Something Rhymes with Purple - Ichthyologist

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

You are in for a whale of a time today Purple People as we are jumping into the deep blue sea and meeting the fishes. We will discover why Halibut are holy, what Cod and weak beer have in common and we will also revisit that famous red Herring of a question: what is the plural of Octopus? Susie takes us on a beautiful trip to the Italian island Sardinia before we leap back into the ocean to join some Salmon fish to investigate their connection with salaciousness.  Gyles shares a fishy story where he unfortunately wasn’t as happy as a clam, but his poem about fish’n’chips will most certainly change that. A Somethin’ Else production.  If there are any fishes or fishy phrases you’d like Susie and Gyles to explore, please send them in to:  [e-mail]  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to sign up to Apple Subs please follow this link https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823 and make sure that you are running the most up-to-date IOS on your computer/device otherwise it won’t work.  Susie's Trio:  Controuver - somebody who creates false gossip Bedinnered - to be served dinner Gaincope- to intercept someone by taking a shortcut  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. My name is Giles Brandreth and I'm based in London, England. My colleague and my fellow presenter of this podcast is Susie Dent, who is based in Oxford. Why are you in Oxford? Why am I in Oxford? Well, for a long time, Giles, I was living in London and working at Oxford University Press. So what happened was the sequence of events, essentially, was that I was studying in America, as you know, and I came back and needed to look for a job and was living

in central London. Loved it so much. I was living in Soho, as you know, and finally got a job, but it was in Oxford. So I decided I would commute to Oxford because I was enjoying Soho so much and did that for quite a long time. But inevitably, the travel kind of got to me. So I moved to Oxford and I was still working at Oxford University Press whilst appearing from time to time on Countdown. I was one of very many people who, you know, sat in the corner where I sit today. So that was it. And then I had children and I have stayed here ever since. And is Oxford a good place to be based? It's a lovely place to be based. I think a lot of people, if they haven't been to Oxford, imagine it to be a little bit like Cambridge,

which as you know, is much, much smaller. So I think most people in their mind's eye have Oxford down as a sort of quaint city with lots of beautiful buildings and people punting. When in fact, it's just this incredibly big, vibrant city, much bigger than Cambridge, as I say, and just has a huge amount happening culturally. And no, it's lovely. Yeah, heartily recommend it. I was brought up in central London and my parents lived first in various places around Kensington, not fashionable Kensington, but sort of Earls Court, South Ken, Gloucester Road, and then they moved to Baker Street. And I lived around Baker Street, which I loved because as a little boy, my first hero was Sherlock Holmes.

And literally out of my bedroom window, I could see what was then the Abbey National Building, which people said was the place where 221B Baker Street would have been. I since know, having met Sherlockians, that that is not the part of Baker Street where it would have been. But nonetheless, I thought I was overlooking where Sherlock Holmes lived. And I loved all that. But nonetheless, I thought I was overlooking where Sherlock Holmes lived. And I loved all that. And then when my wife and I decided to move out of central London, our first flat was in Muswell Hill. But then we moved to another flat in Baker Street.

And we moved south of the river to where I live now, Barnes in southwest London. I just couldn't cope. I thought, I don't want people to know that I've moved south of the river. And in those days, there was a phone number that showed you were in central London, another phone number that had nothing, an extra eight in it that showed you were in outer London. And I, I mean, the stupidity of this is hard to believe. I actually paid money to keep the old phone number so that people didn't think that I'd sort of, you know, died and gone south of the river. And then when I began to reveal that I was south of, you know, died and gone south of the river. And then when I began to reveal that I was south of the river and people said, where have you moved to?

I would say halfway to Southampton. I was so embarrassed that I just crossed the River Thames. Isn't that funny? Is that, does that, I mean, obviously every city in the world has, you know, different locations that are associated with different kinds of residents and, you know, different personality types, et cetera. But has that association with South London of being, as you were saying, sort of slightly in for a dig,

has that always been there? I think it has. And I think I inherited this probably from the snobbery of my parents. My father felt it was very important. He worked in Leicester Square, and he needed, he wanted to be two or three underground stops away from Leicester Square. And that's always, they'd always lived in that part of London. So I just thought it was the end of the world. Now, of course, you couldn't get me to move back. I love being in Barnes. It's a beautiful part of London.

