Something Rhymes with Purple - Katzenjammer

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

According to the great philosophers Heraclitus and Gyles Brandreth, “change is the only constant”. After an absolute Katzenjammer of a week for Susie we focus on change of all kinds, from the shifting seasons to what defines the ‘new normal’. As we Fall into Autumn, we find out why sozzled cads are bonking less and, avoiding the treadmill, we pour a large cuddle-me-buff, to embrace the hygge and snudge our way through the dreich conditions. Elsewhere Gyles picks three of his favourite words from Susie’s new book for our weekly trio and a very special guest delivers a word perfect Wordsworth rendition in honour of National Poetry Day. A Somethin’ Else production. If you have a question for Gyles and Susie then email [e-mail]. Gyles’ Trio: Hibernacle - a winter retreat Zhuzh - to make more exciting or attractive; add a certain je ne sais quoi Perendinate - to put off until the day after tomorrow. 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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with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to this week's Something Rhymes with Purple, where I and my co-host, Giles Brandreth, who I will say hello to in a second, we get to talk about some of our favourite subjects when it comes to language and we delve into their stories and linguistic adventures. So here we are again. Morning, Giles. How has your week been? Well, my week has been amazing. And really,

the best part of it has been observing your week, Susie, because you and I have known each other for a long time. And most years, one or other of us produces a book. And this year, you have produced a most wonderful book, I know, because you kindly let me read it in TypeScript. And because I think it's fantastic. It's caught word perfect. And you know more about words and language than anyone else on the planet Earth, now living, since the late Dr. Johnson passed away a couple of hundred years ago. We haven't had anybody except for you. And it's a brilliant book. It's witty and nobody writes about languages as entertaining as you. You might be a bit partisan, but thank you for all of that.

I am partisan because I've read it and I love it. Anyway, the book was published this last week. And tell us what happened before I give you my take on it. Okay. Interestingly, books in the UK, certainly, I'm not sure if it's the same across the world, but they're usually published on a Thursday, aren't they? And on Wednesday, I was in the Countdown studio and I said to Rachel Riley, who I work with, I'm really worried about this book. You know, I'm just, it's called Word Perfect.

I think I'm going to really worried about this book. You know, I'm just, it's called Word Perfect. I think I'm going to be a hostage to fortune. And we'd had a few troubles with kind of proofs before. So I tweeted a word, which I think I've had as one of my trio before, which is mubble fubbles. What does it mean? Mubble fubbles is a fit of despondency or a sense of impending doom. And that sense was very strong for me on the Wednesday. It was just very strange. Anyway, come Thursday morning, publication day, the postman arrives. This is how close to the wire we were with printing. And he gives me my copy of my book. And normally,

you know me, Giles, I will just, I kind of tend to avoid these things. I would quite happily have just shoved it under the bed and not had a look. But I thought, well, I'll just check that the acknowledgements are okay, because I'd added a few acknowledgements. And as you know, they're the most important part of the book sometimes. And the additions weren't there. And then I checked the introduction where I knew there'd been a typo in the last set of proofs. And that was still in the introduction. Typo being short for typographical error. Typographical error. So I can't tell you how my stomach felt at that point. So I called up my editor. And so, yes, we discovered that actually what the printers had done is used a text file,

which had been very, very old from a much earlier proof stage, full of typographical errors. And it's called Word Perfect. So as you can imagine, not only did I feel sick and have continued to feel sick all week, but the papers have been having a field day with it. So what happens to the books? The books are given to all the shops and your fans, and you have a huge fan base,

hundreds of thousands following you on Twitter, for example. We have all the audience for Countdown, and now globally, through Something Rhymes with Purple, people were storming the shops to buy a copy of the book. What were they told of the book? But, well, what happened is, yes, so the books had already been sent out. There was a lovely British bookshop called the Big Green Bookshop, where Simon, the owner, had stayed up through the night to pack 600 copies. This is one independent bookshop of my book to send off, and I had to tell him the news. So essentially, all the books are being recalled. I think they have been recalled now. Anyone who's bought them has got an email saying, we're so sorry, due to a printing error, et cetera. And they are being sent a proper copy. So a copy of the reprinted version,

which I think is going to be ready next week. But, you know, it wasn't the start I'd hoped for. But are you going to say all publicity is good publicity? Because a lot of people said that to me. I'm going to say several things to you, Susie. I'm going to say certainly all publicity is good publicity. There are people who have read about this book in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent,

who had never read about it at all. You couldn't have created better publication day publicity than you have. Everyone now knows the book is called A Word Perfect. Joke, joke. Is it actually imperfect? That's the first bit of good news, fabulous publicity. The second bit of good news is this. The book, for those who are lucky enough to have it, will become a collector's item. There are many examples across the history of publishing where it's the books that contain the error that become the one that is most sought after. For example, there's a copy of the Bible published several hundred years ago where a word was inadvertently missed out and, you know, thou shalt not sin appears as thou shalt sin.

