it up. It is in the OED and its first, well, one of its first definitions is to spend time relaxing, which is, you know, quite similar to what Charlie is saying now, To hang out, just to sort of, you know, to chill, basically.

But it could also mean to stay or sleep somewhere on a temporary basis, a bit like sofa surfing, or you might cotch on the streets. In the 19th century in Jamaican English, it meant to rest oneself, but also to lean on something for support, really. It also had that sense of, as say sleeping somewhere temporarily but by the 1920s another interesting sense came about which was basically being sort of blocked or preventing movement in some way so the wheels of progress had been cotched is from one newspaper in kingston jamaica um we talk about yeah cotched etc. But the slang sense, particularly in British Afro-Caribbean usage, is to relax or to pass the time, as I say, to hang out. And the only origin that we think we know is from that wedge sense, which is a bit of an outlier, because that's definitely not the one that's used predominantly in slang. And that suggests it's a variation on Scotch, is a new Scotch progress.

Scotch progress. And Richard Alsop wrote the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, which I worked on a little bit when I worked at OUP and I met him and he produced really authoritative work on Caribbean English. And he recorded a sense of Scotch and cotch as a verb meaning to find or be given temporary make-do accommodation. So that's coming closer to the idea of hanging out. But, you know, again, it may go back to that French coucher to lie down, which would mean it is related to the Welsh couch. But we just don't know. And Charlie, I know I'm going to disappoint you here, but all I can say is thank you for the question. I'm going to pass it on to the OED in the hope that if their noses weren't twitching already, that they will definitely then get out their deer stalkers and

their magnifying glass and get on the hunt as to whether kutch and kotch are indeed related, because it does, from their meaning, you're absolutely right, sound as if they might be. That was very intriguing. Brilliant question from Charlie. Very long. We've now got another voice note from somebody else who's been listening for a while, but hasn't actually been in touch before. Hello, Giles, Susie and the team. We love the podcast. I'm a first-time emailer. I've been listening now for almost two years, and I wondered if you could shed any light on the term

nutter. I'm not sure if it's a simple slang, but nut seems to be a common way to describe someone who might be eccentric, deluded or unhinged. This also goes for other terms such as nutty, nutty as a fruitcake, nut job. Thank you. Richard from London. Well, I think I know the answer to this, but you tell us what the actual answer is, Susie. Well, no, I think you tell me what you think. Well, I think it's all to do with the head, isn't it? It is. A head shaped like a nut. Exactly, the shape, entirely that.

So the old English word nut comes from the Latin nux, which also meant a nut. It also gave his nucleus, incidentally. But the idea of a crazy or eccentric person or somebody who is a person who is really obsessively interested in a certain thing such as a speed nut for example if you're really into car racing etc those date from only the early 20th century and yes they probably come from that informal sense of a person's head that gave us do

your nut and getting very cross it gave us nutty meaning but eccentric and it also is the source of nutting someone by butting them in the head and that comes from around the 1930s so as simple as that really as simple as the shape of the head it's a bit like bean as well we have a beanie because bean was also used for for the head because of the similarity in shape you and i are old enough just about you and i know if you're just about old enough to remember, indeed you may have worked with, the late, great Frank Muir. Everyone's a fruit and nut case. Is that what you were going to do?

That's exactly what I was thinking of. It was a commercial for Cadbury's fruit and nut chocolate. It was such a good ad. He performed it. He was the most amusing, very tall man, wrote brilliant scripts, and then became something of a performer himself, a delightful human being. This could be my excuse for reciting my favourite poem,

which I'm not going to have as my poem of the week because we have not time for that yet. But you know my poem, don't worry if your job is small and your rewards are few. Remember that the mighty oak was once a nut like you. Oh, I do remember that. Yeah, it's lovely. One of my favourites. It's very nice that one. Now, you got, please, if you've got a letter or query for us, do get in touch. You know the address.

We're here and we love hearing from you. If you've been listening for years but haven't been in touch before, it's simply write to us, purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com. Now, people, do collect your trio of words. And what have you got for us this week, Susie? Well, I'm going to say the first one slowly, lest you think it's something else. Nickerooz. People do collect your trio of words. And what have you got for us this week, Susie? Well, I'm going to say the first one slowly, lest you think it's something else.