It has literary connotations. I'm 100 yards from the house where the great Henry Fielding, the novelist, author of Tom Jones, lived. where the great Henry Fielding, the novelist, author of Tom Jones, lived. I live in a house that's on the very site of the house where Handel, the composer, lived when he first came to visit Britain. Oh, really? Amazing. In 1715 or something. Have you got a blue plaque? I'm working on that.

I've had one made for myself that simply says, watch this space. But my wife says, oh, you're so embarrassing. And well, you are near the river. I am near the river, which leads us nicely into what we want to talk about. Yes. Because- Fish.

Fish. We're going to talk about fish. I've actually seen a lot of people fishing in the last couple of years because I did a television series with the great Sheila Hancock, and we came across people fishing. Many of them, we found, were not fishing really for fish. They were fishing for pleasure. They were fishing for the companionship of the fellow fisher people.

And the solitude as well, sometimes. Yes, just enjoying sitting on the riverbank. Have you... Bang-a-bonking, remember? That's the word for that. What is it called? Bang-a-bonking. If you bang-a-bonk, you are sitting lazily on the riverbank.

Oh, I think that, I mean, if I ever talked about banger bonking, I'd be cancelled. Well, absolutely. Banger bonking. So let me do it for you. Yes, it's in the English dialect dictionary. It means to sit idly on a riverbank. So the bonk bit is actually from the French bonk, B-A-N-C, although it is spelt as in the rude version of bonking. So yes, just sit on the riverbank. And these people that you were watching, hopefully were throwing the fish back, were they?

They were. Good. Have you ever been fishing either at sea or a river? No. The one thing I do quite regularly and did with my kids as they were growing up is, because my father lives very near the sea and very near the harbour, was just crabbing. So catching crabs with a little bit of bacon at the end of a line and then just no cruelty involved. You bring the crabs up, you look at them and then you throw them back in. It's interesting. There's a rude connotation to crabbing as well, isn't there? I think.

Is there? There's crabs, isn't there? Which was an old slang term for, you know, venereal disease of some description. But I don't know about crabbing and honestly anything is in the urban dictionary i have now stopped looking whatever the word of the day is that i'm about to tweet i've stopped looking it up in the urban dictionary because i would always find something completely filthy in there well let's start if we may on the the broad ocean because some people go river fishing other people go ocean fishing. Yeah. And, well, maybe give us just the origin of some of these words associated, well, what about ocean? Where does that come from, the word ocean? Yes, ocean has quite a story. So, it's from the Greek, Okeanos, and that meant the great river or sea that surrounded the disk of the earth.

So, the ancient Greeks believed that the earth was this single landmass surrounded by a great river, and that great river they called the Okeanos. And this was when much of the world obviously had yet to be discovered. And so, Ocean described this great outer sea. And of course, the Mediterranean then was the sea in the middle of the earth, because that comes from the Latin medius middle and terra land. Fish. That's what we're fishing for today. Yeah. Is that a word with an interesting heritage? Well, yes, because a fish originally was any animal that lived exclusively in water.

So, again, sort of looks back to the time when much was yet to be discovered. So, if you remember, deer meant every animal, meat meant all food. And similarly, fish was anything that lived in water, as distinct from the birds of the air or the beasts of the field. It comes simply from the German fish. But in Christian art, a fish is a symbol of Christ. And so it's often found in paintings. So for example, in the symbol of Christ. And so it's often found in paintings. So for example, in the catacombs of ancient Rome, you'll find paintings of fish. And for this reason, sometimes Christians have a fish, I think, on their number plate, don't they, on the car. And the reason for this is it may go back to the first letters of the Greek words for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour, which were read as

ichthys, the first letters, and that was Greek for fish. And you'll find an ichthyologist, for example, is someone who studies fish, a student of fish. That's so intriguing, because I assumed it was fish because the idea was Christ, we described in the Bible, was the fisher of men, and some of the early disciples were fisher folk. Yeah. How intriguing. Yeah, well, I think all this sort of symbolism is bound in. But yes, we think it goes back to the first letters of those Greek words.