It's been one of the Ten Commandments. So people love these. So anyone who's got it, can I advise you, don't return it. Keep it. It'll be a collector's item. I've got the imperfect copy of Word Perfect. Then in a couple of weeks time, when's it going to hit the shops again? The new publication date is the 15th of October. On the 15th of October, go out and get your perfect copy. So everyone will want to have two copies in their home. I am disappointed that I don't have the imperfect one. I'm going to discuss this with you. I can get a code of a copy of the imperfect one. Trust me, I've got a whole box here. I was going to ceremoniously

take them to my local tip and weep as I put them in. But maybe I should hold on to them now. No, further good publicity. Take a picture of yourself weeping at the skip, as it were, or the dump over it, or even create a bonfire, bonfire of her vanity. Yes, exactly. Word perfect going up in smoke. Will you come and join me? I'd have to stand at a safe distance wearing a mask. Of course. But of course, I would love to burn books with you. wearing a mask. Of course. But of course I would love to. It'll be quite smoky. The one really positive thing, and I know you're going to add

one more. You seem like you've got one more positive thing because it's obviously been very hard for me to find any positive in any of this. But the one thing I can absolutely say I was astounded by is the level of support I've had from people. I've had messages from people I haven't spoken to in years, plus people I've never met on Twitter. And hopefully purple people will understand as well. Just saying, please don't worry, because I think they knew how worried I was. And it's not your fault and all of that. And it's, that has kept me going. Well, two things to say there. One, we all know that you're an anxiety-holic. Yes. That if you've got an excuse to be anxious, you will be.

Yes. The other reason that people have been sending you lovely messages is because of the old Chinese proverb. Are you familiar with this one? There is no pleasure so great as seeing a good friend fall off the roof. There is something quite delightful. They think there's a bit of schadenfreude in there, maybe. There is a touch of Schadenfreude in there, maybe.

There is a touch of that. Yes. So all round, it's been an amazing week for you. I can see how your stomach would have lurched. There was the famous book, as you know, I'm president of the Oscar Wilde Society, and there is a famous biography of Oscar Wilde written by a man called Richard Ellman, who was an Oxford academic,

a very distinguished teacher. And he wrote this magnificent biography of Oscar Wilde, but it contained quite a number of errors. He wasn't very well at the time the book went to press. And I think he died either as it was published or shortly afterwards. And there's a German scholar called Horst Schroeder, who has produced a book that is longer than the original book called Errors in Richard Ellman's biography of Oscar Wilde. And the book about the errors is longer than the original book. There will be scholars who will be doing PhDs on Word Perfect by Susie Dent and comparing the mistakes with the corrected version. There's going to be people now buying a backlist of your books. How many books have you published? Lots. People going, has she ever made a mistake before? You are going to become even more of a cult figure than you already are. So I'm going to introduce you now to two, and it's very relevant to what

we're going to talk about today because change is what we're going to talk about, to two of the seven secrets of happiness. Yes. Oh, I need these. You remember, I was a friend of the great Dr. Anthony Clare. Who I loved, in the psychiatrist's chair. In the psychiatrist's chair. And he taught me two things. Yeah. One was to stop thinking about yourself.

Yes. He said, break the mirror. Stop thinking about yourself. Nobody's actually interested in you. He used to say to me, you know, if I wasn't paid, I couldn't really do this job because listening to the people, they come here, they sit in the psychiatrist's chair, they bang on about themselves and their problems, you know, it drives other people away. So don't worry. Nobody else is thinking about it. They're quite amused and they've moved on. The second thing is he also said to me, and this is what I want to discuss with you today, please, because you're into this. He said change is good. And he criticised me because he said, you are a conservative with every C, big and small, and you don't like change. I said, I don't,

I don't want to rock the boat. He said, well, actually, you're wrong. A little gentle rocking is good for you. Change is the salt in the soup of life. Embrace change. Yes, let's talk about change, because it without saying really that we've had quite a year of it. And there's a brilliant word in French that I always think of and there's never quite a good English translation of it. And it's bouleverser. And to be bouleverser is to be completely sort of everything is overturned. Everything is upended. You are, I mean, it's very difficult to put it in English, but that's what I have thought of for this year in so many different ways. But there was a brilliant article in The Times last week, which talked very much about changing tastes in vocabulary. And we all know that, you know, the slang of our youth has probably been long surpassed by the latest slang amongst kids, etc. So my youngest now talks all the time about spilling the tea, which essentially means sharing the gossip with her friends, or she'll say, mum, I've got some tea. Yes, I've got some tea. So in this article, it essentially said that many of the words that you and I would use are no longer recognised by millennials or by people under 30. Now, the list was quite interesting because some of them I think, yes, okay, I might use that one. But some of them, to be honest, I'm not even sure my grandfather would have used.

