Something Rhymes with Purple - John Doe

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

This week we're being a couple of Smart Alecs and Clever Dicks and we're exploring the world of names hidden in common phrases... and were they based on real people? Was there an original Joe Bloggs? Did he ever cross paths with John Doe? Why was Jack such a lad? Upon whom was Tom peeping? All whilst being 'on our tod' recording from separate locations. Gyles will be testing our general knowledge with some questions he picked up at a star-studded charity event and, as usual, Susie will be providing her trio of words to take with you into the week. A Somethin' Else production. If you would like to get in touch with us then please email: [e-mail] Susie's Trio: Clinophobia - a fear of lying down Paralipsis - giving emphasis by professing to say little or nothing at all ("I'm not even going to mention...") Skimble-Skamble - rambling and confused. 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

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there.

Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself.

Hello, and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast for people who are intrigued by, interested by, in love with language. And it's presented by me, Giles Brandreth, and my friend and colleague... Susie Dent. Susie Dent. And there was a moment's pause because Susie and I, though we can see one another, thanks to the magic of Zoom, we are not in the same room. We're not just six feet apart.

We are 60 or more miles apart. Where are you speaking from, Susie Dent? Same as always. I wish I had something new and novel to tell you, but I don't. I'm still in the same room. The sun is shining, though, and we're going to talk about words, and that will make everything bright. Have you had a good week? Who have you seen this week, either through the window or in your dreams? Who have been your encounters of the week? Well, I did something interesting on

Wednesday. If you know the presenter Colin Murray, he had a show on Radio 5 Live on the BBC here in the UK. And he decided that we should dedicate some time to letting people just relax because quite often, you know, towards the end of the evening, whether it's that sort of 10 o'clock, all that's available really is more talk about the pandemic. And that might just depress people's soul a little. So he decided to offer an alternative. And it was a virtual pub in lockdown. So between 10 and 12, I was looking at lots of different faces on the screen, including some fantastic spoken word poets. And we just sat around, there was no script, there was no presenter, we sat around

drinking a glass of wine and just chatting, which of course could have gone horribly wrong. But it was actually really nice. And it was really really uplifting and I think people who were listening also found that it just gave them that bit of ventilation time really so that was really fun and I listened to the fantastic spoken word poet called Polar who introduced me to the word a univocal lippitude and a univocal poem is one which allows only one vowel, and he chose the vowel O, and delivered this absolute tour de force. No other vowels throughout this quite long poem were allowed, and it was absolutely fantastic. So that was my Wednesday night. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The first time I've ever drunk while working. There was a great craze for univocal work in the 1950s in America. And there was a guy who attempted to do the complete works of Shakespeare,

dropping a different letter from each of the plays in turn. And the big challenge was doing Othello without the letter O. Because Iago, Othello, there they all are, Desdemona, and he somehow managed it. He spent years doing this, and nobody ever performed these plays, and he couldn't quite understand why. Yes. That's amazing. Now, you did something exciting, I know. You did a charity quiz. Well, it was a wonderful occasion. Again, it was on Wednesday, the same night as you were having your sort of spiritual conversation. I was having quite a tense time because I was hosting a quiz for the Riverside Studios, which is an arts complex in London on the River Thames at Hammersmith. And they've spent several years refurbishing themselves and they opened at the beginning of this year brand new, beautiful theatres, several spaces, beautiful cinema screens, television studios.

