Something Rhymes with Purple - Hygge

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

In this week's episode, we unravel the captivating history behind the autumnal season. Join Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth on a linguistic journey through time as we explore the origins and evolution of the term, discovering the rich tapestry of meanings woven into this vibrant season.. Tune in now to harvest the knowledge and uncover the linguistic treasures hidden within the fall foliage! We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Gyles' poem this week was - 'Autumn' by T.E. Hulme A touch of cold in the Autumn night— I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. I love the autumn. I think perhaps it's my favorite season. Oh no, I love the spring too. I'm quite fond of summer. In fact, I love summer and sunshine and falling in love. And I love winter. I love cold, crisp winter.

But it is autumn. At least it's autumn where we are. Where you are, it may well be spring. I've had my niece, Polly, staying with me from Australia. And of course, she's going back to Australia now, and she's looking forward to spring and summer. But we're looking forward to autumn here in the United Kingdom, where this podcast comes from. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm Giles Brandreth, speaking to you from a basement in London, England. And my co-host is my great podpanion, my friend, Susie Dent. Where are you this week, Susie?

Same as always. Although I did have a bit of a blip last time, didn't I? Because I was in the studios of something else, our brilliant producers. But this is the norm. I am sitting in my study, not in a basement, which still always sounds pretty creepy to me, Charles, sorry, however much that you're in there with Audrey and Marilyn. And I too celebrate autumn. I think it genuinely is my absolutely favourite time of year because like so many other people, I just imagine crisp mornings, sunshine, you know, penetrating that crispness, I suppose, and just glorious walks. And we have actually had our share of sunny days. Although as I speak to you now, it is a little bit oppressively overcast. I need to put the record straight. I am in my basement, but it's not a bondage basement.

It's where I keep all my books. And I've got this room that is my home studio. And the walls are lined with books in which I've been involved over the years. And Audrey and Marilyn, they are not here, as it were, strapped to the wall. But they are on a wonderful, what do you call it, the thing that is behind me? A partition? No, it's not a partition. Well, it's sort of a partition. It's a screen.

It's a screen. On one side, I've got the young Marilyn Monroe. On the other side, I have the young Audrey Hepburn. And they just give a little lift to my background. But a little lift in the day is when I go out on a cold day and the sun hits my back. And I know the word for that is apricity. Apricity. Is that right?

Apricity, yes. I mean, how many times? It would be probably quite scary to count how many times we've mentioned it on the podcast, but it is fast becoming your favourite word and it's long been mine. Just for any purple person who happens to have missed it, which I think is very doubtful, but apricity is the warmth of the sun on your back on a winter's day. So that moment when the chill lifts and you just feel wrapped in warmth, it is just utterly joyous. Well, let's explore, if we may, some of the language of autumn.

Can we start with the word autumn itself? There are people now called autumn, aren't there? Lots of people call summer, some call autumn. What is the origin of the word autumn? origin of the word autumn? Well, you and I have talked before, and particularly on our episode where we discussed Americanisms, about the word fall versus autumn. And fall is regularly seen as being, you know, one of those obvious Americanisms, fall of the leaf. Oh, you know, yeah, a leaf's fall, so let's call it fall. Whereas people assume that ours is just much more dainty

and sophisticated. And I guess there is an element of truth in that, except guess what? And this is the case, as you know, Giles, with so many Americanisms, it actually began as our word for this season, because it was short for fall of the leaf, just as spring is short for spring of the leaf. And it was only after the Normans came in and English was flooded with French, which was a language of fashion and aristocracy and those who were considered fashionable and cool, that we took their loton and we anglicised it a little bit in our hybrid language of Anglo-Norman. And we took autumn over. And this, you know, autumn is absolutely beautiful as a word, but let's not knock fall either. But I'd rather be called, you know,

Autumn Brandreth than Fall Brandreth. I mean, autumn has become a name that people use, don't they? I don't think I've ever met anyone called winter. I've definitely met an autumn, quite popular in America. Have you ever met a spring? You've met lots of people called summer.

