Something Rhymes with Purple - Let There Be Light

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

In this week’s dazzling episode, Susie and Gyles illuminate the fascinating etymological roots of everything to do with natural light phenomena. So, join us as we shine the spotlight on rainbows to supernovas!  We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on: [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: Poindexter: A boringly studious and socially inept person. Skeuomorph: Something designed to look as though it does the job it is supposed to do. Paralipsis: The device of giving emphasis by professing to say little or nothing of a subject, as in not to mention their unpaid debts of several millions. Gyles' poem this week:  Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen  When all the world is a hopeless jumble And the raindrops tumble all around, Heaven opens a magic lane. When all the clouds darken up the skyway There's a rainbow highway to be found, Leading from your window pane To a place behind the sun, Just a step beyond the rain. Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops, That's where you'll find me. Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow; why, then, oh why can't I? Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops, That's where you'll find me. Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow; why, then, oh why can't I? If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, Why, oh why can't I? A 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

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. We're really glad that you're there and we're happy to be here. I say we're here, we're in fact two places at the same time. My name is Giles Brandreth and I am speaking to you from London, England. And my colleague and friend and fellow pod person is the lovely Susie Dent. Where are you this week, Susie? I wish you didn't ask me this, Giles,

because you ask me this every week and I'm never anywhere different. I am in Oxford and I am longing to be somewhere else. And in fact, our topic for today, which is natural light phenomena, includes mention of something that I have longed to see all my life, and that actually your friend Joanna Lumley did a whole program on, because she too had longed to see these, I think, for many, many years, and that's the northern

lights. And of course, she, because she's a natural enthusiast, went over the moon about them. I mean, almost literally over the moon to find them, but she went berserk with excitement. My terrible terror is that it would be a little bit of an anticlimax. I do remember going somewhere when there was going to be a total eclipse, and I went down to the edge of Cornwall to be the right place to see this total eclipse. And I saw the total eclipse, and it's an awful thing to say. I mean, this was one of the great wonders of nature. I rather thought when it was over, well, it's a long way to come for so little, so what? We had to all make those special glasses, didn't we? Out of various cardboard things. I remember just going to a lovely, one of my favourite little oases in Oxford, which was a little cemetery close to where I used to work.

Really peaceful spot. And I went there to look at the solar eclipse. And it obviously was something stupendous, but we were expecting more drama. I think that's maybe where we've just been spoiled by things. We were. We were expecting the lights of the world to be switched off. We expected everything to go suddenly completely dark, and it didn't. I mean, it was just, oh, well, there was a bit darker. It was a bit darker, and then it was over. Is that it? But there was excellent bacon sandwiches afterwards, which I do remember those. In the days you ate bacon. But the Northern Lights, I think, could never, ever let you down.

And in fact, they're sometimes visible from the UK, aren't they? And I never managed to see them. Well, exactly. We don't know whether they let you down because you and I have never seen them. I have been, never mind the UK, I have been to Iceland. I have been to Greenland in search of the Northern Lights. You have. And you've still never seen them. I have been, never mind the UK, I have been to Iceland. I have been to Greenland in search of the Northern Lights. You have, and you've still never seen them. They failed to show, and it made it very clear on the brochure, there was no guarantee that you

would see the Northern Lights. And I saw wonderful, I mean, I never regret going to Iceland, one of the most fascinating countries in the world, a country also which has given us various words that we use every day. I tried to think of one of them. Giza is a word that comes from Iceland. But Greenland, even more fascinating. I loved it. No northern lights. But I have a friend who saw them apparently in Southampton.

Well, there you go. So let's begin with northern lights. Let's talk about Let There Be Light. That should be the title of this week's episode. You've never seen the Northern Lights. I've never seen the Northern Lights. I know they're called the Northern Lights because they come from the north, but they have a scientific name, Aurora Borealis.