Nickerous. Nickerous. Okay. And so N-I-C-K-E-R-E-R-S. Nickerous. And I may have mentioned this before, but I was reminded the other day because I have a new pair of trainers, which for some reason make

a really very loud noise as I'm walking and people have genuinely been turning around to find out where it's coming from and knickers are simply new shoes that make a creaking noise oh I like very specific isn't it I like that that's a useful word yeah now I as you know am very nesh Giles I am extremely susceptible to the cold and recently we've had some very cold days here in the uk and i have been wearing a huge number of thermals but occasionally it backfires especially if you walk into the shop from the icy outside when they've got the heating on full whack in which case i might end up with a bit of a lab dab and this is a dialect word a lab dab is a profuse perspiration lab dab it's it's all i mean i do wear deodorant so that's all good

but i just suddenly become incredibly hot so lab dab it's really curious because you would never looking at the pyphonated lab dab think that that's what it meant but it does and i like this one and apologies to any of our purple people called tim but in cornwall and in old cornish a tim doodle oh a tim doodle was a stupid fellow i like to think it was affectionate oh you're such a tim doodle as in you're such a wally but um i just quite like the sound of it tim it's a bad luck being called tim because people say tim and things, don't they? I think it's a belittling word that people use. Oh, okay.

Which is not fair. No. No, I like Tim. I like the name Tim. I like the name Tim. Good friend called Tim. Do you prefer it to Timothy? Yes, I think I do.

Definitely, yes. Yes, Tim. Timothy does sound like a sort of slightly spoiled child, do you think? Yes, I think you're right. And Tiny Tim is one of the great heroes of fiction. Yes. Well, a lovely trio of words. Apologies to all Timothys out there as well. Right. Do you have a poem for us? I have a special poem today. It's a simple poem, but it's a lovely poem. And it's written by a gentleman who I met this morning. He is rising 92. He's called Colin, and I say he's called Colin, he's called Colin Hinton, born in 1932. And he has taken part in a competition organized by a charity, really,

that I started called Poetry Together. I think I've told you about this before. You have, yeah. We get older people in their 70s, 80s, 90s, we've had centenarians, and younger people of school age to meet up, learn poems by heart, meet up in an old folks home or to school, and they share the poems they've learnt, and then they have tea and cake together. And it's been very successful. Hundreds of schools and care homes around the world, not just in this country, but around the world, are now taking part in this. And we've been very lucky. We've been supported since the beginning by Queen Camilla. Anyway, today on a television program in the UK called This Morning, we had the winners of our poetry writing competition come in. A nine-year-old boy

who was completely brilliant, called Avi, who came from Buckingham Primary School. And this gentleman whose poem I'm going to read you, Colin, who lives at Clarendon House in Buckingham. And he wrote a poem about happiness. And he was a lovely man. I really enjoyed meeting him. And he was coping incredibly well with a widowerhood. He'd met his wife when he was 14 and she was 13. And she died about 18 months ago. And they'd been together all their lives. And he said, I said, you seem very happy. Well, I was very well looked after by my wife. And he said, that's the secret. He said, the secret of looking of a good marriage, he said, is if you look after her and she looks after you, then you're not thinking about yourselves, you're thinking about somebody else and that keeps you

going anyway he'd written this poem about happiness and so with his permission i said can i read it on something rises purple and he said it'd be my pleasure happiness by colin hinton rising 92 happiness for me is my aim happiness for all others is my aim. This is what I will endeavor to attain with all the thoughts within my brain. To all my family, I wish happiness. To all my friends, I wish happiness. To others I meet today, I wish happiness. To the whole world, I wish happiness. For this, I will endeavor to do my best to spread happiness from east to west. I will always smile, laugh and jest so that all that meet me will feel at rest. Isn't that nice? That is gorgeous. Spreader of happiness. Age 91. Impressive. I love that. There should be a word for someone

who spreads happiness, don't you think? Yes, there should. There really should be a word for someone who spreads happiness don't you think yes they're sure they really should be well let's have a think about that one people can think of it feel free to send it in absolutely yeah and you can email us anytime we always would love to hear from you purple people at something roams.com um and if you did like the show please carry on following us and please do recommend us to friends and family because that's what keeps us going and there's also the purple plus club where giles and i are scurrying off to now where you can listen ad free and you can get some exclusive bonus episodes on well not actually always the same things if we that we've been discussing in the main pod sometimes we talk about people who have supplied us with wit and wisdom that That's where we're headed now, isn't it, Giles? It certainly is. I've got special monogram slippers to wear in the 12th quarter of today, oh yes.

Anyway, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Deo with additional production from Poppy Thompson, Charlie Murrell, Ollie Wilson. They've all got good names, haven't they? And somebody who, well, like all the great figures in history,

whether it's, you know, I don't know, it could be Elvis or Jesus or, I don't know, I'm trying to think of the others. Stalin? No, let's not go there. Anyway, it's Rishi. No Tim Diddle he.