Hmm, I don't think so. But yeah, no, as I say, it is an absolutely beautiful, beautiful word. But I kind of always resent slightly, or resist, shall we say, people who claim that fall is a pesky Americanism. Because no, it was ours, along with harvest, actually, which is another one. Is harvest, sorry, I was going to say, is harvest a liturgic word for autumn? I suppose it marks the beginning of autumn. Because you're gathering, and the Harvest Festival is this time this time of year. Since you mentioned it, can you give me

a little bit about harvest? Yes. So harvest, I like to think if you take it far back enough, is linked to the German helbst, which is the term for autumn, believe it or not. But harvest is old English and it was applied to autumn very early on. And it is actually, if you do go back far enough, I think you will also find a relative in the Latin carpere, believe it or not, meaning to pluck, and a Greek word meaning fruit. So it's all about, yeah, the time of year where you will gather fruit and essentially gather crop, you know, as a harvest. And we can come to some of the traditions around there in a little while. But do you know what I was thinking

the other day is, you know how when it comes to smells, and I think actually maybe we should do an episode on smells and scents and perfumes and things. You know how everybody, I think, or at least a lot of people now know the word for the smell of rain after a long hot dry spell because it does the rounds on social media and it's a beautiful word, petrichor. So we have that for summer, but we don't actually have a word. And I look for it every single autumn for the changing of the seasons to that autumnal smell, because, you know, you do actually can go out and you can just breathe in and you can absolutely detect that shift from one, almost one soil to another. It's a very rich, earthy smell, earthier than petrichor and different from petrichor.

And yet for all the sort of variety of smells, you know, that we experience, we don't actually have many words for them. And this is no exception. Can I offer you Conchorea? Oh, no, that sounds like a venereal disease. Double R-H-O-E-A. It's a word I've just invented, Conchorea, because I associate the autumn with conkers. And I don't know, adding rea onto the end made it possibly feel like the smell of this earth. I mean, I recognise the smell you're describing totally. I don't think anything good ends in rhea, does it? You've got diarrhoea, you've got gonorrhoea.

You've got verborrhea, which I suffer from sometimes. What does the rhea in diarrhoea mean? To flow. So it's actually linked to rhine, believe it or not, and rhinitis, the nose and all sorts of things. So yeah, it means to flow. So diarrhea means to flow through. And indeed, but you talk about it being connected with the nose, therefore conchorrhea isn't bad because you have conchors in the Ottoman. Rhea is the nose and this is the, as it were, the smell of the conchkers coming up through the nose.

Oh, I think this may catch on, or not, as the case may be. Since I mentioned conker, can you divide and rule and give me the origin of conker? It's one of my favourite pastimes, and particularly with young children, I think if you kick through the autumn leaves and look for the conkers, and there's just something so magical about their kind of mahogany luster, isn't there? Which sadly fades very quickly, but it is gorgeous. Well, the word conquer actually goes back to an old dialect word for a snail shell, because a snail shell is what was first used to play the game. And indeed, actually, the early name or an early name for the game was Conquerors, because, you know, you would try and conquer your opponent. So the idea of victory came together with this dialect word for a snail shell. And together they came up with Conkers, which has an entire lexicon to itself. I don't

know how seriously you play Conkers as a boy, Giles. Excuse me, I didn't realise that Conker was the name of the game. I thought it was the name of the little object, but it's also, I mean, you're playing Conkers. I thought we were playing with Conkers. What is the little thing? I mean, this is all fascinating to me. Conker is the game that you start with. So what are those little objects? They're nuts from a tree, aren't they? Yes, so they come from the horse chestnut tree. So it's the hard, shiny, dark brown nut from the horse chestnut tree. So it's the hard, shiny, dark brown nut of a horse chestnut tree. And the game, particularly in which a conker is at the end of a string and you take it in turns to break someone else's with it or try to, is called

conkers. I knew that. And I thought it was called conkers because you use conkers for it. But you're telling me that the game comes first and we then call these hazelnuts conkers. Oh, no, no, no. No, so the game was probably named after a conch, which was a dialect word for the sort of shell that was used to play the game, which presumably were much, much more fragile. So the word conker is first used in the 1840s