I do know that. Tell me about Aurora Borealis. Where does that come from? Borealis, yes. That means literally the northern dawn. And especially when it comes to literary English, we tend to borrow from classical languages for alternative names because they are just sort of more poetic, aren't they? So, northern dawn. So, the borealis here comes from the Latin

and the Greek as well, boreas. And that was the name of the North Wind in classical mythology. And so Boreal, meaning pertaining to the North, was then imported into English. And the other side, we have Oster, the South Wind, which comes from the same pantheon. And that's the origin of Austral, South. And of course, from early times, the existence of some kind of undiscovered landmass in the South, it was much raved over by cartographers. And it was called Terra Australis Incognita, the unknown southern land. And of course, eventually the name Australia was named after that.

But that's the South, the South Wind. We've touched on light before. We have. Yonks ago, years ago, episode 19, and there are more than 200 episodes people can dip into, called Chandelier. We touched on light then. And you did tell us then about the origin of the word light. And I imagine, trying to rack my brains, that will be Latin as well, won't it? Well, we kind of got it from German. So in German it's Licht, L-I-C-H-T, not L-I-G-H-T. But ultimately, yes, take it back far enough to that ancient Proto-Indo-European ancestry that we often

talk about. You will find relatives in the Greek leucos, meaning white, and the Latin lux, or lux, meaning light as well. And that leucos also gave us leukemia, which is a disease that affects the white blood cells. So, yeah. And also it gave us lung, weirdly, because the lightness of the lungs is said to distinguish them from other internal organs. Gosh, good. Well, we've got light established. We're going to talk about really the effects of light, phenomena involving natural light. My favorite has to be the rainbow. I've not seen the Northern Lights, but I've seen many a rainbow. And as you know, I've devised a daily puzzle that I'm pleased to say tens of thousands of people now do called Full Rainbow, which is

basically an anagram game. I take seven letter words like rainbow and arrange the letters alphabetically, and then you race against the clock to see how quickly you can unravel the letters and make the word rainbow, or whatever other seven-letter word it happens to be. So I have fun with a full rainbow, and I've got a rainbow jumper, and I love rainbows. And I can remember the colours of the rainbow because of, what are they called? Mnemonic. remember the colours of the rainbow because of, what are they called? Mnemonic.

Mnemonic, yes. Richard of York gave battle in vain, gives you the rainbow. Richard is red, O is orange, Y is yellow. York gave green, battle blue, I is for indigo, and V is for violet. Those are the colours of the rainbow. What is the origin of the word rainbow? It's a bow or a curve in the sky. It's as simple as that. And you find the same metaphor, I suppose, in many languages. So in German, it's a Regenbogen, exactly the same thing. So the bow here, it's not related to the ship's bow. That's something very different.

Bow here, it's not related to the ship's bow. That's something very different. It's related to the idea of the archer's bow. So it's all about bending and it's all about the shape. So the rainbow, the elbow as well is from that. Whereas the bow of a ship is in fact related to bow of a tree, the limb of a tree. So that's a slightly different one. But yeah, rainbows. And the rain is in it because we see it when there's rain and sunshine. It's the

refraction of the light through the rain that creates the rainbow. It's a miracle, isn't it? I mean, I don't understand why it's that beautiful shape and that colour combination. Scientists will know that, but I don't. Do you? Yeah, it's the colours of the spectrum, isn't it? So it's all about light dispersion. And as you say, it's caused by the refraction and dispersion of the light by rain or other water droplets that you'll find in the atmosphere. But there's also sort of things related to that. So there's Alexander's band. Do you know about this? As in Alexander's ragtime band? The same thing? No, this is the dark region between the two bows of a double rainbow.

I've been seeing a lot of double rainbows recently. You must get your eyes examined. It's an optical phenomenon associated with rainbows and it was named after Alexander of Aphrodisias. And he, in classical times... You make some of this stuff up, don't you? Knowing nobody's going to check it. Alexander of Aphrodisias, come on. Yes, Well, he wrote a book on Aristotle's meteorology. It was a book of commentary. And he

was presumably one of the first to notice this dark region. And apparently it's due to the deviation angles of the primary and secondary rainbows. And apparently it's an optical effect called the angle of minimum deviation. But it's essentially, it's light reflected by raindrops in this region of the sky, and they can't reach the observer, but might contribute to a rainbow seen by someone else somewhere else. They're so beautiful rainbows, and they've led to all sorts of myths, such as the crock of gold that's there at the end of the rainbow. And you can chase rainbows, but you can't actually find, well, maybe you can find where the rainbow ends.