And then within weeks of opening, they had to close. So a financial disaster for them. And they decided to organise a charity evening with a quiz. And I thought it was going to be like a general pub quiz. And I was just going to ask the questions. It turned out to be a super gala, a superstar quiz. I was asking the questions. The questions, though, had been scripted by John Lloyd. QI. QI John Lloyd. And also the Museum of Curiosities, which I was on one, which I love, absolutely love. That very same man, the only person in the world to have almost as many BAFTAs as Dame Judi Dench. Judi Dench has, I think, 11 BAFTAs and John Lloyd has about 10, which is pretty impressive. Anyway, Dame Judi Dench took part in this quiz. Stephen Fry took part in the quiz. Joe

Brand was there. Eddie Izzard was there. You name it, it was full of quiz kings. And so during the course of today, I may share with you one or two of John Lloyd's questions. Some of them were really easy, like how many muscles are there in the fingers of your hand? And there were multiple choice. How many muscles are there in the fingers of your hand? Are there none? Are there 10? Are there 30? Or are there 34 muscles in the fingers of your hand? What do you think is the answer? Honest answer, I don't have a clue. Muscles. Yeah, because there's lots of tendons. But are there actual muscles? Okay, I'm going to go for broke and say none. None. And that shows you how brilliant you are. That's why you are Susie Dent, because you're completely right. The 34 muscles that bend the

fingers are all in the palm. That's the trick of the question. How many muscles are in the fingers of your hand? 17 muscles in the palm, 18 in the forearm, but none in the fingers of your hand. That's amazing. And I've told you so many times about the origin of muscle, haven't you? Haven't I even? There are lots of variants in different languages, but most of them go back to little mouse, because particularly for the Romans, musculus, little mouse, little mouse, because particularly for the Romans, musculus, little mouse, they thought that flexing biceps looked a little bit like a mouse scurrying around under the skin. I hope you've been doing some homework, because you'll remember the other day, we got a lovely email from Alexandra Townsend, this, well, whenever it was. And she said, Hi, Susie and Giles. I've been living stateside for five years and have just discovered that the Americans use John Doe for a hypothetical person, as us Brits use Joe Bloggs.

Just wondering if you could shed any light on the origins of these names. So we thought that might be a bit of a theme for today's podcast. So thank you, Alex Townsend. And tell us, have you done the homework? I have done the homework. It's one of those ones where people have lots and lots of theories, a little bit like nursery rhymes, but we don't actually have the definitive answer. But it's such a long history, John Doe, to start with, because John Doe was regularly mentioned in courts going back to the 14th century. So the reign of King Edward III, for example. So John Doe was the plaintiff and Richard Rowe was the defendant. And they were

just taken as generic names. Nobody quite knows why, whether they were real people. I mean, obviously they were notional, but whether they were real people kind of inspiring these names, we don't actually know. In the US... You're telling us that this was originally in England. It was originally in England. And yes, in the US, it tends to be applied to corpses. So unidentified corpses. There was actually, well, obviously there are the people who are called John Doe, who have had lots of unwanted attention. There was one who was questioned apparently repeatedly by airport security staff because they didn't believe that was his real name. So it's a rather unfortunate name to have, but it's the same

with Joe Blocks. We do tend to choose, and this has been a running theme throughout our podcast, actually, we do tend to choose random, apparently random names for objects, whether it's Margaret behind the magpie, the robin redbreast we mentioned when we were doing our birds episode, whether it's a jack of all trades, a steeplejack, a lumberjack, etc. We tend to land on particular names and donkey is another one that we think that's just a riff on Duncan. So we don't actually know the precise stories behind them, but they have been there for a very, very long time. So Joe Bloggs, when was it first used? Let me just check that in the OED. I know that we don't quite know, you know, why,

why anyone would take John, because you'd think Smith would be a more obvious one. So as always, I'm going to look it up in the OED. Tap, tap, tap. While you're looking it up in the OED, I'm reminded that in the good old days, we had telephone directories. And then we could have just looked up in the telephone directory to see whether there was a Joe Bloggs. Actually, to see if somebody, I've never met anybody called Bloggs. I don't think I have either, actually, which is quite strange. So if you look at Joe, you will see that Joe has been chosen as a generic name for a very long time. So a person in the diggings during the gold rush in Australia was called a Joe.