as a dialect word for a snail shell. That's the kind of mollusk, okay? And that also, incidentally, may have given us conk, meaning the nose, believe it or not, I think because of the shape. But conker was also then, because it's obviously mostly spoken, part of this sort of dialect oral tradition, was also heard as conker, as in we will conquer all and that was how conquer was often spelled so the game for a while was called conquerors

and then horse chestnuts eventually replaced the snail shells in the 19th century but you know people have been been playing it the game for quite a long time. I loved playing the game. Like you, you put your conker onto a piece of string and then you had a conker that they had names like you had, I've got an eighter or a twelver or a sixteener because that meant it had defeated eight, twelve or sixteen other conkers in battle because you used your conker, you swung it against somebody else's conker and if you bashed or cracked their conker, you were a victor and you could go on to have other victors. Is that right?

Is that how you read the game? Yes, that's right. Oh, there was just an entire lexicon. So the cheesers, and the cheeser, I think, is a conker with a flat side to it because, you know, sometimes when you open up their prickly shell, you see two laying side by side. So it kind of shares a pod with other conkers. There are oblionkers and cheggies. I'm not completely sure what those are. And there

are laggies and seasoners, which are aged conkers, which are matured for a year. And I think some people do resort to underhand techniques, shall we say, and they sort of cook them in vinegar and do various things in order to make them harder. I do remember this now, actually, soaking them in vinegar overnight and then baking them. This takes me back a long while. Oh, baking them. Okay. Yeah, you bake them to bake in the hardness.

Oh, yes. Gosh. And I'm used to finding conkers already open, but, of course, you remind me that they come inside a skin with prickles on the outside. Yeah, absolutely. Which you can prise open with your hands if you're feeling particularly brave, or most often in my case, with the heel of your shoe. And yeah, and there you have it. I think for me, it's just collecting them because they just look so beautiful. And there's also superstition, isn't there, that having conkers in your house will ward off spiders.

Oh, I didn't know that. I don't know if it works. One of the pleasures for me of autumn as a child was scuffing through the leaves, kicking the leaves around, and then collecting wonderful leaves, taking them into the house and either tracing them or painting over them. I loved a leaf. And is a leaf so-called because it's what's left over when it falls from the tree? I mean, why is a leaf called a leaf? Ah, that's a lovely thought, actually. It's called a leaf because it is simply carried over from a Germanic word that I don't think is part of the leave family, although leave

and love, believe it or not, are. So I'm going to check in the OED to see whether I have got that wrong. I often use, while you're looking this up, I often think about leaves because I remember when I did some work with a wonderful psychiatrist called Dr. Anthony Clare, no longer with us, but a great man who was very well known a quarter of a century ago. And he explained to me that one of the fundamentals of being happy was to be a leaf on a tree. And he said, we all need to be attached to an organism that is larger than ourselves and still growing. A leaf off a tree, well, it feels free. And you know, that's lovely. It floats about a bit, but it does end up on the ground and dead. Whereas to be happy in life, we need to be attached to something that is bigger than us, that has branches, that is still growing.

We need to be leaves on a tree. I have such a sense of deja vu here because I'm sure you and I have taught in one of our many, many, many episodes about that Monty Python sketch where the leaves are scared to fall off. And there's a little baby leaf and there's a mother leaf and there's a father leaf. And they're all talking about their sort of imminent demise. And then they jump and sound very sad and plaintive as they fall. Have you not seen that one? No. Sounds very evocative.

You're quite a Monty Python fan, I know. Oh, it's extremely funny. But I have looked up leaf. extremely funny. But I have looked up leaf, and if you do take it back far enough, it may be linked to the Latin liber, L-I-B-E-R, which was the inner bark of a tree, and then, of course, became a book, which is where we get library from, etc. So, lovely to think of the idea of stripping bark and foliage from plants for use as raw materials and for writing upon. bark and foliage from plants for use as raw materials and for writing upon. And is it correct ever to have the plural of leaf as leaves? L-E-A-F-S?