Speaking of sounds, one of the most regular things that we have been asked about, in fact, we were at the last live podcast we did, somebody asked this from the audience, and I know we often get emailed about it, this spelling of fish as goatee, G-H-O-T-I. Explain this little wordplay to me. Yes, there's a lot of mythology wrapped up in this. So it is said that George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, joked about fish because he said it can legitimately be spelled G-H-O-T-i if you use the gh sound from enough which gives you enough the o sound from women so it and the ti sound from action so that was what he kind of reconstructed but actually do you know what we don't think it was george burnishaw there's no evidence for that

at all and it seems to have been this sort of lovely story that then got passed passed on and that actually it goes back to the 1850s so before Shaw was even born and we know it was mentioned in a letter that a publisher called Charles Ollier sent to his good friend Lee Hunt who was a poet and he said my son William has hit upon a new method of spelling fish but actually do you know what it's interesting, and I know that English spelling and English pronunciation, as I always say, they divorced years ago and it's incredibly eccentric and gnarly for anyone trying to learn it. But we have never spelled words by kind of stitching together parts, you know, in Frankenstein fashion. And we've never had G-H at the beginning of a word pronounced F- and nor have we had a T-I at the end of a word being pronounced SH- so it doesn't really work on a number of

different levels. But it's a lovely story and it is one that kind of illustrates the, you know, the frustrating but wonderful gnarliness of English spelling and pronunciation. We've now got fish, we've fished our fish. Do you have a favourite fish? Well, I used to say salmon, and I know you can have wild salmon, and there's this whole question about sustainability, because I have a friend, actually, whose daughter is heavily involved in research on the lives of salmon. And you know what? It's absolutely awful. So to be honest, I don't really have a favourite fish anymore, because I'm really conscious of the fact that these fish may have had an absolutely hideous life. So, it's hard, isn't it?

Well, let's celebrate these fish then swimming wild. Yes. Let's not think about them on the plate. I agree. Well, where I am is looking into the deep and I'm seeing cod. Okay, so cod. Unknown, this one, in terms of its origin but one suggestion is that it comes from an old english word cod meaning bag because of the fish's appearance which is arguably slightly

bag like but that of course gave us cod piece as well which was a piece for your your bags your jelly bags as they used to call them how interesting my goodness this is who knew that fish i mean we come innocently to talk about fish and we end up with crabs and now cod in your codpiece. So the codpiece, the cod is a bag as opposed to, ah. So in fact, what you're doing with your codpiece is that you're keeping a piece in the cod. Well, you're keeping your cod in your piece. You're keeping your tackle in your codpiece. Your tackle, there you go, back to fishing.

Yes. Yeah, very good. Why is something that's phony called, you know, a cod? It's not real. It's a cod thing. Yeah, we don't know the answer to that one. The jury is out. But I do wonder, this is just a personal theory,

but whether it has anything to do with codswallop. And if you remember codswallop, codswallop meaning meaning rubbish possibly goes back to a man called Hiram Codd who invented these glass stoppered bottles that we still use today for fizzy drinks it kept the bubbles in and wallop was a slang term for weak beer and by extension any kind of soft drink and cod's wallop meaning rubbish maybe that gave us cod for phony. I'm not sure, but certainly in a dictionary, you will find origin unknown. It's a great story, that.

Yeah, I don't know why it was called wallop, actually, because it didn't exactly wallop you on the head. But anyway, it wasn't strong enough. I mean, I think maybe it became a byword for rubbish because these fizzy drinks weren't the real thing, if you see what I mean. They weren't alcoholic. And so they were slightly dismissed as being kind of weak beer for those who couldn't take the strong stuff.

I like cod. I discovered this last, the other day, that I don't like herring. I took part in a program called Saturday Kitchen Live. And there was a lovely chef who I do know because I met him before called Nathan. And he created this fabulous dish involving herring, which was complicated to fillet. And he served it up. And I didn't feel like I could say it. It wasn't to my taste. Were these like roll mops? Were they kind of pickled?