But see what you think. So, sozzled, you know what that means. I know what it means. And I think it was popularised by P.G. Woodhouse. It's a sort of, you know, when Bertie Wooster ankled down to the club and drank a little bit too much, he became sozzled. Yes. It's being drunk.

Yes. And it's interesting because if I ever use sozzled, I use it to mean slightly tipsy, which is actually wrong, isn't it? Because it means very drunk. So I will say I'm getting a bit sozzled, but actually I don't think you can get a bit sozzled. I think you either are or you're not. I think you can get a bit sozzled. I am a lightweight, as you know. I've seen you a bit sozzled. It's charming. The tip of her nose goes slightly pink.

Okay, so that's one. Now, bonk, you know, bonking, I think this is very British. So anyone who's listening beyond Britain may not know that to bonk is to basically have sex. A slightly affectionate term for it, I guess, a bit like rumpy-pumpy and others are available. I love rumpy-pumpy. Rumpy-pumpy. I love a bit of rumpy-pumpy. Yes, exactly. Bonking can also mean, if you're on a bike, it can mean completely running out of steam, ironically.

So it means you hit the wall and if you've bonked, you literally can go no further. This sounds a bit like my love life. Bonking in every respect. Yes, running out of steam. What was the origin of bonk, by the way? Well, it's interesting because it's just imitative of a hitting sound. And if you remember when we did our swearing episode, swear word coming up, fuck was originally, we think it came back to, goes back to the Latin pugnare, meaning to hit. So it was all about hitting, not about having sex. And bonk, you know, playing on the same theme of hitting, which is not very nice. So it's simply, if you had a bonk on the head, it's imitative of the sound.

Of course, a bonk on the head. Yeah. Curious kind of sex, but a bonk on the bank is, you know, love al fresco. is, you know, Love, Alfresco. Oh, WALL-E. Again, I think I would call a young person a WALL-E as a sort of teasing. Oh, you're such a WALL-E. Meaning a fool.

Bit of a WALL-E. He's a bit of a WALL-E. As in, where's WALL-E? The character in the children's, in the book, that character in the striped jumper. Yes, where's WALL-E books are brilliant. Well, it's always about identifying Wally in a crowd. And actually, there's a link there because it's possible,

there are lots of theories, but it's possible that Wally goes back to a football match in the 1960s where someone called Wally needed to be located. So over the tannoy, someone was saying, could Wally please report to such and such? And it became a byword for a stupid person who'd got lost, I think. Oh. So that's Wally.

And then others, which honestly, I can't even imagine your father using. Well, maybe he would. Cad? Oh, Cad, absolutely. Would you use that? Oh, my father certainly would. Again, that's a word from the P.G. Woodhouse era.

Yes, Bounder as well. Bounder and Cad. In fact, there's a very amusing double act called Bounder and Cad. A young man who sing amusing songs called Bounder and well. Bounder and Cad. In fact, there's a very amusing double act called Bounder and Cad. A young man who sing amusing songs called Bounder and Cad, yeah. But Cad, what is the origin of that? It's originally in the army, and I think it referred to, it's a shortening of cadet.

So it was a new recruit, and quite how that then flipped into an insult for somebody who behaves disreputably, I'm not completely sure. He's not quite a gentleman. He's a cad. There's a marvellous cartoon that I own drawn by a fabulous cartoonist called Folks, double F-O-L-K-E-S. And he gave me this cartoon in 1980. And it's a picture of a roué in his bedroom.

That's another one. Yes. He did. A roué in his bedroom, a gentleman roué sort of twirling his moustaches and getting undressed. And there's a sort of flighty looking lady in the corner of the picture. And the man servant,

the valet, is also taking off his trousers and is saying, oh, I'm not a gentleman's gentleman. I'm a cad's cad. Very good. I can't think you're a cad. Roué, incidentally, I think goes back

to the idea of being a broken wheel. It's related to roue in French. As in wheel, French for wheel. Anyway, there was others, like again, I could never bring myself to talk about boogieing. Oh, a little bit of boogieing. I'm doing a bit of dancing now. Really old-fashioned, do you think?

