Something Rhymes with Purple - Learning The Ropes

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Strap into your hiking boots purple people! In this episode, we’re going to climb to new linguistic heights and explore the world of climbing. Gyles walks us through his Mount Snowdon expedition and Susie rocks our etymological world as usual, giving us a peak into the wonderful ways of word evolutions. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [e-mail]   Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms'   Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com    Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:    Helluo Liborium: An obsessive and insatiable bookworm Lectory: A reading place Tsundoku: Refers to the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them.     Gyles' poem this week was ‘The Mountain’ by Emily Dickinson:   The mountain sat upon the plain In his eternal chair, His observation omnifold, His inquest everywhere. The seasons prayed around his knees, Like children round a sire: Grandfather of the days is he, Of dawn the ancestor.   A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production.     Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. So what's it like to buy your first cryptocurrency on Kraken? Well, let's say I'm at a food truck I've never tried before. Am I going to go all in on the loaded taco?

No, sir. I'm keeping it simple. Starting small. That's trading on Kraken. Pick from over 190 assets and start with the 10 bucks in your pocket. Easy. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice.

Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is Susie Dent who is desperately trying to let the caffeine percolate through to her brain and to be remotely articulate because this is a podcast all about words and language and we need to be at the top of our game so I need to try a little bit harder Giles. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. It is good morning for us isn't it? Can I reveal to the world that you actually began, you won't have heard this listeners, by saying welcome to something rhymes with podcast. I'm so glad this sort of thing is happening to you.

I find regularly I'm sitting at my word processor. I know that's what I still call my computer, but I'm often at the keyboard and I think I've written one word and another has appeared. You know, I could literally write Something Rhymes With Podcast. What does rhyme with podcast? Purple people, please let us know. I'm not sure there is very much out there. But yeah, absolutely. I am incredibly fallible, as fallible as anybody when it comes to language. But as I say, I'm letting the caffeine purge. I do have a slight cold. That's one excuse. Oh, well, look, look, I have a slight cold too and a sore throat. Well, do you know what we can do as a remedy is we can climb high, we can climb to the top of the mountains and breathe in the fresh air and let it just sift through our claggy lungs, because that's what we're talking about today.

We're talking about climbing, but my experience, I remember climbing to the top of, it wasn't very high, Mount Snowdon. Years ago, I went to Mount Snowdon. I used to be a member of the British Parliament, and my constituency was in the northwest of England, the beautiful city of Chester. Just across the border was Wales. And I thought, I'm going to lose my seat at the next election. I better look around these parts and enjoy it while I can. So the last summer holiday before the general election, I thought, let's go to Snowdonia. Let me climb Mount Snowdon.

My wife and I, we didn't realise that in August in Wales, there's not just rain, but often hailstones. We get to some North Wales town and we couldn't see the sign telling us what the town was through the hailstones hitting the windscreen wiper, hitting. And then I stepped out of the car, my feet disappeared into the puddle and I could just about read the sign that said said welcome to the Welsh Riviera. The next day we were due to climb Mount Snowdon and we thought we're here we will climb Mount Snowdon. We got to what we were told was the top but we couldn't see anything. The mist was so great we did not know where we were. Apparently we were at the top of Mount Snowdon. Did you follow

the paths? We followed the paths. So you were able to see that at least? We saw that we were at the top of Mount Snowdon. Did you follow the paths? We followed the paths. So you were able to do that at least? We saw that we were getting to the top. We were told, you are at the top of Snowdon. We couldn't see it. I have said before on the pod that I am really fascinated by mountains. I have a sort of compulsion to read about mountains, to read about mountaineering expeditions, to read fiction particularly I love, set on a sort of climbing expeditions.