I don't think so. If you go back far enough, you may have found it as a plural at some point in its past, but certainly now it is leaves for sure. Why do we have V-E-S? Same with roof and roofs, hoof and hooves. Yes, but it's not roofs anymore. So that is a really good example of how that has changed, actually, because now we say roofs, but then we said roofs. Honestly, it's so idiosyncratic when it comes to English plurals. And it would take me too long to try and unpick why roof became roofs and then became roofs again. But I do remember being surprised on Countdown when someone came up with roofs and I said, actually, it's not in there anymore. I will just double check because

language is so circular, as you know. A couple of years ago, I remember a couple of years ago, I wrote a book called Have You Eaten Grandma, which was about punctuation and grammar. And I explored plurals. And I was very intrigued by this leaf, leaves, roof, roofs, hoof, hooves conundrum. And I think I did do some research, and I think I got a little bit into it. So maybe we should go back to plurals and investigate at a later date. All right. That sounds good. Quite often, it depends on where the word has come from, of course, like, you know, why moose is not meese or mouse is mice, et cetera, et cetera.

Anyway, you mentioned leaves and autumn foliage, which is just lovely. Foliage, again, linked to the Latin folio, which meant a leaf, a leaf of paper or a leaf that fell from the tree. So again, it's kind of inextricable, this lovely idea of, you know, the natural world and, as I say, what it produces and what we then use it for. So I love the link between trees and reading and obviously paper and that kind of thing. I find that gorgeous. My friends, Christopher and Diana Lang, came round for supper the other night. They're very good people. And they had a lovely paper bag with them and it contained a hostess gift.

I thought, what's it going to be? Chocolates, champagne, even a half bottle of warm white wine would have been acceptable. Instead, I opened this paper bag and inside was a squash, an autumn gift, a squash. And it was homegrown. And it was a funny shape and they were thrilled to give it to me. This is the season for that kind of a fruit, isn't it? We think of particularly the pumpkin, the pumpkin and the squash. Interesting origins for either of those words? Yeah, well, yes, squash is quite nice because it's one of the many languages, sorry, words that come from indigenous languages in America, so native languages. So in this case,

it is from a Narragansett words. A Narragansett, they were a group of people, a people who lived in America long before, you know, the Mayflower set sail. I think they inhabited Rhode Island, actually. And maybe, in fact, they probably are still there. I hope that they still are, only perhaps not as distinctly defined. Anybody who lives in North America can correct me on that one. But they speak this language, Algonquian. It's an Algonquian language.

And squash is from there. And it's a shortening of a word that came from their language. That's rather lovely. Pumpkin is an unusual one. So you will know, Giles, because we've talked about this a lot, what the kin suffix means, pretty much. Well, as in kith and kin yeah well that that kind of is related to kind but if i would say like munchkin or a diminutive exactly it's a diminutive

so it means little and that's probably where the sort of use of pumpkin to a child comes from you know i listen pumpkin i thought you should know blah blah blah yeah or pumpkin pipkin my little pipkin oh pipkin softly but the plant of the gourd family that produces pumpkins that probably goes back a long way to a greek pepon meaning a melon actually so that's where it originally started but obviously it's kind of because of its shape but it's come quite a long way since then. I have to say as a vegetarian, I'm sort of slightly off pumpkins and although I love pumpkin pie and squash, just because you do tend to have butternut squash wherever you go. So if there's ever an event, I don't know if you find this and you have the vegetarian meal, it is getting a

little bit better, but you tend to get either mushroom stroganoff or butternut squash and something. Do you find that? Yes, yesterday I was offered a veggie beef wellington and it was indeed butternut squash and mushrooms. Wow, there you go. Is it nice? For the beef.

It was very nice. Oh, there you go. And it came with all the trimmings. And then they had no idea. They poured on top of it gravy, you know, meat gravy. Because that's what you want with the gravy, won't you? They had no idea. But it didn't really matter.

It didn't really matter. No. But anyway, pumpkins and Halloween weirdo. And we've had Halloween special where we have explored all the vocabulary to do with that. So do go and find that if that is your bag. Speaking of as a vegetarian, I'll tell you what I'm not going to be having. I mentioned that my niece Polly has been staying, going back for summer in Australia. But she said what they're now, what are big in Australia at the moment are things called

Kanga Bangas. A Kanga, haven't you Barbie? A Kanga Banga. It's a sausage made of kangaroo meat. Can you imagine? No, surely not. No, surely. Yes.

