Something Rhymes with Purple - Jirble

Episode Date: June 18, 2019

We’re quids in. This week: the language of money. 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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Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much, you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visittheusa.com. Actually, here's a question for you. What do you call the little stringy bits on a banana? What do you call the little stringy bits on a banana?

I have absolutely no idea, but I'm going to find out. I just saw you peeling them off one by one, and I thought, I need to find that out. That's my assignment for the day. If you just join us, you'll see what a delightful pair we are. This is... I'm Giles Brownroth, and this is Susie Dent, and I've just been eating a banana, and Susie is going to find out what the little stringy bits in a banana are called. Oh, OK.

Those annoying banana strings, I'm told, are called phloem. I'm not sure this is how you pronounce it. P-H-L-O-E-M. Phloem. Phloem. Otherwise known as musa fibre. Musa fibre. Their job is to distribute nutrients up and down the banana as it grows, apparently.

I'm just reading this straight from the web. Its root is from the Greek word for bark. Isn't that lovely? I didn't know that. That's the point of this particular podcast. Welcome to it. This is called Something Rhymes With Purple. It's about the power of words and language. We're a pair of verbivores. We're wordaholics. Susie Dent is my companion. She's my guru, my leader. She is the lady that you may have seen over the last few decades sitting in Dictionary Corner on Countdown and on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

She is a world authority on words and language. She's taught in America, researched in America. She's currently touring the United Kingdom with an amazing show called The Word Detective. Secret Lives of Words. The Secret Lives of Words. I'd love to call it The Word Detective and then have a business card with a deerstalker on it. Yeah, and you are the word detective. And I'm Giles Brown. I'm just a word enthusiast. And I was feeling, this is such a lovely podcast. We've had such wonderful feedback from people that we're quids in.

And I thought, oh, quids in. Maybe that should be our theme today. Let's talk about money. Quid. Quids in. Is that something to do with money? about money, quid, quids in. Is that something to do with money? Well, yes. And quid itself is one of our oldest, oldest words and denominations and slang terms for money. It means a pound, obviously, and it comes from the Latin quid, meaning what, with what you need being the kind of, or you need being the unspoken add-on, what you need in order to survive. Is money quid? Yes. And is there a whole language around the world of money?

I mean, money, they say, makes the world go round. We all need money. Though, interestingly, Freud, Sigmund Freud, the great father of psychoanalysts, he tells us that money is not a fundamental need. We need all sorts of things. We need food. We need comfort. We need love.

We don't essentially need money. So some people are driven. How's your banana? It's fine. I think we need a certain amount. We certainly need a minimum amount to get by. Yes. But that's to do with needing warmth and comfort and security.

We're not driven by a need for money of itself. Do you come from a moneyed family uh no um i don't actually um i know my my um grandparents were uh they had very simple lives my grandfather was a butcher which is slightly strange for me as a uh as a vegetarian but um no i definitely don't come from a moneyed family and my dad worked very very very hard to make what he could. But no, I think your family may be a little bit, well, a lot wealthier than mine. Well, my family has been a rollercoaster family. I have very poor members of my family and I've had very rich members of my family.

Indeed, one of my forebears was one of the richest people in the world. Wow. I was just the one that patented the magic pills. This is the man. My great, great, great, great grandfather left Liverpool in the early 1830s, went to America, changed his name, called himself Dr. Benjamin Brandreth.

He was no more of a doctor than I am. Was he a Brandreth, though? He wasn't even a Brandreth. He was a Holmes, interestingly. But his mother was a Brandreth. He was a Holmes, interestingly. But his mother was a Brandreth. And his grandfather had made a medicine. And he took the recipe, a little vegetable pill. He took the recipe for this medicine to America.

And he began manufacturing Brandreth's pills as cure-alls, whatever problem he had. So he was a quack. He was a quack. He was a pioneering quack. Except that they were like a homeopathic remedy. They were vegetable pills. They didn't do any harm. Whatever, you know. So he was a quack. He was a quack. He was a pioneering quack, except that they were like a homeopathic remedy. They were vegetable pills. They didn't do any harm. Whatever, you know.