Boogie? Well, of course, it was a dance. The boogie was a dance, wasn't it, in the 20s and 30s? After Charleston, you went for a boogie. And I did a radio interview on this last week where a few millennials tried to exact their revenge because they didn't really know, to be fair, what many of these words meant. And they asked me if I knew what some of their words meant. And one of them, in fact, was spilling the tea, which I mentioned. But there was another one on the list, which I didn't know. See if you know it, Giles.

Receipts. Receipts. No, I have no idea. It's a new sense of receipts, as in evidence. So if somebody is saying, no, I didn't do that. I never did that. I wasn't that drunk last night. Someone might say, I've got the receipts.

In other words, they might have a photo. They might have a screenshot of a text conversation, et cetera. They have the evidence. It's a bit creepy that, I think. Quite alarming. So those are the words that the young people now don't know. Sozzled, cad, bonk, wally, betrothed, nincompoop, boogie. Well, I will miss them all, but I'm going to use T now. That's the joy of language. That's what this is all about. Language is evolving. Language is changing. This is the season of change. Autumn hit us hard. We're speaking to you from the United Kingdom.

We know we have listeners all over the world. Seasons are different in all parts of the world, but there's always change. Tell me about the changing seasons. We've reached autumn, called the fall in the United States of America and elsewhere. This is something I actually talk about in my book, if I'm allowed to give it a plug after the week I've had. It's essentially, it chooses a word for each day of the year and quite a lot of them do chime with the seasons. So a lot of them are based on events that may have happened on that day in the past, but a lot of them are to do with seasonal change and the emotions that come with it. And I talk about fall and autumn because we talked about this briefly on our American English

episode, but fall actually was our term for autumn in Britain. It wasn't exclusively North American at all. We had the fall of the leaf, which I think is very poetic, and the spring of the leaf. Of the leaf just dropped off from spring. We still have spring. But when the Normans came in after 1066 and we produced this Anglo-Norman, a hybrid of English and Norman French, we decided to take their loton and anglicise it a bit. And so autumn was born. For me, fall of the leaf has more poetry to it, I have to say. I like the image of the falling leaf very much indeed. Yeah, me too. Also, the sort of measurements of time are quite interesting as well. So we've got, you know, our minutes and our seconds.

Where do they come from? Well, let me start at the beginning. Originally, an hour was divided into 60 parts once, which created prima pas minuta, which means the first diminished part or prime minute. And then it was divided again for the seconda pas minuta or the second minute or the second diminished part, if you like. So that minuta is actually linked to the other pronunciation of minute, which is minute. So it's all about sort of reducing. And eventually those prima pas minuta and seconda pas minuta were shortened simply to minute and second, but it was all about that initial division and the diminished part,

if you like. Well, new normal. That's what we're all looking forward to. I've already forgotten the old normal. What is normal? Where does that come from? Normal is based on the Latin for a carpenter's square. So you know how we like to talk about things being correct? The right hand was considered far more correct than the left hand, and English is threaded through with antipathy towards left-handers. Again, normal meant everything is as it should be. The right angles are there and it fits the kind of proper measurement. So that's how it came into English from that idea of the carpenter's square. But as you say, it's shifted, you know, normal has always shifted over the years. So I didn't even know if there was an older normal really. So yes, exactly. Change is the only constant.

Yes, exactly right. Why don't we take a break? Because I would like to discuss with you proper autumn words, words that we associate with this particular season. 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.

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original podcast. Also from Something Else. Katie Piper's Extraordinary People. Join Katie for a series of powerful and inspirational conversations with people who have triumphed

over adversity. With guests including Fern Cotton. And what about when you get really lazy journalism, so like people that draw just one line, they take it out of context and that's really sad because... It is, it is. I've also been on the receiving end of it so many times. Sometimes it's really tragic levels for me where I've really not felt able to cope with it. Yeah. Zoe Sugg and Nadia Hussain. I think the thing with women, firstly,

is that women sometimes don't always like to see other women succeed. I think that's right, yeah. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of that, and I think that's why just it's really hard sometimes because in the last four years, I've changed so much. Listen now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all good podcast apps. Here we are again. This is Charles Brandreth with Susie Dent. We're celebrating Susie's new book, which is quite

brilliant. It's called Word Perfect, and it comes out in a perfect edition on the 15th of October. I don't know if it includes any words that have an autumnal association, but I remember you mentioning to me once the word cuddle me buff. It was on this show, I think. Cuddle me buff. Is that an autumnal word? Well, in some ways, cuddle me buff just reminds me of cosying up in the corner of a pub, a great British pub with a fire and the open grate. And cuddle me buff is just an old dialect word for beer. Oh, I like that. It's great, isn't it? Quite what the buff was. Because buff also means in the nude, doesn't it? It means in the nude, yes. That goes back to buffalo hide. If you are a word buff, as we are, that actually goes back to the people who used to follow New York firefighters in freezing winters and watch this great spectacle in the early days

of firefighting and kind of enjoy the drama. And because the winters were freezing, they would wear thick coats, often made of buffalo hide. And because they wore these coats, they were known as the buffs. And they became very proficient in firefighting from watching it. And so it was then transferred to any expert in any particular field. So very weird story, that one. Very weird. But that's why we are word buffs.