Yes. Yes, surely. You really like a Kanga Banga? Should we on that note maybe take a break? Yes, let's get away from the Kanga Bangas. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure?

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on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, where we're getting into the mood of the season. In our part of the world, the season is the autumn. In whatever part of the world

you happen to be, if you have words that, well, for you, epitomize the time of year, do let us know because we love hearing about words from around the world. If you want to get in touch with us, we have a new email address. It's purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Before we get on to this week's correspondence,

Susie, are there any more autumnal words that you want to share, unpack for us? Well, I have to mention hygge because, do you remember? Oh, hygge, I would say, hygge. This is the word that became terribly fashionable about three years ago. It's a sort of Nordic autumnal thing. H-Y-G-G-E? Yes, I think most people would say hygge, because that is Danish via Norwegian, actually. And it did make a real splash, didn't it? Because it became this sort of whole ethos as well as a lifestyle, as well as this quality of coziness,

but also conviviality that gives you that feeling of contentment as you were kind of shut inside against the elements. And it's gorgeous. And of course, it seeps into winter as well. So candlelight, special cushions, minimalist comfort.

And I think those two can coexist. That is all about hygge. But I love the fact that it is actually linked to hug, if you take it back far enough. And you'll never guess who gave us the word hug. It was actually the Vikings. You wouldn't associate a Viking with a hug. But it is from their language of Old Norse that we got the hug. In fact, a Viking hug could be a euphemism for getting something ready.

What about the word hugger mugger? Oh, hugger mugger. Yeah. So I was delighted to see that hugger muggery was in the dictionary for kind of secret conspiracy. So I think that is the idea that you are hugging. And then it is one of those reduplicative compounds, you know, where we like to sort of put words together. But actually, it might also be relinked to a dialect word, mucker, not in the sense of a friend, me or mucker, but in the sense of concealing, particularly money. So the idea of conspiracy and subterfuge is right there in Hugamugga.

What I feel, we're a bit higgy here. You're saying hoogie? Higgy hoogie? Hooga, hooga, hoogamuga. Anyway, we're having a little hoogie, hoogie, hoogie time here. Cozy we are. Me in my basement, Susie in her study, and we're both in high spirits because we've had so many messages this week. And let me share the first of our letters this week. It comes from Teresa Stancombe, And she says, hi, Susie and Giles. Today, I visited the wonderful National Trust House Up Park in Hampshire. Oh, I've been there. The volunteers were amazing and full of knowledge.

In one room, I was told this was one of the many drawing rooms. And so I asked, why do we call it a drawing room? It actually stems from withdrawing room, where smaller groups would leave bigger parties to sit quietly and chat, etc. Then I asked, when was the with part removed? They did not know. So I wonder if you do. Interesting question. The drawing room was once the with drawing room. Is that so? And when did that happen, Susie? Yeah, it is so. So Teresa is absolutely right, because it was conventional in polite society,

and you'll find this all over Jane Austen, for ladies at dinner parties to withdraw to the withdrawing room following dinner. And the gentleman would remain for a cigar and port at the dining room table and eventually would join them. Now, withdrawing room is first recorded in the OED in 1611, okay? And it simply was the idea of withdrawing and secluding oneself because that was what was expected, particularly if you were a lady. But actually, Teresa might be surprised to know that the drawing room, i.e. the abbreviation for that, is recorded just 20 years later. for that is recorded just 20 years later. So there's not very much in it at all. 1635, drawing room, a room to withdraw to. So you could almost say, given that, you know, we will still be digging for first records, et cetera, they're almost at the moment synchronous. So they appeared

pretty much in the same decade or so, But obviously, withdrawing room came first, and then drawing room seems to have been a very quick abbreviation. We can check on the difference between our ages, Susie, because when I was young, I would regularly go to dinner parties. It's not that long ago, but it is, I suppose, a lifetime ago. When I was young, I would go to dinner parties where the men would be dressed in dinner jackets. And this is in people's private homes. And the women would be dressed in dinner jackets. And this is in people's private homes. And the women would be dressed in long dresses. And after dinner, the ladies would indeed withdraw.