In other countries, countries other than the US, a Joe was a guy from America. Joe College was a college boy. These are all sort of late 19th century. Joe Blog's actually very recent. It says a name applied to a hypothetical average or ordinary man. 1969. Quote from The Guardian, LSD can be taken by Joe Bloggs on a lump of sugar. There you go. I'm amazed that that is, that they're so young. I assumed it would be a Victorian. Yeah, it sounds like it. There's Joe Blow as well in the US. Joe Soap was once applied not very nicely to a mug. So a very ordinary person. Joe Blake, that's Courtney Rhyming's slang in Australia for a snake. And of course, we've got Joe Public, haven't we? Which goes back to the 40s. So Joe's had quite a ride in English.

Is there a female equivalent of Jo Bloggs? Jane Doe is certainly in the US, plain Jane, etc. But you know, as we've talked about before, I think an Abigail was once a maid, that was in Victorian times. So it's quite strange how we land upon these names. But as we're about to discover, hopefully, there are idioms and expressions in English where real people are lurking behind them. Before we do that, can we just send out a message of love to all the people who are called Jane? I don't think I've ever met a Jane who didn't actually use the phrase plain Jane almost within seconds of telling you what her name was. What about Fanny Golightly? Where does that come from?

I've never heard Fanny Golightly. You know, Jane Doe. Oh, who is she? Oh, it's Fanny Golightly. I've not heard that before. No. Do you want me to look it up? And I know a character. These casual names, you may have Joe Bloggs. I have Fanny Golightly.

And I also have, oh, it was just Lord Pispot. Lord Pispot is one of my favourite characters. Who was it? It was, oh, it was old Lord Pispot. When I was an MP and you referred to some member of the House of Lords whose name you couldn't remember, you said, oh, it was, oh, you know, Lord Pispot. And people immediately said, oh, Lord Pispot. Oh, I know him.

So just a few more of these sort of anonymous phrases and names of people. What about Billy No-Mates? Yeah, I'm going to really disappoint you with all of these because we actually just don't really know who Billy No-Mates was or Flaming Nora or Flipping Ada. You know, there have been some different ones over the years, but quite why, we don't know. I think Bloody Nora was mentioned in a novel from the 1950s and then in the late 60s. I don't know if you remember this. It was a sitcom called Nearest and Dearest. Oh, yes. There was a sitcom called nearest and dearest oh yes

there was a nora in that and the term firmly began in lancashire we can see and then examples of flaming and bleeding came along as euphemisms for bloody but we think nora is just it's just a working euphemism for for hell really like blooming neck and then there was nora batty wouldn't that later on wasn't there Nora Batty from was she from Corrie no maybe she was last this summer when purple people out there are going to be screaming they are that we know nothing of their devices because we know nothing and Flipping Ada the same one first first record of that actually is from D.H. Lawrence um Flipping Ada but yeah Billy No-Mates the same why a Billy don't know. What about a clever dick?

I'm sometimes called a clever dick, which I don't take to be a compliment. I don't think it's meant as a compliment. It's usually when I don't know something. Where does that come from, clever dick? Clever dick. You've just reminded me of spotty dick, actually. Oh, yes, spotted dick.

I used to love that at school. Oh, yes, spotted. My dad's absolute favourite pudding as well um he used to have it fried the next morning i probably shouldn't go there can you imagine anything less healthy um clever dick okay yes richard whiteley the great late presenter of countdown the show that you and i both appeared on lots um he used to be called clever dick so it started off meaning simply a clever or smart person and then quickly became ironical, as it says in the dictionary. So yeah, why Richard? Who knows? Dick was a name for a pudding as well, hence Spotted Dick. And that was a regional term. So it could be an apron

made of leather, but also, as well as lots of other things, a pudding. You get feeling dicky, don't you? And you're not feeling too well. Is that a rhyming slang with sick, dick? Exactly. I think so. Yes, you're asking me loads of good questions. Well, I'm the tribune of the people here. We've come to you. You are, as it were, Muhammad and the mountain, and we've come to you on your mountain, Muhammad, and we want the answers. We want the truth. So, actually, actually says origin unknown. That makes me feel a little bit better.