They weren't. He actually cooked them in a dish. He said herring is a wonderful fish. You can cook it in all sorts of ways. You can do a variety of things with it. You can have it raw and have it cooked. He cooked it and everyone else thought it was very tasty. I courteously said, oh, lovely. But the truth is, it was not to my taste, to be candid with you. Interesting, isn't it? I just maybe think about the etymology of Royal Mops as well, which is quite nice nice although not particularly politically correct so roll mops are those pickled herring fillet that are rolled up into that kind of cylindrical shape and you'll have a savory filling inside it's german and it goes back to rollen meaning to roll obviously and then mops and mops means either a pug or a fat young boy because they look sort of quite fat on the plate

uh so that's where that one comes from. Is herring of German extraction true? Yes, it is. Don't ask me for the ultimate etymology for that because I don't know. I won't. But I do remember there is a puzzle, I think, written by Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson,

which involves a herring and a cat. And it's a pun on herring, her ring, you know, put the two words together. That's fun. You mentioned salmon, and we don't want to think what's happening to the poor salmon as they come towards us. But is there an interesting etymology for the word salmon? It's quite a nice one, actually, because it may come from a Latin verb, salire, meaning to leap, because obviously salmon famously leap out of the water. And that salire gave us lots of different words in English. So it gave us salacious, for example, which meant sort of leaping up and down to mate. It also gave us a really lovely thing. The first salient point, you know know today if we make a salient point it's highly

relevant and pithy i suppose but the first salient point was a heartbeat so it kind of jumped so you know when you look at the skin with with the pulse beneath it it's like it's that you can see it sort of slightly jumping under your skin so that was the very first salient point so that again the idea of jumping or leaping goodness oh john dory i'm partial to john dory i like cod not necessarily battered but i like cod i'm afraid i do like salmon i'm feeling bad about that now john dory i also like okay what's the origin of that i imagine it's a person called john dory who first fished well it possibly it's a it's a bit slippery, this one. So it sounds like it was named after a person. But you know, there's this very famous French culinary dictionary called

La Russe Gastronomique. And there it will tell you that we got John Doré from a corruption of Jean Doré. And some people think that that is itself a corruption of jaune doré, meaning golden yellow. Oh, jaune doré. Yes, yellow. J-A-U-N-E, the colour. Yes. How interesting, yellow doré meaning golden, so a golden yellow. Yes.

And is jaune doré that colour? That's what I don't, actually, I don't, I'm not sure I've ever had jaune doré. But others think it may come from a janitore in Spanish. I made that sound Italian. Because Saint Peter was the janitor or porter, if you like, of heaven. And the fish's other name is Saint Peter's fish. So religious associations there. Again. Give me one more fish before we take our break. The halibut.

Yes, I like this one. My father loved halibut. Yeah, I like the origin of this because I went to a convent, as you know, and so religiously, no pun intended, we would have fish on a Friday for school lunch, for school dinner. And halibut comes back to the, it's sort of late Middle English, this one, holy, but meaning holy, and then but meaning a flat fish, because the halibut was eaten on holy days. So it's the holy bat, really. I love it.

Well, look, we're learning a great deal. I want to swim with the dolphins after the break. And also I want to get to grips with the plural of octopus. Oh, yes, definitely. And just before we go, Giles, just to remind our lovely purple people that if they would like to support the show, they can do so for a subscription. It's £1.89 a month and that gives you all episodes ad free, discount codes on our merch and all sorts of exclusive bonus episodes, which we really love doing.

So we've talked about Wordle, we've talked about Cheese, we've had a mini series on Giles's favourite poet. And I think all the information, if people fancy it and are able to, they can follow the links in the program description. We've been doing bonus episodes on rude words. Oh, yes. Lots of swearing too. It's wonderful. My wife says to me, at your age, you're still just a naughty child, aren't you? Well, I'm discovering that today. Are you ever minding your own business and start to wonder, is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch real?