Not the same as Hufflepuffs, which, as you will remember, are the kind of baggy, comfy clothes that you might creep into at the weekend and just lounge around in. Tell me about this thing called Huggy. Higgy, Huggy. My children have been talking about this for several years now. It seems to be some Nordic thing that they're into

and where they do stay in their pyjamas all day having Higgy. What's it all about? Higgy. I like the idea of Higgy. I think it's hygge. And yes, hygge was all the rage, wasn't it, a few years ago. And it's a kind of Danish word for a lifestyle that is based on cosiness and conviviality and the hugging of the senses, essentially. It may be related to an old Viking word hygge, which we had an A at the end,

which meant to comfort. And that also possibly gave us hug, because it seems like hug probably came to us from the Vikings, which is a bit counterintuitive because we don't really see them as being very cuddly. But yeah, that's where we think it came from. The weather today is dismal or dreich. They'd say that in some parts of Scotland. Am I pronouncing it correctly? Yes, you are. And I think that is often chosen as the Scots' favourite word. D-R-E-I-C-H. Yes. And it basically means dreary, bleak, dismal, a little bit like today. In fact, as we're recording, it's the heavy clouds, little light and lots of rain. And Dismal has its own stories

to tell as well, or story to tell, because it goes back to the idea that certain days of the year are unlucky. I think I had one of those last week, more than one. And medieval calendars would mark these days with the letter D, which was actually short for Dies Egyptiati. My Latin is not very good. The Egyptiati, which meant Egyptian days, because these had been identified by the Egyptian astrologers. And no one would ever schedule anything on these days, whether it was bloodletting, whether it was going out for lunch, whether it was marrying, you name it.

You would not do it on these days. On a dismal day. It's a dismal day. Dismal day. Then they became known as the Dias Mali evil days. And Dias Mali eventually in our mouths became dismal, Dias Mali. How intriguing. From D to Dias Mali to the word dismal.

I think it's wonderful. Evil days. When you're on days, just give me, if you know it in the top of your head, red letter day. People talk about a red letter day. That's a good thing. A D day, a dismal day is bad. a red letter day. That's a good thing. A D-Day, a dismal day is bad. A red letter day is memorable. Yes. And that's because saints' holidays would be

what's called rubricated. So they would be written in red on calendars in medieval times and actually even before. So these were festive holidays commemorating a saint. And from there, from the idea that they were actually written in red. What is the feast day of St. Susan? I have no idea if there is even a St. Susan. Is there? Of course there has to be a St. Susan and she has to have a feast day. I can't believe it.

The feast day of St. Giles is the 1st of September. I mean, don't you celebrate your saint's day? In a word? Clearly you don't. Good grief, this may explain everything. Well, there we are. If you happen to know what the feast day of St. Susan is, and you know a little bit about St. Susan,

do feel free to get in touch. Purple at somethingelse.com. And that's something without a G. Purple at somethingelse.com if you have news for our own St. Susie Dent. Any more to give me, autumnal words? Or words maybe that tells about changing mood? Changing mood. Yes. Gosh, there are so many dialect words in the dictionary. I mean, I do the origin of treadmill, which as you know, were actually horrible machines in prisons in

Britain, which were designed to kind of introduce prisoners to hard labour as a form of punishment. And quite often, they were just treading air. They weren't producing anything, but then there were sort of, you know, mills introduced so that people could thrash something, corn or whatever it was that would actually be quite useful for the community. But beyond those literal histories, there are words like for sloth or for sloth. I have this argument with my daughter, actually. How do you say sloth? You're very slothful. Sloth. I think I'd say slothful. I'd say sloth. She says sloth. Anyway, to for sloth or for sloth is to basically waste time

through lounging about. So you could say I have for slothed or for slothed the entire weekend. There are so many words in the dictionary. If you look in the OED, I was completely lost in the entries, which began with F-O-R, because there's fore wallowed and fore wallowed is to be exhausted from tossing and turning all night. I had a bit of that this week as well. And fore swunk is to be completely exhausted through labour, etc. So it's a very useful few pages in the Oxford English Dictionary. There's also something again that came to mind last week because I needed to lick the book into shape. Do you remember the lovely medieval story that gave us licking something into shape? One of my absolute favourite etymologies. We covered this actually in I think our very first episode. To lick something into shape goes back to the medieval belief that bear cubs are born as formless blobs and have to be sort of licked into bear shape by their mothers.