It says perhaps playing, this is Dickie, perhaps playing on its resemblance to tricky or sticky or other sounds with negative connotations. Or it could be an alteration of Dickens, as in what the Dickens or go to the Dickens, which of course was a euphemism for the devil. I love, there's another word that i think expression that i've told you before if you are feeling a bit dicky a great regional dialect word which is flobbly mobbly you're just feeling a bit in there i love flobbly mobbly what about in your dicky is your dicky the bow tie or is it the white waistcoat that you're wearing uh so okay it

has meant many items of clothing um so a dickie in the olden days could be a woman's petticoat talked a lot about petticoats haven't we uh recently a man's shirt especially a worn out one and then in the 19th century it was a detachable front. So particularly one that was worn as part of a formal evening dress. We don't know who the original clever dick was, but do we know who the original smart aleck was? Oh, that's a good question. Yes. Now this involves one of my favourite stories. Now, as you know, sometimes it's really, really hard to identify, not just the people who are lurking behind some of our idioms, but you first use of something really hard for any lexicographer or word detective. But we think we've nailed this one. Unlike Clever Dick or Contrary Mary, et cetera, Smart Alec, we think does have a namesake behind

it. And that man was Alexander Hogue, aka Alec Hogue. And he apparently in the 1840s in New York was a celebrated thief who worked in tandem with his wife, who was a prostitute. She was called Melinda, and an accomplice who was called French Jack. And together they were quite a formidable team, and they would fleece unsuspecting visitors to New York City. And they share the loot, crucially, with two police officers who were in on the racket. There are lots of records of exactly what their strategy was. So one from 1844, this is a diary. Melinda would make her victim lay his clothes as he took them off upon a chair at the head of the bed near the secret panel and then take him to her arms and closely draw the curtains of the bed as soon as everything was right and the dupe not likely to heed outside

noises the traitress would give a cough and the faithful alec would slyly enter rifle the pockets of every farthing or valuable thing and finally disappear as mysteriously as he entered anyway apparently the fact that he tried to pocket some of the money himself without giving it to his police accomplices was his undoing because the police then turned against him. They nicknamed him Smart Alec or perhaps Not So Smart Alec and he went to prison together with Melinda. It's a great story. I think it's got it all. It's even got, never mind the coughing major, it's got the coughing Melinda the prostitute. The coughing major, in case those further afield haven't heard of him, he was in a very famous quiz here called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And there's just been a wonderful three-part drama based on the fact that allegedly

one contestant cheated and was aided by a coffer in the audience. Did you see it, Quiz? It was really good. No, because I've got hooked on this French television series called 10% or in English, Call My Agent. It's on Netflix. I'm completely hooked on it. It's good for your French, a subtitle, so you can follow it whatever your language. And it's been a huge success in France. It's about an actor's movie, a movie actor's agency in Paris.

It's totally gripping. Now, speaking of the prostitute in the 1840s, what about a peeping Tom? Oh, yes. Nothing to do with the 1840s, this, and everything probably to do with Lady Godiva. So Lady Godiva, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in protest against her own husband's taxation of the people. And her name is definitely there in the Doomsday Book. But she's said to have issued this public order that all doors and windows be shut so no one could see her. I don't quite know what the point of the exercise was, but no one could

see her riding through. And Peeping Tom is the name given to a prying tailor who's said to have been struck blind, or in some versions even struck dead, after completely defying that order and watching her secretly through his curtains. He was a bit of a Jack the Lad, wasn't he? He was. Oh, Jack the Lad, yes. We've talked about Jack the Lad, I think, before, have we? Jack Shepard, a famous criminal celebrated in ballads from the 18th century. His thievery was fairly standard, but it was the fact that he was imprisoned so often and every time he managed to escape, apart from the last. And they would kind of involve all sorts of contraptions in order

to keep him there. He was manacled to the floor at one point and he escaped and so became this kind of celebrated folk hero. And when he was hanged at Tyburn, it was witnessed by 200,000 people apparently. He was such a hero. So he was the original at Tyburn, it was witnessed by 200,000 people, apparently. He was such a hero. So he was the original Jack the Lad, we think. One more before we have our break. I heard this, somebody using this the other day. And I thought, oh, my goodness, this is absolutely... Gordon Bennett.