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I'm Giles Branforth. With me is Susie Dent. And she's going to tell me about the origin of the dolphin. That wonderful... And is a dolphin a fish? I don't think it is, is it? I don't know. I think we might be slightly cheating with this one, but it has got a lovely origin. Well, tell me. Well, it goes back to, ultimately, to the Greek, delphin, I should say. Give it a French

pronunciation there. But dolphin did come to us directly from French. The French word also came to us in a different form. So we got dolphin, but we also got dauphin, as in the eldest son of the King of France. And that's from the family name of the Lords of the Dauphine, which is an area of Southeast France. And that gave us potatoes dauphinoise as well. And it said that the family, the Dauphine family, had a dolphin on their crest, hence the name. Yeah, so she's got a lovely kind of historical association there. But yeah, I'm not sure whether the dolphin would classify, but it's a nice one. Octopus.

I promised people that we'd get to grips with the plural of octopus. But what is the origin of octopus? Octo, I suppose, is from eight, the Latin. Is it Latin? Greek, Latin? It's Greek. So this is a mistake that people make when it comes to the plural. So first of all, octopus is eight foot or eight feet.

Makes little sense. The puss is like in ped. Exactly. Although we tend to think of them as having arms rather than feet, don't we? But anyway, that's where it comes from. And the plural, because people think it's Latin, they tend to say octopus, singular, octopi, plural. But actually, because it's Greek, strictly speaking, it should be octopus, singular, octopodes.

But no one ever uses that. So the dictionary usually gives octopuses. It sounds a bit pretentious, doesn't it? But that's the correct plural. But I'm ridiculous. When I go to a restaurant, they offer me scampi, I think I say, oh, no, I just have one scampus. Is that correct? And you ask for one panino, I'm sure. Is that what? Do you know, I'm genuinely not sure about scampi. I'm going to look it up here.

I'm sure it's not one scampus, but I love the thought of it. So scampi treated as singular or plural. Oh, it just tells us it comes from Italian. I need to look that one up. Scampi and chips. Gosh, I haven't had that for ages. Anyway, there you go. Good. We mentioned herring. Yeah. And I was just thinking how many phrases there are, like red herring, associated with fish. Can we begin with red herring? It's a red herring. Yeah, we've talked about this before, haven't we? So that's obviously a clue that, or a sort of piece of information really, that is intended to be misleading or distracting.

And it's said to come from the practice of using the scent of red herring or planting an actual quite smelly red herring when training hounds so that they would be tested to see whether or not they went off the trail of whatever they were hunting, hopefully not foxes, and, you know, just to sort of see whether they'd be tested to see whether or not they went off the trail of whatever they were hunting hopefully not foxes and you know just to sort of see whether they'd be distracted so it was used it was used in their training and then a red herring was something that kind of is something it takes you off the right path takes you off the scent yes being packed packed like sardines that must relate to tins of sardines because sardines travel in shoals so with this we're

getting into different territory here with collective nouns. Is a group of fish a shoal of fish? Yes, it is. Yeah, and this definitely comes from the way that we eat sardines and how, yeah, they all are squashed inside those tiny tins. And there are lots of similar phrases in other languages.

So in Russian, I think you say packed like herrings in a barrel. But sardine is a nice one because it comes from the island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean, but so does sardonic. And I think I've talked before about sardonic because the first uses of that, you know, if you have sardonic smile, it's quite sort of sneering, isn't it? But the first sardonic smile was a really dangerous and often fatal one because it was the kind of rictus expression that you got by eating

the sardonian, which was a plant from Sardinia. And this plant from Sardinia was supposed to cause all kinds of convulsions, including facial convulsions. So actually, sardonic and Sardinia and sardines are all linked. All linked originally to the place Sardinia. Which is beautiful. Yeah. I've never been to Sardinia. Oh, you must go to Sardinia. Which is beautiful, yeah. I've never been to Sardinia. Oh, you must go to Sardinia. It's beautiful. I only went as a child.