And the chaps would stay in the room, often moving up the table to where the gaps were, filling the gaps and moving closer to the host, where, as you say, port and brandy were served, cigars were lit. Did you clear up? Men talked serious talked serious did you do the washing up yeah no no there was no i don't know who was doing the washing up the women were in the other room oh well we do we know exactly and then after about half an hour the host would say shall we join the ladies and we'd all get up and troop out

and find the ladies who were either in the drawing room or had been, if it was a house that didn't have enough rooms, they'd be in the kitchen. No, not in the kitchen, in the ladies' bedroom, sitting around on the bed chatting. Isn't that extraordinary? And that's only, you know, I suppose it is 30, 40 years ago. Did you ever experience that in your time? No, no. But I have very fond memories of my mum getting ready for, I don't think they ever split up at the end of their parties, but, you know, into men and women's rooms. But she did used to wear long dresses. I have really fond memories when I was little of her dabbing Chanel No. 5 behind her ears. And I loved the whole ritual of that. It was very special.

But no, I have never been asked to withdraw into a different room. Thankfully, I have to say. Right, now we have a time, I think, for a second voice note. And actually, this is from Australia, just like your niece is from Adelaide, and it's Nathan. He says, is there a word for a word, which is a fake word, but has snuck into acceptable usage? Unlike snuck itself, Nathan, which I really like, but I think snuck is much nicer than sneaked, personally. He says, I bring this up because a friend of mine said that he offered me his warmest contrafabularities, which was a nod to an old Blackadder episode

where Blackadder mocks Dr. Johnson's comprehensive dictionary. Do you remember that scene, Giles? I do. I love Blackadder. Oh, it's brilliant. Samuel Johnson says, this work, sir, contains every word in our beloved language. And Blackadder comes up and says, every word, sir. He said, in that case, may I offer you my most enthusiastic contrafabularities?

And when Samuel Johnson looks incredibly perturbed and disgruntled, he says, phrasmotic and aspectic to have caused you such pericompobulation. It's absolutely brilliant scene. And it's a little bit like the cromulent scene in The Simpsons for those who know that. So is there a word for this? Well, not so much. I mean, in some ways, you might think that every word is sort of, you know, the invention of a moment and whether or not it catches on is another thing. But there are terms for fake words that are, for example, planted deliberately into the dictionary in order to stop other people plagiarizing it or in order for the dictionary publishers to be able to spot very easily whether their work has been copied. And that's called a Mount Weasel. And a Mount Weasel

is this bogus entry. It's deliberately inserted and used as a safeguard against copyright infringement. And the source of the term is a fictitious woman called Lillian Virginia Mount Weasel, who was a bogus entry in the fourth edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. And it's just absolutely brilliant. I love it. There is also a word for a sort of so-called fake entry that accidentally got into a reference work, and that is adored, D-O-R-D. It's like a ghost word, really. And that went in to the OED. I think it was the OED. It might have been Webster's Dictionary, actually, because the abbreviation D in uppercase or D in lowercase was given after the entry for density. In other words, density could be abbreviated to a capital D or a

small d. But because there was no space between the d's and the O, it became a dored. And dored then is, as I say, a word for a kind of a spectral word that never actually really existed. So I hope that helps. It's not exactly what you wanted, Nathan, but it was a really fun question. I absolutely loved that blackout, it seems. Haven't you actually answered it by saying a spectral word? A spectral is a ghost word, isn't it? So a ghost is something that we do believe in or don't believe in, but people see they... So, this is the same with these words, maybe. They're spectral words. Not really. I think a ghost word was one that sort of probably

wasn't ever meant to exist, whereas obviously John Lloyd, et cetera, very beautifully crafted that blackadder sketch. But, you know, I mean, we remember them. And who knows, they may even be in the OED. I don't know if contrafibrillarity is in the OED. Certainly, cromulent is, as is embiggens. So yeah, you never know. And if people listening come up with a word for this phenomenon, they can share it here. And gradually, who knows, it may gain currency and end up in a dictionary. So if you want to communicate with us, share the words you've invented or share your questions, we will be here waiting for your correspondence. It's purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com.