Well, can I tell you something really gorgeous? So in the ancient legends of the Greeks and Romans, Iris was the goddess of the rainbow, and she was also a messenger for the gods. And people believed that every rainbow was a bridge or road that had been let down from heaven and was to be used as a path for Iris to carry her messages. So for the Greeks and the Romans, Iris actually became the word for the rainbow. And today we use Iris for the coloured part of our eyes, not all the colours of the spectrum, but blue or brown or green. And it was given the name Iris because of this

variety of colours. That's a most charming story. Was it an important film to you, The Wizard of Oz, with the young Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Oh, this was my bedtime lullaby to my eldest. Every night I would sing that, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Yeah, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous song. In fact, for any British Purple listeners who happen also to be watchers of Countdown, the show that I work on,

Colin Murray, our new presenter, is obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. And I went round to his house not too long ago, and he's got a picture of the red shoes on prime display in his house. I mean, he absolutely adores that film. Well done. Well, it's a lovely film to adore. Completely marvellous. So that's The Rainbow. Give us some more words that are associated with other natural light phenomena. Well, I just also mentioned iris there, just to finish that off, because you can also find that in the beautiful word iridescent. And that describes objects that gradually change colour when you see them from different angles. So if you see a washing up bubble or a soap bubble in the light, you can see its many colours,

and seashells and butterfly wings, those are iridescent as well because they shimmer with the colours of the rainbow. So it looks back to Iris and the goddess of the rainbow, which is gorgeous. You have crepuscular rays. So these are sunbeams that originate when the sun is just below the horizon during the twilight period, because the Latin word crepusculum meant twilight. So it's the crepuscular rays are when the sun's rays are so noticeable because the contrast between light and dark is so obvious. So that's a really gorgeous one. Well, mirages, have you ever seen, well, I suppose we all see mirages, don't we?

Well, what is a mirage? I mean, a mirage is something that you imagine that isn't actually there. No, exactly. But we see them quite a lot as the weather gets hotter here and here with climate change, etc. We see them on very hot days. So it is an optical illusion, you're right. You say we see them. I've never seen a mirage. I've seen them in cartoons. Oh, I've seen them on roads. You see them on roads all the time. Really? Yeah. In a cartoon, people are often trawling across the desert, aren't they? And they see a mirage. Yes.

I mean, every hot summer I can see a mirage on the road, or every time we go to a hot country. So it's the appearance of a sheet of water. Excuse me, I apologise for interrupting you, but what are we seeing? What is this mirage that you're seeing? We're seeing what looks like a sheet of water or a surface of water that is caused by the refraction of light from the sky by heated

air. And many a purple people will have seen mirages because they are, yeah, you don't have to go abroad to get them. I've never seen a mirage. I've not lived. Well, it just means it is baking, baking hot. You only see them when it's incredibly swallowing and sultry. But that's mirage. But it's also then, of course, in figurative terms, came to mean an unrealistic hope. So another sort of illusion. And it actually goes back to a Latin word, mirare, to look at. And that gave us miracle, something to look at in awe, and also a mirror, because we look at ourselves in the mirror, probably not in wonder. Well, I certainly don't look in the mirror in wonder and love what I see. Most of the time I'm idio-repulsive, as they say, self-repellent. I know the feeling. I get up sometimes in the morning feeling quite jolly.

I bounce out of bed. I go into the bathroom thinking, oh, I'm feeling really boyish and full of beans. And then this ancient man appears in the mirror in front of me. I think, oh, who's that? What's going on? And suddenly gloom overwhelms me. Yes. Which is why we need to look up into the sky and be lifted by light because light is terribly important, isn't it? Light is essential to all of us. And I mean, yeah, the sun is, I don't know,

this is like, if I was given this topic in just a minute, I would be, well, the sun is, I don't know, this is like, if I was given this topic in just a minute, I would be, well, the sun is incredibly important. Buzz, buzz, hesitation. But the sun, I mean, have we ever discussed the origin of the word sun? It's fundamental. I don't know why people don't worship the sun still, because if you're going to worship anything, why not start with the sun? Because it's the source of everything, isn't it? Weather, ocean currents, season, climate, plant life. Yeah, without the sun, life on earth wouldn't exist, would it? So yeah, it came from the German Sonne, which means exactly the same thing. So yeah, hugely, hugely important and, you know, of huge interest now and, you know, worry. I mean, eventually it will burn itself out, won't it? I think. Oh, don't depress. There'll be young people listening.