I'd love to go back. Oh, I want to go everywhere. I've been nowhere. I realise I haven't been anywhere, you know, for two years. Been up and down the country. You never sleep in your own bed. But yes, you need to go further afield. Can I say I have been up and down the country

and I'm having a whale of a time. A whale of a time. What about that? Why is it a whale of a time. A whale of a time. What about that? Why is it a whale of a time? Simply because whales are enormous. So if you have a whale of a time, you have a really huge, huge kind of amount of fun, I suppose, is the idea. It's just simply language inflation at its best. What about happy as a clam? I always think of you as happy as a clam or happy as a sandboy. Yes. Why is it happy as a clam? I thought with a clam, you were tight as a clam,

you kept quiet, but it is happy as a clam. What's the origin of that? Well, tight as a clam makes sense in terms of its origin because it goes back to an old English word meaning to grasp, as if you're kind of gripping it, that the clam is gripping itself together and not opening. But it goes back to the fuller version, which is as happy as a clam at high tide, because at high tide, clams are least vulnerable from anyone eating them, from any predators.

And happy as a sandboy, if you remember, goes back to the sandboys who would deliver sand to taverns, who would spread or just strew the sand on their floors to soak up any alcoholic spillages. And these sandboys would often get a tipple for their efforts. You know the language so well. I've occasionally been stitched up like a kipper. That again, I suppose, is simply because that's what it looks like. I mean, what is a kipper? A kipper is a fish that's been kippered, isn't it? Yeah. It's a different kind of fish. A kipper isn't a kipper. It's usually a herring, isn't it? I think. That's right. Is it? Yes, a kippah is usually a herring. Although kippah is also sometimes applied to a male salmon

in the spawning season. But yeah, various theories really as to why you are stitched up like a kippah. One is it's kind of playing on the word gutted because when you kippah a herring, you basically are gutting it. And then in the 1960s kipper a herring, you basically, you're gutting it. And then in the 1960s, there was a really, you might remember this. I don't know. There was a really wide tie called the kipper. Oh yeah, of course. Said to be introduced by the British fashion designer, Michael Fish. And kipper was then a pun on his surname is the idea. So if you are stitched up or done up like a kipper, the idea is that you were wearing a very smart tie. But yeah, we're not completely sure. And kipper itself might go back to a route that also gave us copper because of the colour. I had lots

of kipper ties in the 1960s and I thought they were called kipper because they were rather shaped. Well they are. They were broad and shaped like a kipper. Yeah this is the problem with folk etymology is that all these lovely stories grow up around these words so yeah it could be that. I've come across the phrase catfishing. What does that exactly mean? Well, there was a documentary in 2010 called Catfish, which essentially concerned a relationship where somebody was pretending to be someone else online and essentially misleading the victim. So unfortunately, lots and lots of catfishing around, particularly when it comes to dating. So people imagine that they are talking to somebody who eventually they fall in love with and want to meet. And it turns out that they have been spun a yarn.

So it can have very, very sad consequences. But there is the idea, it's probably a myth, that cod were actually shipped with real catfish in the same tanks, which would keep the cod active. And so the cod would remain sort of supple and good to eat. Whereas the theory was that when they were shipped alone, the cod would become sort of quite lethargic. And so they would deteriorate a little bit. So that's the myth is that if you're catfishing, you're kind of, you know, you're keeping people active and on their toes in this case by doing something really nasty. Well, there you are. I mean, it's amazing.

We've just been dipping our toes into it. And there's so much more swimming around our ankles. There could be. I think we're going to have to come back to fish another day. Yes. If you're listening, wherever you are in the world, and there are fish in your part of the world where you want to know the etymology, and you think that Susie might be able to help, do drop us a line.

It's purple at somethingelse.com. Purple, P-U-R-P-L-E, at something without a G on the somethingelse.com. That should reach us. And we call ourselves purple people because it's called Something Rhymes with Purple. Though I was on television the other day with a lovely lady who said she was a regular listener

and she said, I very much identify as a mauve person. Anyway, who has been in touch this week? Have we had purple people getting in touch from around the world? We have. So our first question, and this is lovely now, Jars, because remember, we get voice notes from our purple people, which is great. It comes from Graham Hazelgreaves. Hello, Jars and Susie.