I was watching an old episode because I love it of location, location, location. And Kirstie Alsop was at every other... Was saying, oh, Gordon Bennett, Gordon Bennett. And I thought, well, I can't remember. Is it the newspaper man from Victorian times, the American newspaper editor in New York, or isn't it? What is the origin of the expression Gordon Bennett? Well, yes and no. So the way that Kirstie was using it is as a euphemism for gore blimey, I guess.

And that, again, is said to have been uttered by Peeping Tom. So that kind of links that nicely together. So the name was a useful euphemism because of the G and the B. But the real Gordon Bennett was also quite a large figure in the popular imagination because he was the son of a newspaper mogul who became famous, actually, for conducting the first ever interview covering the murder of a prostitute. This is in the 1830s. Anyway, his son took over the New York Herald, but apparently was more interested in good living. He had kind of lavish mansions and yachts, a really flamboyant lifestyle, drunken escapades that were said to scandalize New York society. And his name was

always in the news. And because of that, people thought of his name perhaps when exclaiming things. And as I said, it was quite a useful, I must stop using riff. It was quite a useful variation on Gaublemy and other stronger expletives. So he was a real person, but I think his name was also just handy. Well, one of the expressions we use in our house, Kirsty may be saying Gordon Bennett all the time, I'm saying Susie Dent. Susie Dent will know that. More of what Susie Dent knows in a moment after our break. And to take you through the break, I'm going to tease you with one of my friend John Lloyd's quiz questions. See if you know the answer to this. In ancient Egypt, what would you say to someone who had shaved off

their eyebrows? Would you say, A, my God, what happened to your eyebrows? Or B, is everything all right? Or C, good heavens, is that the time? Or D, sorry to hear about the cat. What would you say to someone who had shaved off their eyebrows? Answers in just a moment on Something Rhymes with Purple. your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together.

That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Are you the friend who can recognize anime themes sampled by J. Cole, MF Doom, and The Weeknd? Don't worry. I'm Lee Alec Murray, and I'm also that person.

I'm Nick Friedman. And I'm Leah President, and we invite you to take your sonic knowledge to the next level by listening to our show, Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. Learn about how Yeji's latest album was actually born from her own manga. I started off with not even the music. I started off by writing a fantastical story. Or how 24K Golden gets inspired by his favorite opening themes. There are certain songs that I'm like,

whoa, the melodies in this are really amazing. No idea what bro's saying at all, but I'm jacking these melodies. And you know, I hear Megan Thee Stallion is also a big anime fan. So Megan, do you want to trade AOT hot takes? We're here. Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcast,

and watch full episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Also from Something Else. Mel Gedroich is quilting. Also from Something Else. scissors and I went into my husband's wardrobe. Now, this comes from a shirt that I bought him that I know he doesn't like. So I'm testing him by... This is brilliant. Yeah, by finding out when he discovers

that the shirt has got a big patch out of the back of it. Wow, and which area of the shirt is this taken from? Bottom right. Okay. Listen now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all good podcast apps. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. And before our break, I gave you one of John Lloyd's quiz questions asking you, in ancient Egypt, what would you say to someone who had shaved off their eyebrows? And what was the answer you would to someone who had shaved off their eyebrows?