So the idea of licking something into shape was a really literal thought in the medieval imagination, which I just think is gorgeous. That is gorgeous. Yeah. And I think, you know, quite often in the winter months and maybe in autumn as well, we tend to think, well, I really need to lick myself into shape. I really need to kind of do something about whatever it is now that you have more time at home. And of course, we have a lot more time at home at the moment. Huckle-duckle. time to get up. I mean, all these, Giles, are from the Dictionary of the Scots language, which is two centuries old and is just brilliant. Well worth a riffle through because it's just full of wonders like these. I think snick up might be in there as well. And a snick up is a fit of sneezes rather than a hiccup. And I talk about the history of sneezing in the book and also, you know, the sort of various greetings that you might give, the sort of sneezing etiquette, if you like. And if you remember talking about sneezing, it should have been a fneezing because somebody in the 17th century, I think it was, mistook the F for an S.

Easily done because they looked very similar, didn't they? Because I remember in the early editions of Shakespeare giggling when I read, where the bee sucks, there suck I, because it looked like something quite different. But I think phoenicing is so much better because it's the sound of a blocked nose, isn't it? And a bit of a puff in the snot. Any others?

Any other changing mood or tumble words? Oh my goodness. Before we sweep on. Well, do you remember, I think I told you that the Victorians called a hanky a snottinger, speaking of sneezing. And a snottinger is just gorgeous. I mean, the Victorian words for various things,

remember bags of mystery, meaning sausages, bumba shoot as well for an umbrella. I mean, I think we just need to bring these back, particularly at the moment, because they just bring a smile to your face. Cackle farts as well, the eggs. Oh, remind us. I mean, you've told me this before. I just can't, I'd love to hear you say cackle farts as well the eggs oh remind us i mean you've told me this before i just can't i'd love to hear you say cackle farts cackle fart well it was just it

just an old term for eggs oh that's of course it's a cackle and then the breaking of wind and out plops the egg oh can i ask you as an aside um the phrase good egg he's a good egg that's an old-fashioned phrase what's the origin of that um do you know i don't know i'm going to look this one up i know that the curate's egg which again no one under 30 is ever going to understand the phrase curate's egg that goes back to a punch cartoon so punch the satirical magazine and it had a curate eating at a very posh dinner. And someone asked him, how is your egg? And he said, it is good in parts. Because he didn't want to say it was actually bad.

Is that right? Or you know it's bad for me. I know it because it's my vintage. And I'm the person who uses words like sozzled and betrothed in the everyday language. And as a boy, my father had a subscription to Punch magazine. It's a very famous cartoon. And the curate is saying he's having breakfast. Oh, breakfast.

Okay. Yeah, having breakfast with the rector, maybe even the bishop or the dean. And he's asked, you know, how is your egg? And clearly the egg is off. Horrible. Yes. And he says parts of it are excellent.

That's the point. There you go. A curate's egg is a mixture of good and bad. So there's good in it and there's bad in it. Yes. And good egg, just looking it up here, British public school slang from the 19th century, but quite white was an egg. I mean, it could just as well have been a potato, I suppose. So there you are. That's the world I'm living in. I'm using British public school slang from the 18th century, 19th century. But you know, we all are, because do you remember that cool, as in that's cool,

probably was first used in this sense in public school slang from the late 19th century. That's one of our earliest records. And the great slang lexicographer Jonathan Green reckons that it was used in that sense that far away, you know, nothing to do with the jazz age of Charlie Parker, which definitely popularised it, but it goes back to public school slime. So there you go, you're cool as well. I'm pleased to be cool. I tell you who is cool, who are cool and wicked too, are our listeners. And please keep writing to us. We're so grateful. If any of you had chance upon this marvellous book by Susie Dent called Word Perfect. It's fabulous.

It gives you, for every day of the year, something to intrigue, amuse, stimulate. So if you are into words and language, Word Perfect has to be a book to put in your Christmas stocking and the Christmas stocking of everybody you know. If you're lucky enough to have one of the recalled first edition, well done you, because I think that's the collector's item. But there will be a normal, rather dull, impeccable version published. It won't be. I have to say no book is ever impeccable. And I do say,

I remember having this argument with my publishers, do we have to call it Word Perfect? And they said, yes, yes, it's such a catchy title. So I went with it. But I do say in my introduction that there's perfection. I take Samuel Johnson's definition of it, which is that it can never be achieved, but we can all strive for it. And he decided that trying to capture English and trying to get a hold on English as it evolves is like chasing the sun. You can send your reviews and appreciation of Susie Dent and details of the life of St. Susan to us here, purple at somethingelse.com. People have been in touch. We've had a letter all about the word snooze. It's from Laura Wood. She's listening from Dubai.