And there is the most amazing film that I'm sure lots of purple people have already seen that I could watch a million times and not get bored of. And it's called Free Solo. Have you heard of this? Never heard of it. Oh my goodness. I was lucky enough to see it in a cinema originally,

but you can just get it now from anywhere. And it's a sort of thriller really, as well as a portrait of an athlete called alex honnold who was i think is possibly the first to climb el capitan in california in yosemite without any ropes or anything there are so many extraordinary moments in it not least because his camera crew many of whom had become friends, couldn't bear to watch. So they focused the camera on the mountain and then had to turn their backs because they could not watch what could potentially very, very realistically be his death. It's extraordinary

a portrait of human physical and mental potential. It is just the most amazing film, I think, or one of the most that I've seen in the last decade. So, yeah, I'm not exaggerating. It's brilliant. I would find it very difficult to watch myself. And I would find it impossible to persuade my wife to watch this. Really? The kind of jeopardy involved, particularly when it's real life. Yeah.

Though the conquest of a mountain is a marvellous thing. I have a friend, the distinguished actress, now 90 years of age, Dame Sheila Hancock. And she made a film a few years ago called Edie, which was based on, again, on a true story about a woman in her 80s, whether she's either a widow or she's found her marriage dull. Maybe she's a widow. She decides in her 80s, she wants to fulfill the ambition of her life, which is to climb a particular peak, and she does so. And indeed, Sheila Hancock, in her 80s, learnt to climb mountains and climbed the peak for the film. That was impressive, but it didn't have this terrifying moment,

the film, your free solo. What does the title Free Solo mean? Well, Free Solo is essentially to climb without any equipment, well, any ropes, anything that is going to climb without any equipment, well, any ropes, anything that is going to sort of give you a safety catch, if you like. And I mean, I watch and my palms sweat like mad, but it's just compelling. And let's kick off actually, because there's a lot of vocabulary that we need to cover. Good. Okay. We're going to talk about climbing, basically, the world of climbing. That's what our language is going to be about today is it it is we're all about climbing even though neither of us do it particularly i do love hill walking but i like you have never

actually used equipment to do particularly terrifying peaks or i just i'm i'm in awe of the people that can do it but yeah climb itself is part of quite a large family actually so it goes back to the old english klimban or kleinban. We used to pronounce the B in those days. It's got Dutch and German relatives, but it's related to clay, cleave, clammy and clamp. And also the clam. And it's all about a tight grip in a way. So there's an old English dialect word clam meaning to be sticky or stick to something.

And that, of course, is related to clay and it's related to clammy. And then if you cleave to something, you stick firm to it. And it's not easy to prise apart a clam. And that tight grip lies behind the origin of that word too. So it's quite a family, really. When you say, as casually as though we all knew this, we used to pronounce the B in those days. Climbing, you would think it's spelled C-L-Y-M-I-N-G, but it's actually spelled C-L-I-M-B-I-N-G. Why was the B making the sound of the B dropped,

and when was that? Well, particularly when we borrowed words from German or Germanic languages, when we borrowed words from German or Germanic languages, we tried to imitate their pronunciation. So we've spoken before about the silent K in words like a knight in shining armour, knitting, knock, and that kind of thing. Originally, we did pronounce the K there. Do you remember we talked about Knesht and various German words, but it just didn't suit our language particularly well. It didn't suit its speakers. And so eventually the K fell silent and the B is another one. Well, in German it was klimmen, klimmen, and we put the B in there. Do you know what? I need to talk to a phonetician to find out exactly when the B fell silent, but I'm pretty sure in its earliest days, it would have been

pronounced as were many silent letters. Because we still say clamber, don't we? We do. As in clambering up a mountain. You climb a mountain without sounding the B, but you clamber up a mountain pronouncing the B. Curious. Yeah. Oh, honestly, I've said so many times when it comes to English spelling and pronunciation, well, they divorced a long time ago. And it's fascinating because there are so many stories behind them, but it's also quite frustrating for learners. Are clamber and climbing then related? Clamber, yeah. So ultimately, if you take it all the way back to the sort of earliest roots, yes,