And what was the answer you would have given of the fall I gave you? I think it can't be what's the time. So it's got to be B or D. Either a cat, which is very specific, or is everything all right? I'm going to go, is everything all right? Well, I'm afraid you made a mistake there. No, it's a cat. Of course it is, because cats were sacred in ancient Egypt. So if yours died, it was customary to shave your eyebrows to show you were in mourning. Well, that's kind of links to be. You'd know that something was wrong. We've got so many cats in the cat's room. We call it the cat's room. It's kind of larder,

where we keep the cat litter and the cat food and everything. And we also keep all our old cats. We've been keeping cats for 50 years. We've got an awful lot of them. Hang on. When you say you've still got your cats, you mean stuff? We have their cremated remains in jars. And we've been meaning to bury them in the garden. We haven't got round to it. But now's the time. What better time than lockdown to actually perform those important ceremonies? You've also got a stray cat that you've just adopted, haven't you? It's not a stray. It's the cat. It's a beautiful pedigree cat, a Maine Coon belonging to our next door neighbour. But she, the Maine Coon, prefers to live with us. I say with us, with my wife. And very sweetly, the neighbours have allowed this. And to show you what generous

neighbours they are, they continue to pay the vet's bills. My father knew a woman in Lancashire who had had her husband's cremated remains, the ashes, put into an egg timer. And she said, he did not useful while he was alive. He can do something useful now he's dead. She was on her own or on one's Todd. Was there ever a real person called Todd? Yeah, that's a really nice link. And there was, yes, there was Todd Sloan. So Todd Sloan was a jockey who had quite a time of it, really. He, for a time, rode for the stables of the Prince. I can't remember which prince it was. Prince of Wales, anyway, at the time. So he was an American jockey and this was 19th century, really, that we're talking about. And he too, a bit like Gordon Bennett, was a minor celebrity. He was the one who introduced what's called the monkey crouch used by jockeys today,

you know, that sort of hunched up forward sitting position on the horse. So he was the one who introduced that. But he also liked the finer things in life. He was arrested, I think, for insider betting. I think he's been exonerated of that since quite recently. But at the time, he was absolutely disgraced. He was fired from all the stables that he rode for. I mean, he was quite an amazing jockey. He won so many prestigious prizes.

But he was disgraced and died an early and very lonely death from cirrhosis of the liver because he turned to drink. And Todd Sloan became rhyming slang for alone, hence on your Todd. 99 out of 100 people who listen to this podcast listen to it for your wisdom on words. 99 out of 100 people who listen to this podcast listen to it for your wisdom on words. One in 100 people listen to it to hear me drop names. And can I tell you, have you ever been to the home of Frankie DeTore? Forgive me, the English home of Frankie DeTore. He has homes in many places.

I wish, no. Well, he's delightful if ever you do go. He did kindly invite me over to his home. And his kitchen is the most amazing room you have ever been to. It's a huge room. One whole wall is taken up with the largest refrigerator I have ever seen. And in this refrigerator are row upon row of bottles of chilled champagne. And essentially, these jockeys have to have a very light weight. They have to carry as little weight as possible. And so many of them virtually live off champagne. And Frankie DeTore doesn't drink too much. He's a very disciplined human being, as he couldn't

hardly be so successful if he weren't. But he does enjoy a glass of chilled champagne, and he always has champagne available. Why is it in the kitchen? Well, because that's where he spends so much of his time, because one of the walls of the kitchen can disappear at the press of a button. And when it disappears, behind that wall is a swimming pool. Within the water is a simulated horse, a mechanical horse with a saddle. And so Frankie DeTore gets into the swimming pool, sits on the saddle, water flows against him, and he rides on this saddle, taking his exercise that way. That's how he loses weight. How amazing. Yeah. I know this one, and see if I'm right. Titchy. Is that little Titch? Okay, so the Titch who was the inspiration for this

was one Charles Titchbourne. Now, Charles Titchbourne was someone who was the heir to a very large fortune, but was thought to have been lost at sea and perished. His mum didn't believe it, insisted that she was still alive, sent out detectives far and wide trying to find her son because she thought he'd ended up in new south wales in australia and lo and behold someone claiming to be her son stepped forth and said that he was charles tichborne and he this was despite the fact that her son was actually quite thin and worry and this this man was rather the opposite and very florid of complexion. He was a butcher, I think.