Oh, wow. And yes, I'm just listening to this week's podcast. You mentioned Edward Jenner. Giles joked about the Kardashians. In fact, Caitlyn Jenner is a descendant of Edward Jenner, so they are related. Oh, how amazing. So my little aside, my little joke, actually turns out I stumbled upon the truth. Anyway, this is Laura Wood.

My actual question is about the word snooze. Since working from home over the pandemic, I've had the luxury of being able to snooze my alarm more times than usual as I don't have to commute to work. However, every time I look at the word, it doesn't seem to have any connection to other words. Do you know the origin of the word snooze? And since when have we used it? As I assume it was before the invention of alarm clocks with a snooze facility. Thanks, Laura Wood. Well, the answer is, I wish, Laura, that I could actually say to you it's from this, but no one knows. It's a bit of a mystery.

We do know it was first recorded around the 18th century. Our best guess is that it is perhaps imitative of a snore. But the answer is we're not completely sure, but it's a great word. And remember that alarm, before we had the alarm clock, is from the Italian alla arme, to arms. I think it's fascinating. Snooze then joins the list, another word being dog, where we just don't know where it comes from.

So, Laura, we don't have an answer for you, but thank you for raising the question. Greetings from Minnesota. Wow. This is from Monique Hernandez. First, love the show. Very generous. It's a weekly dose of humour and encouragement.

And now my question, what is the origin of the phrase on the fritz? On the fritz. I've always heard it said this or that is on the fritz, but I've never known where it comes from. Well, I've heard of the expression being on the ritz, but on the fritz, tell me more. Early 20th century, our first records. And I did have to look this one up because I wasn't sure about it either. One theory is that it refers to cheap German imports into the US because it is predominantly a North American term before the First World War. So it's not necessarily disparaging in the wake of the two world wars, but is perhaps referring to German imports that came flooding in then.

two world wars, but is perhaps referring to German imports that came flooding in then. However, there is another theory, this is put forward by William and Mary Morris, two American etymologists, which takes us to a comic strip called the Katzenjammer Kids, in which two youngsters called Hans and Fritz got up to some awful capers and were always fouling things up. And so it may be a reference to the Fritz of that. Katzenjammer being a brilliant German import, fittingly, for a terrible hangover headache. I'm not sure why they were called the Katzenjammer kids, because hopefully they were too young to have hangovers. But if you have a Katzenjammer, you have all sorts of horrendous things going on in your head, all sorts of noises, because it's a cat's caterwauling, really. It's a cat's wail. That's what it means. So that's on the fritz. Nothing to do with the song and putting on the ritz,

which came much later. Just one more. This is tackies, inquiry from Emily Reynolds. Have you got the letter there? I have, yes. She says, I'm from Limerick in Ireland. We are the only place in the country that uses tackies as a slang term for trainers or running shoes. Rumour has it that a priest brought the word back after a mission in Africa. I was wondering if there's any way to verify that or to see if there were other areas that use the same word. Well, this is a call out to purple people. You know, do other people use the word tackies?

And if you're a dialectologist or dialectician, you will know that actually dialect collects around certain themes. And one of them weirdly is trainers. So you have not just tackies, but you have sannies, you have gutties, you and I just probably have plimpsoles. And now of course we have the ubiquitous trainers. But as for tacky, two theories, and I'm sorry, it's all down to theories here, but one is because the rubber is kind of sticky. So it kind of refers to the adhesion of the rubber. Or tacky, I'm afraid to say, with reference to their cheapness and quality. I'm not sure about that one.

I personally think it is the idea of the stickiness of the rubber. Very good. Well, look, if people have got questions, it's purple at somethingelse.com. Well, look, if people have got questions, it's purple at somethingelse.com. This week, Susie, with your trio, I've chosen the trio because you have been so traumatized. I thought I better focus. And so I got out the original manuscript of the book that you sent to me. Thank you.

And I've just at random chosen three fun words from it. And you can tell us what they mean. Hibernacle, H-I-B-E-R-N-A-C-L-E. It's seasonal, isn't it? Hibernacle is seasonal and it's gorgeous. It is basically all to do with a place that a hibernating animal goes in the winter. So it's a winter retreat. And I think this year more than ever, we may be forced into a hibernacle, but it has got a wonderful feeling of kind of coziness and protection from the outside world. And yes, I definitely relate to that one, shall we say at this time.