Oh, okay. Heart disease, take a brandless pill. Want a baby? Take a brandless pill. Don't want a baby? Take two brandless pills. And people really said that they worked. And he became literally one of the wealthiest people in America.

He became a friend of Gordon Bennett, who is somebody who is a bit of an eponymous because Gordon Bennett is a kind of exclamation, isn't it? Yes. And Gordon Bennett was the editor of a New York newspaper. He was a playboy as well. Was he? Lots of yachts, fast cars, women.

And a great friend of my great, great, great grandfather. And Gordon Bennett basically made his fortune in the New York Post, whatever his newspaper was, because my great-great-great-grandfather pioneered... Actually, I don't think it had fast cars then. Correction. Fast vehicles. Fast vehicles. All strong carriages. But the point is, my great-great-great-grandfather

spent a lot of money advertising these brand-new spills, helped make Gordon Bennett his fortune, was much admired by P.T. Barnum, who wrote a chapter in his book about confidence tricksters, about the genius of my great-great-great-great-grandfather. And when he died, he was one of the richest people in America and therefore in the world. Good grief.

He had about 16 children. This is the point of the story. Okay. And they were all very wealthy. No? They were initially all very wealthy. Some of them married. Okay. And they were all very wealthy, no? They were initially all very wealthy. Some of them married incredibly well. One of them, one of his grandsons-in-law became America's first billionaire, founded the Texaco Oil Company in the 1930s. Others didn't do so well, such as my

great-grandfather, who came back to Britain to run the English end of the company, who I'm afraid went through all the money, spent lavishly, was a good Christian soul, founded a lot of, built a lot of churches. And so by the time he got round to my father and grandfather, there was no money left at all. So 100 years ago, we were a hugely rich family. And now we have nothing. I don't know. Well, you have something. I have been to your house. It's a lovely, lovely house. It's not all bad. No, no, it's not all bad. But the point is,

I've not inherited anything. Whatever I've got I have earned and I think I like earning money I suppose. I mean people say to me why are you still working at your age? And I say I need the money. I've discovered over the years that money is the one thing keeping me in touch with my children. So tell us about the language of money please.

There are so many. I'll start with money itself. Now this is quite interesting it's quite a um a lesson really for us all so money goes back to um that the latin and the roman uh moneta originally the name of a goddess um in whose temple in rome money was coined moneta also gave us uh mint of course as well as money. And who was Moneta? Moneta was a person? She was a goddess.

So she's associated quite often with Juno, if you know your mythology. I know Juno-esque is still large people are described as being Juno-esque. Well, that's very true. That's very true. But one of her names, I think she had many, was Moneta. Moneta. M-O-N-E-T-A. Yeah, that's where we get money from. But interestingly, if you go back, we think that Moneta itself goes back to the Latin monere, which meant to warn, which means that money and warning are linked, they're siblings. Money and warning. Well, not warning itself, but money and the original Latin root is all about warning people, perhaps about the evils of money.

But I would just say that if you look at all the slang terms for money, I mean, it's vast. What people always say about slang is that its waterfront is narrow, but it's very, very deep. And slang, together with sex and drugs, you know, it's one of the major themes that you will find in slang and there are so many you just dig for slang terms and you find literally hundreds so uh dosh dosh perhaps one of the most recent additions to the money lexicon uh dosh it may be a blend of dollars and cash but actually we think it's most likely to come from dos a place to sleep if you're dosing somewhere um as in dosing down yes hence you need somewhere you need some you need some money you need some dosh in order to be able to dos notes notes you talk about notes well notes

made of notes when when did when did the note come into 1600s but it was short for a promissory note in other words you promised to pay a particular sum at a particular time. As it says on the note to this day, I promised to pay the bearer the sum of. It is a promise. The piece of paper is an undertaking. Exactly. That was a promissory note, and that's how it's a note. It's a note.

Cash goes back even further. 15th century, cash was a merchant's chest or money box, and then it was transferred to the contents thereof. And if you go to the denominations, so if you're talking about fivers or we've mentioned quid, etc., tenors, etc., sometimes those go back centuries as well. Hold on. So a quid is a pound.