There are a plethora of words that begin with ambi, ambiguous, ambivalent or ambivalence, ambidextrous, ambience, and other words that aren't springing immediately to mind. I was curious if there was a link of some description with regards to the use of ambi. Loving the podcast. It's bloody brilliant.

Graham Hazelgreaves. Aw, thank you for the bloody brilliant. Abso-bloody brilliant is what I thought Graham was going to say they're just putting in a bit of temesis but really appreciate that hold on

a bit of temesis what's temesis? temesis is when you sandwich you make a word sandwich essentially so you take one word and then you just

insert another word in the middle normally a swear word as in as I say fan-bloody-tastic abso-bloody-lootly and other options are available. What a wonderful name he's got, Hazelgreens.

Isn't it lovely? That's a fantastic name. I wonder if it's linked to Hazel Grove, Grove full of hazel trees. I don't know. Not sure. Oh, okay. Ambiguous, ambivalent, ambidextrous, ambience. What's the ambi connection?

What's it all about, the ambi? So ambi means both ways. so if you are ambivalent you can see both points of view so you have mixed feelings about something if you're ambidextrous you can use both hands to write ambiguous goes back to ambi again both ways and then agarator drive so you kind of you go both ways if something's ambiguous it's not going in a straight line it's kind of going off in two directions. So you can't quite work out which. Now, ambient is slightly different.

Do you remember me telling you about the political origins of ambition and how Roman candidates would walk around town in order to canvass votes and their flowing white togas? And ambire means to go around or go about. So it gave us ambition and it also gave us ambience because if you go around, you know, something ambient and ambient temperatures kind of all around you, if you like. So that's where that comes from. So we mustn't assume, this is quite interesting for people who are sort of studying this, that just because AMBI appears in lots of words, that it's the same AMBI. Sometimes it will be looking both ways, and sometimes it will be as in perambulatory. Yes. Although, you know what, if you go far enough,

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a sort of link on that family tree, because if you were going around or going about, you've still got the idea of sort of going both ways, if you see what I mean. So take it back far enough and you never know what you might discover. Well, I'm in the world of ambivalence. One of my problems when I was a Member of Parliament is that I tend to agree with the last person I've spoken to. Oh, I know. Me too. I'm the same, actually. I don't have very fixed opinions. No, I am very similar.

I can be persuaded. Anyway, speaking of ambivalence, Doreen Beatty has been in touch. Hi, Susie and Giles. I'm stumped and hope you can help me out. A few weeks ago, my son was telling me about a movie he and his wife went to see. I asked him if he liked it, and he said, not really. Later in the conversation, I said something about him disliking the movie, and he said he didn't dislike it. He just didn't like it.

I was confused until I realized, duh, it is in fact possible to neither like nor dislike a thing. That, however, led to the big confusion. What word can be used to say you neither like nor dislike something? I can think of phrases such as being ambivalent towards something, but so far I haven't come up with one single word. Well, unless you include the modern meh, which I'm not convinced is an actual word. It has now become a family discussion, and we've got nothing.

So what say you, Susie? Is there a single word to say you neither like nor dislike something? Thank you both for all the hours of entertainment and education you provide. Dorian Beatty, Pennsylvania, USA. Oh, wonderful. Well done, Dorian. What a great name. Beatty is a good name too. It is. Well, what is the word? Is it neutral? I'm neutral on that. I don't know, what would you say? Yeah, it could be. Well, I'm going to offer you a word that I have mentioned in one of the trios from the past, I think. And that is, remember this one, frobbly mobbly.

I do remember the word. Frobbly mobbly is kind of 18th century equivalent of meh, which was mentioned there. So it was described by Francis Grose when he collected his local and provincial words. And this is, as I say, in the 18th century, as meaning kind of indifferent or indifferently well. In other words, neither one thing nor the other. So, I would recommend that we start to say, well, I'm a bit frobbly-mobbly on that one. And I'd love Dorian to start using that one, particularly in the US. I'm a bit frobbly-mobbly. It's spelled F-R-O-B-B-L-Y. Just one B. One B in each. Frobbly-mobbly. Frobblyily, mobbly. And meh, M-E-H, I think it probably is in the dictionary now.