Not in our lifetimes. No, not in our lifetimes. That's something. So there's the sun. On a hazy day, you can't see the sun so well. Haze, we touched on that. Oh, haze is related. Actually, it's one of those ones that came from hazy rather than the other way around, I think. And it meant foggy hazy in nautical context. And it could also mean frosty, hoarfrost, where you get that sort of slight fogginess. So yes, the shimmering haze. That's absolutely beautiful. If hazy came before haze, did lazy come before laze?

Ooh, very good question. And I don't know the answer to it. So let me find out. I have to go to not the current dictionary, but the Oxford English Dictionary, the OED for this one. Lays, the action of lays, an instance of this is, no, that came later. That came in 1862. He will take a quiet Lays, but Lays about is 1592, and it is always a back formation from Lazy, and that's 16th century as well. And we don't quite know where that comes from. When you say it's a back formation, it does suggest that, in fact, Lazy came first. Yes. What were you saying? Did you say Lazy came before Lays?

Yes. Oh, you were absolutely right. Yes, it absolutely did. So, Hazy comes before Haze, Lazy comes before Lays. You'd you were absolutely right. Yes, it absolutely did. So hazy comes before haze, lazy comes before lays. You'd think it was the other way around. Like, curiously, lunch comes before luncheon. Oh, I know. That's always the one that you absolutely love.

I love that. I love that. Oh, I love everything you teach me. I think it's fantastic. No, I remember you really, really clocking on to that. I had the similar effect when I learned that Welsh rarebit was not the first incarnation of that dish. It was Welsh rabbit. I couldn't believe that. I've still found it hard to believe. Have we touched on supernova?

We haven't touched on supernova. Now I'm going to test your astronomical skills. Do you know what a supernova is? No idea at all. Okay. It is a catastrophic explosion of a star. So it gives a sudden and enormous temporary increase in the star's brightness, an intense burst of, I don't know, I'm not an astronomer, but neutrinos and gamma rays and that kind of thing. And so in science fiction, to go supernova is to explode as a supernova. And then something resembling a supernova is brilliant or explosive in the same way. And a nova, in this sense, is a newly discovered or newly visible star or nebula.

And of course, the Latin novas meant new. It gave us novel in both senses. Two things to say. One, I'm surprised that supernova hasn't become part of contemporary slang. You know, something was supernova. Oh my God, that was supernova because of what it means. Well, it did for a while. Oh, did it? Yeah, I think it's sort of been and gone, really. So in the 1960s. Yeah, well, like a supernova would.

It exploded and then went into darkness. I can never understand this. Where I live in London, you look up at the sky at night, you can't see a thing because of, you just can't see a thing. Light pollution, yeah. Light sky at night, you can't see a thing because of, you just can't see a thing. Light pollution, yeah. Light pollution, and anyway, you can't see a thing. But I was, as you know, recently in Jamaica, and there you look up in the night sky, and it's a brilliant black sky with these wonderful stars. You can actually, you know, you can see bits that you recognize, Orion's belt and all the rest of it, the bits you remember from childhood looking up at the sky.

It's fantastic, and some do seem brighter than others, but people keep telling me that some of the things that I'm looking up at the sky, they're no longer there, that it's an optical illusion. The light is still being sent down to us, but the star itself has exploded and disappeared by now. It's a memory, isn't it? It's lovely that there are those sort of memories because of the speed of time and that kind of speed of light. It's a memory, isn't it? It's lovely that there are those sorts of memories

because of the speed of time and that kind of speed of light. It's quite extraordinary. Sometimes we are slightly, I don't know, just, well, as you and I, definitely not astronomers, but we do get things wrong in English and they become enshrined as wrong. So it's always puzzled me why we have a meteoric rise because meteors don't rise, they fall. So it doesn't make sense at all.