A fiver is a pound. Is a fiver a dollar? A fiver is a five-pound note for us. The dollar, oh gosh, look at the dollar. If you look at the slang thesaurus for the dollar, you'll find lots of green vegetables. Because, of course, after Abraham Lincoln coined the dollar, it was green. And so it was known as the greenback for quite a long time. Oh, forgive me. Where does the dollar come from?

Well, it's interesting because it was the english name for the german tarlo which was a large silver coin um that was used in the german states around the 16th century and then um it made its way to this i think it was the name for the piece of eight or the peso, which was used in the British American colonies. And then it went on to become the standard unit of, here we go, gold and silver coinage of the USA. This was in 1782, where Thomas Jefferson says, the unit or Spanish dollar is a known coin and the most familiar of all to the mind of the people. It is already adopted from south to north. So it had a huge journey before it came into America, but it all started in the German states. It's the Thaler. So that's how we get the dollar. That's how we get

the dollar. So it was, I think, short for Joachim's Thaler. So it was the coin of Joachim's Thaler, which was in Bohemia at the time. And the reason that there's so much slang around money is because, like sex, it's fundamental. It's fundamental. We all need money. It's a staple of life, which is why you will find so many terms for money linked to foodstuffs. We talk about bread.

Obviously, we talk about dough. It's also the sweetener of life. You'll hear it talked about as jam, cake for some people, biscuit um so how far back to this go i mean i need i need more dough meaning i need more money uh dough as money is probably i'm going to check this in um for for um everyone listening i basically i can't live without the oxford english dictionary i have it on my phone I carry it around with me in an online sense. It's the best thing in the entire world.

And I'm now looking up Doe to see when it was first, it's the first record that we have to do with money. Keep talking, Giles. It's a very long entry. I find money totally uninteresting. But I've been free of money, of thinking about money for some years, because some years ago when I became an MP, my wife saw that we were spending more than I was earning because I was a full-time MP. And I'd been earning more when I wasn't an MP and suddenly became an MP. And I think when I became an MP, MPs were paid something like £37,000 a year.

And we found we were running out of money. And my wife said to me, you are steering the ship of state that is the brand with family and finances towards the rocks. Oh, dear. You turnip. And she said, I'm going to have to do something about this. So my wife literally took from me our checkbook. We had a checkbook in those days, the credit cards and everything, confiscated them and took over the family finances. Good for Michelle. And from that day in the early 1990s to this, I have had nothing to do with the family finance and she has sorted out everything. This

has freed me up incredibly. I don't know, literally, I don't know how much I earn. I do lots of, you know, I'm busy all the time. So I know I'm earning money. And it goes into her account. She sorts it. She pays the VAT. She pays the tax. And she pays all the bills.

And so I'm a totally free person. Which is lovely. It's quite liberating. It's liberating. The only downside is that I can't give her a present without her knowing exactly how much it's cost. I literally can't. Because she gives me her knowing exactly how much it's cost. I literally can't. Because she gives me a little bit of cash, which she gives me, you know, a tenner.

And I do have a credit card for emergency use, but it's her credit card. Good grief. You are a kept man. So I'm totally a kept person. But it is incredibly liberating. It's interesting that you carry cash. I do not carry cash at all. So in the lexicon of money, the only really new, new terms that we've got,

because most of them, as I say, go back centuries, are to do with contactless. So, you know, contactless itself, swiping, if you still swipe. But I never have cash on me. Where does cash come from as a word? The French for a money box. 16th century. Caché or something.

It was caisse. Caisse. As in caisse. La caisse. Don la caisse. And then it was transferred. C-A-I-S-S-E is la caisse. Exactly. Becomes cash.

Doe. So you asked me about whether. Yeah. Doe is first recorded in the OED from 1848, an edition of Americanisms where it also gives you tin, kelter, dimes and rocks. But Doe has obviously definitely survived and then crept into British English soon thereafter. We're in the money. I'm going to stop you singing. It's time for a break. Thank God. Summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days We'll be right back. A day of sunshine? No. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that.