It is. But I think it has a slightly negative connotation. I don't think it's, I didn't feel one way or the other. I didn't feel one way or the other, but I'm erring on the side of, no, it didn't mean much, it didn't work really for me. I agree. It now means a bit of a lack of enthusiasm or interest. It now means a bit of a lack of enthusiasm or interest. So, but originally it kind of meant unexceptional. So that's where you get the idea of neither one thing that the other is coming, you know. We never feel frobbly-mobbly about the people who write to us.

We always are feeling enthusiastic and grateful. So thank you, both of you, for this week's messages. And please feel free to keep them coming. It's, you know, simply purple at something else dot com. You mentioned your trio. What three words have you got to introduce us to this week? Okay, so I'm going to start with a word that was spelled slightly differently at the time. One was a contriver, which I think most of us would kind of recognise, and the other was a controver. But either way, I think it's quite a useful word for today because

it's somebody who invents false gossip. Now, I couldn't possibly say that this is what some media do, but a controver or a contriver, somebody who makes up a story and spreads it far and wide. Oh, that's very good. I like that. Yes. So my second one, I just took my fancy really only in that if you are lucky enough to have dinner cooked for you one day, you can sauce onto the sofa, which is to fall down with a sigh or to just flop into a soft and easy chair and say, I have been amply bedinnered. So bedinnered means served dinner.

I just like it because no one's talked about bedinnering someone these days, but I just think it's quite cute. I like that very much. Bedinnered. And the third one is, it's just quite interesting. It's got quite a specific meaning, obsolete now, gain cope. To gain cope was to catch up with or intercept somebody by taking a shortcut. So imagine if you were trying to avoid somebody coming towards you and so you take a slightly different route but that person anticipates it and actually takes a shortcut and gets to you first they are gain coping you i just quite like the fact that that word exists i like them very much all three of them oh good what about your poem for today oh how i crave for fish and chips, a fine cuisine of world renown. I dined on such a subtle dish when QE2

received her crown. Oh, how I need some fish and chips. I'll queue in pouring rain or snow. What better way to warm my hands as soggy chips make fingers glow? We Brits are famed for culinary finesse, like steak and kidney puddin' no no less, wondrous tripe, cottage pie, bangers and egg in lard to fry. But fish and chips, the crowning glory, a dish to trounce the great kebab, you think I care for chicken masala, it's cod and chips that grow my flab. Oh, how I yearn for fish and chips, all poshly wrapped in the daily star, then caked and drowned in salt and vinegar and stinking out my brand new car. It's by Mark Slaughter.

Who's that by? And he wrote it a few years ago and it just makes me laugh. Oh, I haven't had fish and chips for ages. It makes me also wonder whether you've ever tried a battered Mars bar. Do you know, I was in Glasgow once and somebody said, you've not been to Glasgow till you've had a battered Mars bar. And we went out and we had one. And what's even worse is it was so tasty, I asked for a second. I have to try one. I'm hoping you didn't, like one famed politician, ask for some guacamole instead of mushy peas. I know. He denies it. It's said of Peter Mandelson and he absolutely denies it. Well, it's the sort of thing,

honestly, the sort of thing anyone could do to be fair. It is. And actually, I'll tell you what I feel about fish and chips. I love the idea of fish and chips and almost immediately I've had them. I slightly regret it.

I know exactly what you mean. Well, we will leave it there, but we really look forward to hearing about your fish stories if you have got any. So do, as Giles says, please get in touch, purple at something else dot com. And if you have enjoyed us today, we would absolutely love it if you could leave us a review or recommend us to friends. Something Wives with Purple is, of course, a Something Else production.

It was produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wales. Wales? Oh, that's good. And Harriet Wales. With additional production from Steve Ackerman, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale, and what fish would he be?

Well, I believe he's not here today because he's out trying on a new codpiece. Of course. That's gully.