clam was the past tense of climb, in fact. So, you know, how we've spoken about strong verbs before where we change the stem of the verb in the past tense, I teach, I taught, you know, how we've spoken about strong verbs before where we change the stem of the verb in the past tense. I teach, I taught, I bring, I brought. We in Anglo-Saxon and Old English, we used to actually do that all the time. People used to change the past tense and they still do it quite a lot in American English. And we've spoken before about, you know, I dove into the pool, I snuck into the auditorium. They still keep those strong verbs, whereas we just stick an ed on the end. I much prefer the strong verbs to the weak ones, which are the ed versions. I texted you yesterday. So does clam, clam is the past tense of climb? It is, C-L-A-M-B, yeah. But as you say,

we still pronounce the B on that, making it a right hodgepodge, really. And is there another clam, as in C-L-A-M, in the world of climbing? Oh, in the world of climbing, no. There is the mollusk, of course, which, as I say, is from that tight grip. And the Old English clam was a bond or a bondage. But yeah, all part of the same family. What about abseiling? Have you ever abseiled? Of course not. Sadly, I'm a physical coward. My children have all abseiled. Yes, I have abseiled once. And they've all done that bungee jumping thing. I remember years ago when they first, each of them went to Australia and they sent back film of them jumping off the edge of a precipice attached by a rubber

band. So it seemed terrifying. Yeah. That's as close as I'm going to get to watching that kind of a movie. Yes, I know it is quite terrifying. I've only done it in a very sort of modest way, going down a valley. There wasn't too much peril there. But Abseil is from the German Abseilen, which means up, down, and Seil is a rope. So literally you are climbing down a rope. It's as simple as that.

But yeah, off a high bridge, not something I think I can do. And you mentioned precipice. That came to us via french but ultimately back to latin and it means steep or headlong so originally it was a sort of headlong fall if you like before it began to be used in its modern sense of a steep cliff or a steep mountain do they have a different word for abseiling in the united states uh yes they do actually they call it rappel and that's from french as well. And it means a recalling.

So it's like you bring yourself back, you know, you bring back to oneself. So it's the rope manoeuvre that kind of brings you bouncing back up, if you see what I mean. Because je me rappelle means I remember. I'm bringing back to me. I'm bringing back to myself. I recall. Yeah. Yeah.

We have that in recall, don't we? We call back that memory to ourselves if you're clambering and climbing over boulders are you bouldering is there such a word you are bouldering that's climbing on large boulders and boulder is actually a shortening of boulder stone it's scandinavian in origin that one and that's just a large large stone as we know that's kind of smoothed by erosion but we have all the equipment as well, which is quite interesting. And, you know, I have to say, I didn't interrogate so many words involved as I should have done. And actually, once you prize them apart, you think, oh, yeah, of course, that's so obvious.

Like belay, if you belay, you're fixing the running rope around a cleat or a rock or, you know, whatever object you're using to secure the rope to the mountainside. It's be, as in the verb of action, and lay. You are belaying it. You are laying it down. So much as we might have beset, besmirch, that kind of thing, that sort of verbal be, that's what we're doing with belay. We are belaying something done. You already threw in another couple of words that I didn't understand. A cleat, you mentioned. What's a cleat? Oh, well, you must know about cleats. You've never obviously been on a bike where you actually fix yourself to your pedals. Oh, well, maybe as a little child I did. I don't know. As you know, I have a tricycle.

Yeah, I don't think you did that with those. So cleats are things to which ropes are attached. So they tend to be T-shaped and they're usually metal when it comes to climbing. But I'm also referring to the cycling sense sense which is where you have these projections on the sole of your shoe and you know a lot of shoes have them so you don't lose your footing but when it comes to cycling cleats they actually attach themselves to your pedal so you have to remember very quickly when you stop at a traffic light to quickly snap your feet out of those cleats otherwise Otherwise, you will just topple, which has happened to me a number of times. Good grief. No wonder I'm travelling by bus. All this is far too complicated. You have to wear special boots to ride a bicycle now. Well, yeah, proper bikes, proper racing bikes. But they're much more efficient, I have to say,

because otherwise, if you're going up a hill, quite often your foot will come off the pedal and you lose a bit of momentum. So they are worth it it and then we have the carabiner that's from german as well the germans obviously and the swiss great alpinists that is a shortened version of the german carabiner harken which is a spring hook essentially so these are all things with which you attach yourself to the mountain you have the harness and that's quite interesting actually that's a french one and it goes back to a word meaning military equipment so it was actually army provisions that were carried in your harness so it's had quite a journey to end up where it is today harness but that's something you wear you you're wearing a harness aren't you i mean i'm familiar with the word you're wearing