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Does money interest you? I wouldn't say it interests me. I think one of the key things really for all of us is that the real language, not the slang, but the sort of the standard language, if you like, of the financial world is so alienating, isn't it? Do you remember all that talk during the credit crunch of deleveraging? Do you remember all of that? It meant nothing. It meant nothing to me. And also, what was that thing that they did where they poured more money into it to make more money into the system? Oh, yes. What was that called? We can't even remember. We were so out of it. We didn't even know what it was about. Which I think is why we come up with so many slang terms, because that makes it sound more manageable.

We feel more confident, less uncomfortable. These hedge fund people, I think, are just into, it sounds like gambling to me, it looks like gambling to me, but they dress it up in these terms like hedge fund, and somehow you think... Again, it's tribal, and some of it, I'm sure, is very useful shorthand within the tribe. But for most of us, when actually it's quite

important that we do understand what's going on with our government and our finances, for most of us, it's, as I say, utterly alienating. And a lot needs to be done. When I went to university, I went to do politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford. And the first year was economics. And I thought, this is impossible. I don't understand this. And so I gave it up, which is, of course, why i ended up when i was an mp at the treasury knew nothing about what was going on you don't really need the treasury i'll give you a nice word origin exchequer yes okay do you know where that comes from no okay it goes back centuries again um to the checked tablecloths used by the royal accountants who would count the king's money with counters and they

would move these counters from one cheque to another on this tablecloth. And they were known as the keepers of the exchequer, the keepers of the cheque tablecloth. And eventually that meant the keeper of the money in every way. I wish I'd known that because I worked at the exchequer. Did you? Well, I became eventually, when I was in government, Lord Commissioner of the Treasury. Wow. And the Lord Commissioner of the Treasury is the person who signs the government checks.

This is very ironic, given that actually you don't manage any of the money in your household. I don't manage. I can't be trusted. My results at GCSE for maths were appalling. I abandoned Economics at university. My wife confiscated the cheque. Who appointed you?

But I was appointed by the then prime minister, who was John Major, and I worked for Kenneth Clark when he was the chancellor of the Exchequer. And I was the Lord Commissioner. And the job of the Lord Commissioner is to sign the government cheques. The last cheque I signed was for £136 billion. Serious money in those days. And they said with these huge multi-billion pound cheques,

you can't sign the cheque alone. There has to be a co-signatory. I said, who will that be? They said it would be the head of the treasury. It's HM Treasury. The head of the treasury is the queen. So I would go along to Buckingham Palace

with the government cheque book to sign these huge cheques with Her Majesty. The first time we did this, I wasn't sure which of us should sign the cheque. Who should check the cheque? Or going back to those cheques on the with Her Majesty. The first time we did this, I wasn't sure which of us should sign the cheque. Who should check the cheque? Or going back to those cheques on the tablecloth.

Exactly. And I felt I couldn't patronise the Queen just because she's a woman or say, you know, after you. Indeed, I didn't want to pull rank on her either because I was the elected one. Anyway, she was holding the pen. She seemed to think she should sign first. But the last time we did this, when we signed this cheque for £136 billion,

Social Security Payments First Quarter, I said to the Queen, you know, Your Majesty, the way the government insists on the two of us signing these huge cheques, I can't help wondering, Your Majesty, which of the two of us it is the government doesn't entirely trust? She had no answer to that. Did she laugh? She, well, sort of. It wasn't a big belly laugh, I have to confess. It wasn't a boffler.

No, but you're right. The world of finance is a closed world to me. And it's done deliberately, you're saying. I think it is. It is deliberately obfuscating so that it creates this linguistic gap and we don't really understand what's going on, as I say. And I think that's why we love a bit of banter when it comes to money. So I'm going to give you some Cockney rhyming slang here.

Oh, good. Okay. What is a cock and hen? A cock and hen is through with money. Yes. Cock and hen, is it ten, a tenner? Half of ten. Cock and ten is half of ten.

Yeah, it's a fiver. It's a fiver. Likewise, jacks. Jacks alive, five, or jacks and five, perhaps. Five. Jacks alive, five. Okay. An airton.