Anyway, nobody believed him apart from the mother. And it ended up in a big court case, which was notorious, again, in the papers, headlines for years and years and years. And he was found to be guilty of fraud. His name became extremely popular and lots of stage performers then decided that they would take his name. And usually if they bore some resemblance to the man pretending to be Charles Titchborn. But there was one particular performer called Harry Ralph, who was absolutely tiny. And he called himself Little Titch. And Titch then became attached to the little rather than the fact that he looked like this claimant of this notorious case.

Very good. And you can catch Harry Ralph still on YouTube. And there's some marvellous late Victorian footage or early Edwardian footage of him. He wore huge shoes. A great man. Look, we've virtually run out of time. We haven't heard about the full Monty or going for a Burton. I mean, maybe we'll have to keep those for another day. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. There are so many people lurking behind the scenes in English. I mean, maybe we'll have to keep those for another day. Yeah, that's absolutely fine. There are so many people lurking behind the scenes in English. I love it. Because we must deal with a couple of listeners' questions. Look, here's one. Hello from Christchurch, New Zealand. We love your podcast and always find out something interesting in each of them. Just wondered if you knew the origin of these words, please. And Mark and Joe from Christchurch, New Zealand, scuppered, quibble, and dollop. Oh, wow. Okay, well, I think start with dollop. I think that's just onomatopoeic.

You get a dollop of something. You can almost imagine it being sort of dolloped or plopped onto a plate. Absolutely wonderful, that one. Quibble, that goes back to the Latin, I think, and quis meaning who. And it began to be associated with all sorts of kind of legal niceties in court documents, where people were trying to find out not just who did it, but who said what, etc. And so quis and quib became a quibble. So kind of, you know, just being very pernickety and arguing over tiny points. I think that's where that one came from. And the third one was Scupper. Oh, Scupper.

Scupper, well, that was actually military originally, and it meant to annihilate someone, to kill them. Then later it was applied to ships. And that was quite late, actually. The sense of sinking a ship and scuppering it is as late as the 1970s. And we think that was because it was confused with scuttle. But quite where it comes from, we don't know. There's an opening on a ship called the scupper, which allows water to drain. So maybe if a fallen sailor rolled into the scuppers, you know, that gave us the sense of scuppering an enterprise or something these days. But

definitely the first uses we have is military slang. Well done. And here's another international one. I think this is coming from Paris, France. Today, I was listening to you discuss the use of the phrase, Charlie's dead, to inform a girl that her petticoat was showing. In my youth here in Glasgow, we would say it's raining in Paris. I saw the word Paris, I got excited.

I have no idea why. Actually, I see the word Glasgow, I should get excited. The ubiquitous chip is almost my favourite restaurant. Anyway, it's raining in Paris as an expression meaning child is dead, meaning your petticoat is showing. No idea. It sounds like, again, it sounds like it's been plucked out of thin air. There may be something behind it. Perhaps the purple people know. I honestly don't know the answer, just as no one seems to know why we say Charlie's dead. So, yeah, I don't know. But if anyone does, let us know. If you are a purple person and you want to let us know, it's purple at somethingelse.com. That's somethingelse.com without a G in something else. Good. Have you got one for us? I have. I have. I've got one from Holly Tyerman McBean. What a great name.