a harness so it's the arrangement of straps isn it really? So you have a harness when you parachute, for example. So that is part of the climbing repertoire. Rope is another Germanic word. Nothing particularly interesting to say there, but you'll notice that Abseil had Seil for a rope in it. And there's another German word, Reif, that gave us the old English rope. So yeah, just multiple words in different languages for the same thing. You'll understand that my ability as a climber is somewhat ropey. How do we get ropey, meaning not very good, from rope? Yes, we think that it actually goes back to sailors' slang, nautical slang, for a riff on money for old rope um so if you have money the old rope is something that's not particularly useful you know on board a ship skill in handling ropes and

tying knots is pretty essential so you learn the ropes and you know the ropes and ropey actually was also used in raf slang too Although it's possible that in that sense, it links to the old biplanes because they had ropes or supporting wires, if you remember. But the rope, the importance of ropes was particularly high on board a ship. And I imagine climbing too,

because I can think of murder mysteries where tampering with the ropes is being central to it. Or indeed, on parachutes, you know, people are tampering with it so that their parachute opens and the ropes snap and the body hits the ground. This is as close as I get to any climbing,

reading a kind of 1930s golden age murder mystery where this sort of thing goes on. Then you have the rope in Cluedo, don't you? That's one of the murder weapons as well. Of course it is. It makes it all sound so innocent if If you stop to think about it, it's too ghastly for words.

It is pretty grim. Yes, I have to say. So, yeah, so there's lots and lots of equipment, really, obviously, very important equipment. And... Well, what about crampons, clampons, crampons? I feel that there's a word like that. Yes, there's tampons, crampons and clampons so i'm not sure that clamp on actually exists but i'm going to check for you in the oed just because as i always say to everybody oh well it's not in the current dictionary but it might well be in the in the historical one let me have a look no sorry jiles you lucked out there so no clamp on no clamp on but definitely a crampon is is the metal plate that has spikes and it affixed to a boot for

walking on ice or for rock climbing that's a crampon and we know that it's from old french but ultimately probably of germanic origin but it used to be a term for a grappling hook which is a device with iron claws attached to a rope, and that was used for dragging or grasping. So that's sort of similar idea. And then to tamp is, I'm not sure actually, I don't know why I brought tampons in here. Obviously, most of us are familiar with tampons when it comes to menstruation, but to tamp something is to pack a hole full of clay or sand

to concentrate the force of the explosion. And then it's to pack something down firmly so i'm not sure whether that is i don't think that probably is involved in timing i don't know why i brought that in but anyway well actually it's very interesting i didn't know that that's what tampon meant yeah that is to tamp and when you pack something in order to absorb that's how we use it in the menstrual sense too so that's how that came about why do mountaineers travel with chalk yes i had to think about this one and do a bit of investigation and actually climbing chalk is used to dry the sweat on your hands when you're climbing because there are many people who you know as i say when i watch these things i get sweaty palms but you know when you're

actually there you must get incredibly sweaty palms so So that's, I think, its primary use. And I imagine that that kind of friction is incredibly important. So, yeah, and it's made from magnesium carbonate, the climbing chalk that you can get. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to discover if there are memorable words that people have uttered when they got to the summit of a great mountain, whether it was Mount Everest or K2. Also, why is K2 called K2 and Mount Everest not called K1? These are the mysteries we'll unravel in a moment. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security.

Meeting friends a world away? You can use 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 yamx.

Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. 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. I've just been looking up K2 and it turns out that you can buy vitamins called K2 and they make you feel good. But also, more significantly, because we're talking about mountains and climbing today, K2 at 8,611 metres above sea level is the second highest mountain on earth after Mount Everest. And I don't know why it's called K2 and Mount Everest has got this interesting name. I think it was called for a while the Savage Mountain after George Bell,

who was a climber in an expedition in the early 1950s, because he said it's a savage mountain that tries to kill you. Anyway, according to what I'm reading here, it's of the five highest mountains of the world, K2 is the deadliest. Oh dear, approximately one person dies on the mountain for every four who reach the summit. I shall not be climbing this mountain. But what we want to know, and I'm sure there will be mountaineering listeners, purple people, who can tell us why Mount Everest is so called and why K2 has got this curious name of K2. Well, I know Snowdon is being renamed, isn't it? Really? Yeah, I think it's being given

back its Welsh native name, which is great. So it's being reclaimed. And Everest was named after George Everest, who was the Surveyor General of India. And the Tibetan name of Everest is Chomolangma, which is Mother Goddess of the World, which is rather beautiful. So yeah, I think there's quite a few instances where actually the proper native names are being, you know, given back to the mountains, which I think is great. Have you heard of an amazing individual called Nirmal Purja, called Nims for short? He is an extraordinary person. He had a project a while ago. Well, I say a while ago, I think it was only a couple of years ago. It was called Project Possible.

And he essentially climbed the 14 tallest mountains in the world and completed the fastest ascent of anybody. And he smashed so many different records. For me, he will always be truly special in that quite often he has rescued people on the mountain where nobody else dared to go without oxygen quite often and saved lives. He's an extraordinary individual and I've spoken to him just a little bit via messaging because at one point I was going to go climb to base camp, Everest base camp. And I just didn't have the time to do it, but it would have been a real journey. So I don't know, one day, maybe it will be something to do. One day, though I believe now it's overwhelmed with tourists. It is, unfortunately. And I think the sort of rubbish and the environmental aspects were another consideration, really, because I think, you know, you have to think about what this is

actually doing to the landscape. But he is an extraordinary individual and the purple people should look him up if they don't know him already. All right, he sounds completely fascinating. Keep in touch with him. I've managed to find out a bit more about K2, which has been called K2, believe it or not, since about 1856. It's derived from notation used by the great trigonometrical survey of British India. A man called Thomas Montgomery made the first survey a long while ago in the 1850s. The policy, interestingly, of the Great Trigonometrical Survey was to use local names for mountains wherever possible.

And they'd already marked one as K1 and then discovered it was known locally as Mashabroom. K2, however, they couldn't find a local name for it because of its remoteness, and that's why it stayed being called K2, though for a while it was named Mount Godwin, Austin, in honour of Henry Godwin, Austin, an early explorer of the area. So there you are.

But if purple people have got more information to share with us, you know how to get in touch. It's simply purple at somethingelse.com, something without a G. Are there any other climbing words we should touch on? Oh, gosh, there's so many. I mean, crag is quite an interesting one for me because a crag, which is sort of, it's defined by a sort of rock feature, isn't it? A particularly dominant rock feature like a batris or a cliff face. It's one of the few words in English of Celtic origin, because when the

Anglo-Saxons arrived, the Celts were here and thriving. And we know how successful the Anglo-Saxon language was, but it's still surprising that so few Celtic words survive. And it's actually largely in the geography of the landscape that it's really felt, you know, the resonance of the Celtic people. So you have Tor, Crag, Pen, Coombe, Cross, all describing features of the environment. And they still survive. The Lake District has lots and lots of these, has lots of Tors and Crags and Pens. And the names of our major rivers also have echoes of our Celtic ancestors. So we've got the Don, the Thames, the Wye, the Avon. So all of these are really significant names for us, but actually they're very few in number.

And one of the big mysteries for historians of English, and I'm certainly not one of them, is why the Celtic languages were so quickly and readily subsumed by Anglo-Saxon. And it's a surprise because English, as we've always said on Purple, is so hospitable to other languages. You know, it's absorbed words from other languages and other tongues throughout its history, and yet so few survive. So I like crag for that reason, because it's, you know, it's one of the few legacies that we get from the Celtic peoples. I like the word crag too, because it features in one of my favourite very short poems. I know we do the poems at the end of the show, but I'm going to throw in this short one now. I may have given

it to you before. It's a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson called The Eagle. It's only five lines long, six lines long, but for me, it's so powerful. He clasps the crag with crooked hands, close to the sun in lonely lands. Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls. He watches from his mountain walls, and like a thunderbolt, he falls. Isn't that powerful? Wow, that's gorgeous. And it's the strength of the word crag, I think, that arrests you there.