An airton. Ayrton Sen senna it's a tenor very very very good all right this one is almost impossible to work out uh and if you can i will be so impressed a commodore a commodore is it to do with an eagle a bird no no that's a really good guess no it's to do with the band called the Commodores. Oh, the Commodores, I've heard of them. What's their most famous song? Any idea? I don't know. All right, let's get back to the beginning.

So, the Courtney rhyming slang for a fiver was once a Lady Godiva, shortened to Lady. The group the Commodores, probably best known for their song Three Times a Lady. Do you remember that one? Three Times a Lady, so it's 15 quid. Three Times a Lady. It is 15 quid. Isn't that clever? That i love that a commodore uh pavarotti pavarotti feeling grotty i don't know pavarotti was one of the tenors the three tenors of course he was

absolutely um an archer did you know jeffrey archer in your time i i know jeffrey archer jeffrey archer is a friend of mine but finishing on pavarotti yes those those big. Did you know Geoffrey Archer in your time? I know Geoffrey Archer. Geoffrey Archer is a friend of mine. But finishing on Pavarotti, those big tenors you know, not necessarily them, not necessarily Pavarotti himself, but I worked at the Opera House once and there was a tenor who wouldn't be paid, I mean he wouldn't sing until he was paid in cash in the wings before the performance. Wow. I'm going to try that. And he was actually stuffing the money, this is true, into his padded outfit, into his

tights. They paid him the maluka. Oh, that's a good slang word, isn't it? Filthy maluka? Filthy luka. Filthy luka is from the Bible, whereas mula is from British troops that came back from Egypt, from an Arabic word. So there you get them come together. I've never heard of maluka. I think you've just invented that.

Filthy lucre is money from the Bible, is it? Yes. Well, lucre was first used for money in the 14th century translation of the Bible. Then filthy lucre came a little bit later. It's a dishonorable gain, really, isn't it? And it goes back to, I was surprised

by this, the old high German lawn, meaning wages or reward. I thought it had something to do with lasting, but I was wrong there. Do you give your children pocket money? I do. And? Well, my oldest is kind of, she's sort of earning herself now a little bit in a holiday job. But my youngest.

How much do they expect nowadays? I mean. A fiver, really. Oh. I think. Well, not the oldest. The oldest is they expect nowadays? I mean. A fiver, really. Oh. I think. Well, not the oldest. The oldest is earning a lot more for herself. But yeah, I think my youngest, I give a fiver a week.

When I was a little boy, I used to get a penny a day. A penny a day? A penny a day. That was five pence in the week. But this is the old money. OK. When it was pounds, shillings and pence. Yes.

And a penny a day was enough for me to get a little chocolate bar or a penny chew. Penny chew. And you could buy a double-sized gobstopper. Gobstoppers. Gobstopper for a penny. Oh, I love gobstoppers. You can still buy gobstoppers.

And in my day, there were hapenies, farthings, pounds, shillings and pence. I love that. So where did pounds and shillings and pence, I know where they went to, they went in the 1960s, didn't they? But where were shillings? What were they named after? That's German again, isn't it? Shilling is, they're all so old.

Shilling was first applied to a sovereign, I think, and certainly in modern terms, but it says it's from the Norman conquest originally. And it's linked to a Viking word. So very, very old, I would say, Shilling. Do you know, Susie, what a guinea is? No. Pound is quite interesting.

I'll come back to that in a minute. Guinea, no, tell me. You don't know what a guinea is? Well, I know it's a unit of currency. But that's amazing. It just shows you the difference in a generation, how quickly things can change. Well, it says an English gold coin, not coined since 1813, John. No. It just shows you the difference in a generation, how quickly things can change. Well, it says in English, God coin, not coin since 1813, John, so not that old.

But interestingly, when I first worked for the BBC, which is, I agree, 50 years ago, you were paid in guineas. No. Yes, you were. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys's diary. Of course it's mentioned. Don't be ridiculous. Guineas went on. And indeed, there are races, horse races today, still called the Thousand Guineas. That's true. Do you know what a guinea is? I can't believe you don't know. One pound and five pence, apparently.