One of our weekly treats is that Susie digs up three words. She either digs very deep and they're old words, or she goes to her favourite Jonathan Green and finds some slang words. Or whatever you mean this week, what are the words you found for us? Well, the first word I think is quite beautiful. And I didn't really know it until I started digging. And it's enselleur. You can tell it comes from French. So it's E-N and then S-E-L-L-U-R-E. So in French, it would be enselleur. In French, Encelure, I think. And essentially, if you think to all the famous nude paintings by, I don't know, Da Vinci, perhaps, or Michelangelo,

etc. And you notice that beautiful concave curve that's formed by the spine, particularly in women. That's exactly what this is. It's just that beautiful curve of the back. Never knew it had a poetic name, but there you go, it does. My second is one that I think maybe some of the purple people will recognise. It's a lambent, L-A-M-B-E-N-T, which means shining with a very soft, clear light, but it can also mean sort of playing lightly upon something or gliding across it. And by extension, if you deal very delicately with the subject and sort of very brilliantly with the subject, you are lambent as well. So it's got lots of different meanings and I think it just sounds beautiful, lambent. And the third from the OED has various meanings, this one, omnium.

And the third from the OED has various meanings, this one. Omnium. Omnium, I think also a cycle race. But in this sense, in the sense that I've chosen it, it's absolutely beautiful. The sum total of one's desires and values. Your omnium. Wow. It's rather beautiful, isn't it? This is my life's omnium.

I love it. I love this word. Yeah, I love it too. How about a poem for us, Giles? Well, Susie, of course, I knew we were going to talk about autumn, so I planned to read into the famous John Keats poem. But then, as you can tell, my voice is a bit rough today and I keep coughing. I'm going to get some antibiotics by that. So I'm going to read that poem to you a little later in the autumn because it's a long poem. So I was looking for a short poem to read to you, an autumn poem. And I came across this wonderful poem by a poet called T.

E. Hume, H-U-L-M-E, a very interesting poet, a First World War poet. Indeed, he was killed during the First World War, but a remarkable individual as well. And I think he was one of the founders of what is sometimes called the modernist movement in poetry. So he writes in free verse, without a rhyme, and rather leaving the reader to make sense of the images. So this is a poem simply called Autumn, and I rather love it. A touch of cold in the autumn night, I walked abroad and saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, and round about were the wistful stars with white faces like town children. Isn't that evocative? It is.

Yeah. Yeah, very short. Short, not particularly sweet, but absolutely fantastic. I mean, he was, T.E. Hume was a sort of aesthetic philosopher, sometimes called the father of imagism. And I don't know, I mean, he was only 34 when he was killed in the First World War, but a really interesting character. And I think that's quite an interesting poem. But I'll give you a more predictable poem, the Keats poem, another day. I will look forward to that. And we'll look forward to future episodes with you, the Purple People. Thank you so much for being with us, for tuning in and for continuing to be

so loyal because it means the world to us. Don't forget, you can find us on social media, at Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook or at Something Rhymes with on Instagram. And just a reminder, there is the Purple Plus Club, where Diles and I are going now, actually, just to shoot the breeze a little bit more. You can listen ad-free. And these are bonus episodes on words and language and quite often the themes that we've covered in our main app. Just a little bit more riffing on that same theme. And this week, we're doing the Purple Plus Club

from our withdrawing room. We've arranged one especially. It's the Purple Withdrawing Room. You bring the port something rhymes with purple it's a sony music entertainment production produced by naio dio with additional production from naomi oiku hannah newton chris skinner poppy thompson and well he's not here today but we are in the capable hands of teddy who giles i have to say this is probably very unpeaceful i hope you don't mind me saying this,

Giles, he slightly misread Teddy's name at the beginning of the episode when we came online and called him a hot toddy. I shall leave it there. I thought I read toddy and I thought looking at him, this is a hot toddy. We're thrilled that he's here because Richie is away having a brilliant game of conkers with Gully.