It is. And actually, even if you describe somebody with a craggy face, that's incredibly descriptive, isn't it? So it's a great word. There's also beta, which is quite a nice one to look into, because that basically is the information on how to ascend a climb. time so alex honnold if he was telling anybody how to free solo after him he would have an effect he made for himself a whole set of instructions as to where to hold on to what was the best foothold how much of a jump from one ledge to another might be involved etc and that's called the beta and it's just quite nice in terms of its story because it's apparently short for Betamax and that's the old videotape format that was then replaced by VHS but it's attributed to a climber late climber actually called Jack Mileski and according to some it may be an urban myth but according to some he would

record himself on tape while completing routes and then share these tapes with friends so he called them because he recorded them on the Bet beta max he called them the beta but other people are saying it's actually a play on words as he would often ask do you want the beta max um anyway either so it's a nice tribute to um to the climber jack but you know there's a lot lot more there's choss which no climber wants because that's loose rock or loose stones that make life difficult, really. It can be quite dangerous as well. And that apparently is a pronunciation of chaos, because that's what it can cause. I know that's the peril involved.

There's a lot of peril, a lot of jeopardy. But I suppose for the climbers, that is the reward. That's the excitement, the thrill of conquest. is the reward that's the excitement the thrill of conquest i mean i'm genuinely intrigued to know if there are records of interesting or other things said by people when they achieve the summit apart from well we've made it so if anybody knows people who know this world what people have said when they hit any of these summits and it's memorable perhaps they could get in touch with us and i'm just going to throw in one more etymology, which is jeopardy, which is always a nice one. Because jeopardy was originally used in chess and other games to describe a position in which the chances of winning or losing were hanging in the balance.

So it could go either way. And it's from the French jeu parti, meaning evenly divided game, a divided game, because it's literally right in the middle. Oh, jeu as in game, J-E-U-X, partie. Yes, je partie. Maybe with the X it's the plural, maybe jeu on its own. Yeah, je partie, an evenly divided game. Let's come down from the heady heights of the mountain to, well, who's been in touch? Chris Lattin has been in touch.

Dear Susie and Giles, what's the etymology behind the word blockbuster? Chris Lattin has been in touch. but you've talked a lot about seemingly recent words that in fact go back a long way and perhaps this is another example. Thank you so much for your wonderful podcast. Keep up the good work. Best wishes, Chris Lutton from Epsom in Surrey. Well, it doesn't go back too far actually, Chris. We're talking the 1940s and clearly now it belongs to the film industry, but actually it began as an aerial bomb that carried a really large explosive charge that was sufficient to destroy a whole block, as they would say in American English, of buildings. That was the blockbuster. And you will find in 1942, an Illinois newspaper talking about several hundred of Britain's Lancasters and Halifaxes pounded Berlin with blockbusters, the two-ton bombs which shatter a city block. That's the first reference that we have. But already, just a year later, it was being used figuratively to mean a really hard or powerful punch. And then again, very soon after, a thing of enormous impact, power or size, such as a film book or other product. In that, it's a bit like bikini, isn or size, such as a film book or other product.

In that, it's a bit like bikini, isn't it, Giles, which famously goes back to the explosion or the test in the bikini atoll. And it was where an atom bomb was exploded in 1946. And the supposed explosive effect that was created by the bikini garment then explained why, you know, apparently why it was given that name. I've just been reading the diaries of Chips Channon, who was a politician and socialite in the 1930s and 1940s. And I've been reading his war diaries and just being reminded of the horror, the horror of the Second World War or the horror of any war. But it's interesting, wars do bring new words into the language, don't they?