Hibernacle is one of the words of the week. Zhuzh is another, spelt Z-H-U-Z-H or Z-H-U-Z-H. Do you know there are a million and one different spellings for this word. No one quite knows it because it's such a spoken word. At some point, I will go into the whole history of this because it's from Polari. Polari being a kind of gay slang. Yes. So it's to, I mean, it's almost untranslatable. You might zsuzh up your outfit.

So you might sex it up a little bit. You might say, I think that sofa needs a bit of zsuzh up your outfit. So you might sex it up a little bit. You might say, I think that sofa needs a bit of zhuzh. It's a kind of je ne sais quoi that makes something better, wouldn't you say? Zhuzh ne sais quoi. Very good. Very good. I like the word zhuzh and I'm pleased to know how it's spelt. Now, the third one I've chosen, perendinate. Perendinate, is that how you pronounce it? Yes. Perendinate is one of those old markers of time. Put something off until the day after

tomorrow. And this gives me a chance to give you or remind you of the most beautiful word for the day after tomorrow from a long time ago, and that's overmorrow. Oh, that's lovely. The day after tomorrow is the overmorrow. I will see you on the overmorrow when we might record our next podcast. They come out every Tuesday, and I'm not quite sure what we're going to do next week. I do know what I was doing last week. I was celebrating National Poetry Day because I'm an enthusiast for poetry, and I have this project called Poetry Together, which involves getting young people, kids at school, and old people, people in care homes and retirement homes, separately this year to record their poems. In previous years,

they could meet up and perform the poems together, have tea and cake. But this year, they couldn't. So they've been recording their poems and putting them online. So I've got my grandchildren and their school friends, in fact, more than 200 schools around the country took part this year, and loads of old people's homes as well. And I asked some other old codgers that I know, people over 70, if they would record some poems too. And I thought instead of me reading you a poem this week, I'd get one of them to read you a poem. So here he is. Okay. read you a poem. So here he is. Okay. Oh joy that in our embers is something that doth live,

that nature yet remembers what was so fugitive. The sort of our past years in me doth breed perpetual benediction, not indeed for that which is most worthy to be blessed. for that which is most worthy to be blessed, delight and liberty, the simple creed of childhood, whether busy or at rest, with new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast. Not for these I raise the song of thanks and praise, but for those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things, fallings from us, vanishings, blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised, high instincts before which our mortal nature did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

But for those first affections, those shadowy recollections, which, be they what they may, are yet the fountain light of all our day, are yet a master light of all our seeing, uphold us, cherish, and have power to make our noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal silence, truths that wake to perish never, which neither listlessness nor mad endeavour, nor man nor boy, nor all that is at enmity with joy can utterly abolish or destroy. Hence, in a season of calm weather, though inland far we be, our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither,

Have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither. Can in a moment travel thither and see the children's sport upon the shore and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Wow. So there you are. I'm stunned by that. Not just any old codger. You've got a very special old codger to read that one. We're honoured. That's amazing.

That's the Prince of Wales. And Prince Charles has been supporting National Poetry Day for some years. He's a great poetry enthusiast, reading there, I think rather wonderfully, a bit of Wordsworth. And the Duchess of Cornwall, his wife, is also a Poetry Together supporter. And they kindly put these poems up. You can follow them. If you go to Poetry Together 2020, put that as the hashtag, or there's a Clarence House Twitter account and Instagram and all that, and you can find them performing their poems. It's fun.

So the idea is that if you are an older person, you just record a poem, a short poem, you know, a sonnet will do up to a minute, record yourself either speaking it or film yourself performing it, and then put it online, hashtag poetry together. And young people are doing it and people are just sharing the joy of poetry, the joy of language, because that's what we are all about, words and language. Do you have a favourite poem? Oh, gosh, I have lots of favourite poems, but it will probably be Autumn Journal by Louis McNeice. That's a great one. I have a favourite book. It's called Word Perfect by Susie Dent. And I have a favourite podcast. It's this podcast. Yay!

The award winning Something Rhymes with Purple, best entertainment podcast 2020. Not a single typo to be seen. Entertainment Podcast 2020. Not a single typo to be seen. No, no. We just fumble and stumble our way through it. But the worst of our excesses are edited out. And the technology is done by somebody called Gully,

who's been absent for a couple of weeks because he's been at a beard growing championship. Did he win? Sadly, not. There's some people with proper beards. Anyway, that's our lot for this week. Next week, it's going to be our 80th podcast. Wow. Can you believe that? 80.

That is incredible. And we have to say thank you to not just to Gully, but to everyone else who has helped to make this. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker, and yes, he's back. Can't actually see him at the moment. So if he's had a two-week lie, and I think he's probably still under And yes, he's back. Can't actually see him at the moment. So if he's had a two-week line, I think he's probably still under the covers. It's gully. He's got the receipts.