Hi, Susie and Giles. My mum and I are regular listeners and love the podcast. It's nice to listen and feel just that little bit closer together, despite my mum living in southern Spain and me living in South Wales. How lovely. You mentioned 1984 by George Orwell fairly recently. That would have been you, Giles, I think. And it inspired me to dig my copy out. I have tried to read it probably close to 1984 times, not 1984 times, and never succeeded in getting past chapter five. So I have started reading it again for the 1985th time, and two things have stood out to me. In chapter four, history is described as a palimpsest. Do you know the origin? And secondly, in chapter five, the bar in the canteen is described as a mere hole in the wall. Was that coined for 1984? And when did it become popular for an ATM or

cashpoint? Good luck to you both during the lockdown. And thank you for continuing to make wall was that coined for 1984 and when did it become popular for an atm or cash point good luck to you both during the lockdown and thank you for continuing to make podcast sarah welcome break in the storm clouds of current life that is so lovely i love the fact that holly's mum um and she both listen in very different parts of the world and that it gives them some sense of being you know being connected i love that so thank you Holly for for writing in um so palimpsest is something that kind of has ghosts of what went before really because it's particularly applied to paper or parchment for example where you can see words that were written underneath so it's kind of like a ancient form of recycling I guess so palimpsest itself comes from the Greek for scraped again. So something has been

rubbed out by scraping, referring to the method with which they kind of erased one layer and then you wrote upon the paper again. Hole in the wall was probably the second one. That was originally quite an insulting term for any dive. So it was like a small, obscure place. And then especially one in the US where bootlegged alcohol was sold. And then it was applied to businesses that just were a bit dingy. And then the person running the business as well for a while. And then I think the transfer to, you know, to the ATM, the cash points that we know was simply because they are literally holes in the wall. And they've lost that past of either illicit alcohol and, you know, something being quite kind of dingy and divey and simply refer to what it is, a hole in the wall. But I love that email. Thank you, Holly.

So, and Holly, may I encourage you to persist with 1984? I think it's a fascinating book. We might do a whole show about George Orwell because I am a great admirer of the advice that he gave for good writing. He did a wonderful piece about how to write good English. And well, it hasn't been bettered. And maybe we could talk about it one day on the podcast. What we need to talk about today on the podcast is your trio. What are your three words that are going to introduce us to this week? The first one is a little bit of a reference to the fact that we, well, a lot of us, a lot of my friends as well, are finding it quite hard to sleep. And when we do sleep, we have very vivid dreams, not all of which are very pleasant. Sometimes,

a couple of my friends have mentioned they're actually quite scared of going to sleep because they don't like the sort of nightmares that are coming their way. And so there is a word for that. If you have a kind of morbid fear of lying down, you are cleanophobic. Now I've mentioned cleanomania before, which is an overwhelming desire to lie down, but this is cleanophobia. So if you're actually quite scared of lying down because of what may come if you fall asleep cleanophobic the second one it's just a kind of term from rhetoric actually but i quite like this one is paralipsis do you know that one giles paralipsis no yes okay paralipsis is mentioning the fact that you're not going to mention something so if you say i'm not even

going to bring up g, the time you came in at 2am and passed out in the hall, that is paralipsis because you're making a big thing about not making a thing about something. And the third one, I just like this one because it's playful and I like the sound of it. It's skimble, scramble with a K, skimble, scramble. And it just describes speech or writing or a brain first thing in the morning that is confused and incoherent. And of course, one of T.S. Eliot's famous cats in Possum's Old Book of Practical Cats was Skimble Shanks. Look, Susie, we've run out of time. I'm not going to give you a quotation this week or a poem this week. I'm keeping those up my sleeve. I've got

so excited by the quiz questions that I got from John Lloyd. I'm going to share one of those with you and I'm going to give you the answer next week. We were talking about George Orwell, 1984, that was originally to be called 1948. The publisher decided to change the title. This is my quiz question for you, Susie. Don't answer it today. We'll see if you know the answer next week. What was the original title of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22? Was it going to be called Catch-Back? Was it going to be called Gotcha? Was it going to be called Catch-18? Or was it going to be called Catch Me If You Can? We will tell you all about that next week. Please don't forget to give us a nice review or recommend us to a friend if you've enjoyed today. And if you have any question you'd like us to answer, or if you'd just like to get in touch, especially during lockdown, if something's

on your mind, you can email us at purple at something else.com. And as we always say, there is no G in something else. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett, with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker, and Mr. Skimble Scamble himself. Gully!