They're, for all their destruction, they're surprisingly productive of new words. Yeah, there's a sort of counterflow. It's strange. But yeah, absolutely. So a blockbuster was originally a bomb, an aerial bomb. Yeah, an aerial bomb. It's interesting because actually something that, in movie terms, something that bombs means it's failed, doesn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, it goes down rather than sort of explodes

in a positive way. Yes, I hadn't thought about that. But a blockbuster is clearly supposed to be huge. Who else has written to us? Stuart Riddle has a really good question for us. Hello, Susie and Giles. This is Stuart Riddle from T Timworth in Devon. In previous episodes, I've noticed you've given us some very beautiful words that are part of your list of favourites and have suggested that one of the reasons is because they've got really positive, heartwarming, if you like, reasons and definitions behind them. I wondered whether you could tell me a little bit about some of my favourite words that don't have such positive events to them. The examples I'm thinking of are besmirch, chagrin and harangue. I'd love to know more about those words.

Thank you so much and keep up the great work. Interesting. He comes from Tynmouth, which is spelt T-E-I-G-N, mouth. Isn't it funny? It's actually spelt Tainmouth, but it's pronounced Tynmouth. I would say Tynmouth, which is spelt T-E-I-G-N, mouth. Isn't it funny? It's actually spelt Tainmouth, but it's pronounced Tynmouth. I would say Tainmouth. And he said the word chagrin in a different way that I would say it. But anyway, it's intriguing. But tell us, have you got an answer to his query there? That's the question. Yes. Besmirch. Well, do you remember I was talking about belaying and how it actually began with belaying and the be, the B-E being a sort of, you know, verbal component. Well, it's the same with besmirch because it's that B-E again, plus smirch.

And to smirch was to make something dirty or to soil it, which is why if you besmirch someone's reputation, you sully it or you tarnish it in some way. And it is a great word. sully it or you tarnish it in some way. And it is a great word. Chagrin, or chagrin, as they say in French, is a beautiful word. And actually, it takes us to really exotic destinations. Because after the Crusades, metal workers that created these wonderful pieces of art, but also very practical things in Damascus and Arabia. Their skills were really taken up by European artisans and one of the things that these European metal workers adopted was the rubbing and polishing of fine metal with the hard and tough leather that these workers of Damascus had used and they had taken it from the rump of a horse or an ass and the Arabian term for this leather was

sagri. I'm not sure how to pronounce it it's s-a-g-h-r-i and in Italy that became something closer to chagrin but actually we in England called the leather chagrin and we dyed it green probably because the colour that the leather assumed after long long years when you're polishing gold silver or copper was was green anyway the French term for this leather from a horse's rump was chagrin and you're probably getting where it's going now because of the very rough nature of the leather chagrin came to be applied to cares and worries which kind of rub away at the mind. And it's from that, that we've got our present meaning of chagrin or chagrin to mean disappointment or anything that,

you know, frets our soul or our spirit. So it's got a really lovely and quite, as I say, complicated origin, but it's had quite a journey across the globe. And finally, harangue, that's a good one as well. Harangue is just, if you give someone a harangue, it's kind of got scorn in it, but it's also a sort of long diatribe, isn't it? It's a lengthy and quite aggressive speech. So it's not an innocent word at all. And it began with the French harangue, H-A-R-A-N-G-U-E, or harangue, which was a public address but ultimately you have to go back to an old italian word aringo meaning a public square or a pulpit so the idea is that people were gathering perhaps at the pulpit perhaps on a public platform and holding forth at length and possibly in a very

critical way and i think if you trace it back far enough, you'll find a very old word meaning a circle and the idea of a circular gathering of people around these platforms. So again, not a sort of straightforward one, that one. So great choices. And an interesting pronunciation again, because harangue, it's spelt A-N-G-U-E at the end, like meringue, but ague, A-G-U-E, would be pronounced aigu. Now, why is it not harangue, which in a sense sounds rather stronger as a word? Why has harangue come along as opposed to harangue? Because it came to us from the French harangue, because they don't pronounce it gu at the end. So we've adopted the French pronunciation, which we don't always. And then aigu is, I think it probably did come to us via French, but ultimately it goes back

to the Latin for acute febris, meaning an acute fever. That was the aigu. I love it when you just know things. I throw things at you and you know things. You're just brilliant, Susie. Well, I don't know everything at all, but especially when it comes to old English pronunciation, that's been on my bucket list for such a long time that I absolutely have to master this. So yes, I don't pretend to know everything at all. Thanks for being in touch with all those interesting words.