It is a pound and a shilling. One pound, one shilling, which would now be one pound and five pence. And it was coined in Guinea, I'm guessing. And I don't know why it's called. That's what I'm asking you. But since you never heard of it. No. You're supposed to be.

The people tune into this, Susie Dent, because they think it's Susie Dent being interrupted by Giles Brandreth. And in fact, I meant to interrupt you because you don't know. What is the origin of Guinea? I think it was coined in Guinea, but it ultimately says in the OED origin unknown. So that, he doesn't know

either. Well, there we are. If the OED doesn't know, if the OED doesn't know, you are excused. Pound is a nice one. I'll quickly tell you that one. Yes. Pound comes from the ancient Roman Libra, of course. You remember scales and the star sign Libra. And Libra Pondo was literally a pound in weight.

It was a very, very heavy amount of money. And LB eventually became the abbreviation. And that's why the pound sign, because one of my grandchildren was saying to me the other day, Grandpa why is the pound sign this letter? Yes. This funny thing. And I said it is because a pound was Libra. Yes. That is the L for Libra. Yes. I wasn't sure

what the two little lines across it are. The two little lines were to show that it was an abbreviation. That's what they were doing. And LB in terms of, you know, weight of weight, weight of flower, etc. is Libra Pondo. Very good. Apparently you have a lovely story to tell me about Richard Branson. No, I don't have a lovely story to tell you about Richard Branson,

but it is the explanation of why I'm still working at my great age. Because I had an opportunity that I didn't take up. When I was 17 and at school, I got a letter from Richard Branson, the Richard Branson, who was then 16. And he invited me. He knew about me. We'd been corresponding. I was editing my school magazine and he was editing his school magazine. And that's how we got in touch.

And he invited me to come to his parents' flat at Hyde Park Corner. And I went and I met Richard Branson. And we got on reasonably well. We were both young. We were teenagers. And he was, I was thin. He was even thinner. And he seemed to me like a monkey because he couldn't stop moving. He was sort of running around the room all the time, almost swinging from the chandeliers. And he had long hair. This is the sort of mid-60s, early 60s. And he had this long hair, and he was very thin and wiry. And he was jumping all over the place. And he was saying, look, we should go into business together, you and me. And he proposed that we start a company together. And that we raise 50 pounds each, quite a lot of money in those days. And you could buy a company off the shelf. It was called buying a company off the

shelf. And it would cost you 100 pounds. You'd have half the shares each. So the idea was that we would have a business together. And it would be a publishing business. And I looked at this monkey. And I thought to myself, I didn't say this, you're going nowhere, mate. Because he said to me, we've got to leave school. I said, we can't leave school. I said, I'm just doing the A levels. I said, when are you doing the A levels? He said, I don't want to do A levels. I said, you've got to do A levels. I said, we can't leave school. I said, I'm just doing the A-levels. I said, when are you doing the A-levels? He said, I don't want to do A-levels. I said, you've got to do A-levels. I said, I'm going to university. He said, don't waste your time going to university. Let's get out, let's get going. I said, Richard, you are going nowhere. I am going somewhere. I am going to university. And so Richard and I parted. And we didn't go into business together 50-50. And occasionally, as I'm disappearing down into the Hammersmith and City line on the underground, near where I live, his rather attractive Bentley pulls up.

And the electric window goes down and he raises a single finger to me and greets me for old time's sake. That last bit's got to be a bit of embellishment, but I love the image. It hasn't. Actually, he's sending me up. We do still know one another. But that's happened to me more than once because I then, when I was at university, I went into business with another friend of mine

called Colin Sanders. And flopped. Well, no. Well, we went into business together. We each had £50 in the same company. And we put on Sonny Lumiere. Have you heard of Sonny Lumiere? It's got a history lesson in the rain.

Yeah. And we killed it. And there's no longer Sonny Lumiere in this country. We did the last of the great Sonny Lumieres. Oh, but these came in France. But anyway, it was a French idea. We brought it to Britain. Anyway, I said to him, we're going nowhere with this business.

We're going absolutely nowhere. He made the electric systems to make the lights go up and down and the sound. And so I gave him my £50 of the company. He sold the company for £70 million. Isn't that amazing? That is really amazing. I don't have any stories like that. It was very nice.