Do please, if you want to, have queries that the genius that is Susie Dent can attempt to answer for you. Get in touch with us. It's purple at somethingelse.com and something always without a G. I say you've got amazing things in your head. I know you research some of these words and have you researched three interesting words

to share with us this week? I have. And I've got a bookish trio for you today just because I have been, I've been reading quite a lot recently, actually, which is nice. I have sort of periods where I just don't have time to read, but I am making an absolute effort to read, not just poetry,

which you taught me, but also just, you know, really getting stuck into some good books. And so I've dedicated these three, this trio to books. First of all, I'm going to start with a lectory, which I've mentioned before, sort of various rooms in the house which were once dedicated to certain emotions so you have the growlery for example where you would go and let off steam you had the boudoir which is from the French to sulk so originally that was the supposed to be a woman's sulking place quite misogynistic and you've got the lectori which is where you go and read I just quite like that one I mean obviously you've got the, you know, some of us aren't grand enough to have a library. So we have a lectory, a little corner where we like to read.

Have we mentioned this one before? It's a Japanese word, tsundoku. It sounds like a puzzle. It's T-S-U-N-D-O-K-U. And it's the obsessive practice of buying books, but leaving them unread in little piles around your house. It's the story of my life. I've got thousands of books and I've only must have read hundreds. Oh, me too. Me too.

I mean, it's ridiculous, but I like possessing them and I mean to read them one day. But I do know I put on the top shelves the ones I don't think I'm ever going to read, but I don't, I can't bear to get rid of. No, it's honestly, and you just think, oh, when, when, yeah, when I retire, whatever it's going to be, I will, I'll sit down and read just think, oh, when, yeah, when I retire, whatever it's going to be, I will sit down and read all day, every day. I just really hope that actually happens. And my third one, which I think also applies to us, and it's a really unusual one. It's straight from Latin, but it does not look Latin at all. Heluo, H-E-L-L-U-O, and it's Latin for a glutton.

So if you have a heluo liborum, you are a book glutton. And I think that's what leads to the Tundoku. Absolutely. A Heluo Liborum is a book glutton. Oh, that's fantastic. Yes. My wife wants to get rid of all the books, and she wants to start with all the paperbacks, which is interesting. She just, you know, she'll think of yellowing pages, they fall apart. We don't need them, they're not worth anything, get rid of them. And I love them. Yeah, I would fight your corner. Yeah. I'm going to hit you with a very short poem, because I've already given you one short poem, the one by Tennyson. And this is a poem by somebody who was almost a contemporary of

Tennyson's a bit later, the great American poet, Emily Dickinson. And because of what we've been talking about today, it's a famous poem of hers called The Mountain. And the Tennyson was only eight lines. This is only eight lines. The mountain sat upon the plain in his eternal chair. His observation omnifold, his inquest everywhere. The seasons prayed around his knees like children round a sire. Grandfather of the days is he, of dawn the ancestor. Powerful stuff, isn't it? It really is. Well, she always comes up trumps. It's a reminder, aspiring poets, how much you can do with just eight lines and the simplest vocabulary you can imagine. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

I hope that we became more articulate as the podcast went on. Colds notwithstanding and lack of coffee notwithstanding. Thank you for joining us always. And please continue to follow us and subscribe and recommend us to friends if you think they would like it too. And for more Purple, please consider the Purple Plus Club where you can listen ad-free and get some exclusive bonus episodes on words and language.

Oh, yes, there's that A to Z of poets that we've been doing on the Purple Plus Club. That's rather fun. Anyway, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Deo, with additional production from Chris Skinner, Ollie Wilson, Jen Mystery, Jay Beal, and...

He's here. Now, really? Wearing his crampons? I haven't checked. It's gully.