And when I had another business, which also went belly up, lost millions, and he very kindly saw I was a bit low, he took me in his private aeroplane for a holiday to Venice. So that's grand. Wow. Speaking of grand. Grand canal. Speaking of grand, what's the origin of the word grand for a thousand?

Oh, grand for a thousand is simply because it's a big amount of money. Not massively interesting, that one. Oh, okay. Well, we always end with our three words. Susie Dent's trio. Are they going to be financially linked? Well, one of them is financial. But then I thought I'd give us a rest if our pockets are not feeling full of shrapnel,

which is something I found out quite recently. We call coins loose change shrapnel, or at least some people do. Because apparently British troops used to collect shrapnel as souvenirs from the trenches and put them in their pocket and they jungled around just like coins i learned that quite recently all right the first one is something that none of us apart from richard branson are ever likely to use but it's nice anyway a marigold is a million pounds wow marigold gold um basically until the 19th century coins rather than notes were the norm. And so their colour was all important when it came to naming them. So you will find coins called gingerbread, yellow boys, canaries, goldfinch,

all these slang terms for various denominations. And marigold is now used specifically for one million pounds. But as I say, who's going to need that? You mentioned Archer earlier, but you didn't tell me why. Oh, yes, Archer. Well, please apologise to your friend, Geoffrey. But that's a reference to his libel case because it's £2,000,

which is apparently the amount that he allegedly offered as a bribe. That was the basis of the case. And it became known as an Archer. Yes. People sometimes refer to a Darwin. What's that? £10 note. Oh, because he was on the ten pound note.

You'll find that quite often, actually. Should we get to my trio of words? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes. No, no, it's fine. I've just looked at the time. Give me what was the first one? So Marigold. I love Marigold for a million. For a million. Yes. OK, this one, nothing to do with money at all. But you might need one, I suppose, if you're if you're a bit hard up. And that's a cover slut. A cover slut? A cover slut.

Now, I have to say that this could be quite useful in my house because I always seem to, if I'm wearing something white, to spill something down myself. myself. And a cover slut is something that you, an item of clothing that's worn over the top of another in order to hide a stain or a tear or any other kind of blemish. Oh, that's very good. It's the garment that you use to cover. Yes. Absolutely. I need that quite a lot.

So that's a cover slut. They used to say at certain restaurants that the most exciting, most expensive item on the menu is the tie because you're spilling your food down the front. Well, there you go. So my third word is actually linked to that. Caused much hilarity on Twitter.

I'll leave this to your imagination. But to gerbil, which is not spelt like the animal, is J-I-R-B-L-E, is to spill a liquid through unsteady hands. I love it. And again, that accounts for my cover slut usage look this is why people stay tuned for the whole

of the podcast because they may have thought oh god he's just telling another of his stories he doesn't even know anything about words at all but I do know that there will be the Susie Dent trio at the end and she has introduced us today to Marigold which is a million a cover slut which is what she never is,

because I've never seen anybody eat more daintily. But if she did spill food down the front... No, I'm not the cover slut. It's the clothing that's... Oh, the clothing is the cover slut. But you can call me a cover slut if you like. I won't call you a cover slut. You would make a brilliant cover girl because you're so beautiful, but you are no way a cover slut.

A cover slut is the garment that might well result if you've gerbled. And gerbling is spilling liquid through unsteady hands. I love that. If you love it too and have enjoyed us even just a little bit, please can you give us a review or rate us and help us spread the word? Yeah. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, and it's a Something Else production produced by Paul Smith

with additional production from Russell Finch, Steve Ackerman, and Josh Gibbs and your friend, what's he called? He's called Gulliver and I looked up on, because at his request he asked me to look up the origin of the name Gulliver. We all know Jonathan Swift, obviously Gulliver's Travels, but it goes back to a French word meaning glutton. You like your food. We love our food. We love getting together and we'll be together soon on another of these podcasts. And if you want to communicate with us, I'm on Twitter at GilesB1. G-Y-L-E-S-B-1.

And where are you on Twitter? I am on Susie underscore Dent. I'm just going to pull on a new cover, slut.