But it's the same idea of something exploding into the skies, really. Well, this is a subject where I am totally off beam. But beam is a word from the world of light, doesn't it? A beam, I think, is a big chunk of wood. Why would a light, I suppose it's the shape, is it? It's a shaft of light, yes. So as well as referring to a piece of wood, it also meant a tree. a tree is a baum as it goes back to the same family and in fact the hornbeam is a member of the birch family and also you have a beam on board ship that supports the deck and

holds the vessel together and then it came to mean a ship's greatest breadth and that's why you call someone broad in the beam if they're wide in the. And then a ship that's on its beam ends is almost capsized. And so if a person is on their beam ends, they're in a very bad situation. But yeah, the beam in your eye or a sunbeam is that idea of almost like a trunk of light. And you mentioned being off beam, that is, I think it began as a reference to an aircraft that had gone astray from the radio beam that was guiding it. I mean, you're making all this seem so clear, whereas my knowledge is pretty opaque. Is that to do with light, the word opaque? Yes, it is simply from Latin opaicus, which meant darkened, but it came into English from French, which is where you have the Q-U-E.

English from French, which is where you have the Q-U-E. And also from classical languages, this time from Greek, is shadow. And that goes back to the Greek skatos, meaning darkened again. But one of my favourite etymologies is that the word squirrel, if you take it back far enough, the etymology of that is shadow tail, because its head is below the shadow of its tail. Isn't that gorgeous? It's gorgeous. I mean, language is wonderful. Is it time for our break? It is time and we've got some fantastic correspondents to come to as well. Oh, it's all so exciting. Okay. Well, that's it. The light is dark enough. The dark is light enough. Let's take a break. Wherever you're going, you better believe

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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.

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on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Oh, Susie, it's very exciting. We're going to be on stage again soon, aren't we? We're going back to the Ambassadors Theatre on the 14th of May. It's a Sunday afternoon. We do matinees,

which should technically, I would have thought, be in the matin, but they are nowadays in the afternoon. We do matinees, which should technically, I would have thought, be in the matin, but they are nowadays in the afternoon. Were they once performed in the morning? They were absolutely once performed in the morning. We've said often, haven't we, I find matinees really special. I love a good matinee. I love a good matinee film as well. But there's something quite, I don't know, quite different about a matinee audience, but demographically, exactly the same. It just has a different feel. Well, also, they're awake. I mean, anyway, our shows are at 2pm. They're at the Ambassadors

Theatre in London, but we're also travelling around the UK a little bit later. And if you want to come along to one of these shows, each show is different. We record an episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. We have a lot of fun around the recording. We meet people during the interval. You just go to somethingrhymeswithpurple.com. That's the website. And there it will take you to the details of how you can book tickets at this lovely theatre, which is worth a visit anyway. It's been beautifully refurbished. It's the theatre where famously the longest running play in the history of the world, The Mousetrap, opened many years ago at the beginning of the 1950s. And here we are, the beginning of the 2020s. Well, actually well into the 2020s, on the 14th of May, strutting our stuff there. But you never like the lights on the stage. Often

you, talking about beams and light, as we have been doing, you don't like the lights on the stage often you talking about beams and light as we have been you don't like the light i'm not struggling in a street car named desire sense where stella isn't it who has the light the light it's not that it's just my eyes are so sensitive and only where there is the iris of my eyes actually that they just start to stream with bright light so if they're shining directly into me i really really struggle i thought the first time this happened you were overwhelmed by the warmth of the response from the audience when you came on. You burst into floods of tears, but it turns out it was just the effect of the light. It's the light, yeah. And so much as children and adults do sometimes sneeze a lot when faced with sunlight, my eyes just start to absolutely well up. Well, please come and see us at the

Ambassadors Theatre if you're free on the 14th of May, come from all over the world, because we get listeners from all over the world, and they write to us. And they write to us, this address, purple at somethingelse.com. And when you write to us, you can send in a query, an observation, or indeed a suggestion for a theme that we might talk about. Who's been in touch this week, Susie? Well, before I tell you, it was Blanche that said that in a streak on Inside. Of course, Blanche Dubois. It was Blanche Dubois, absolutely. So, well, we have some fantastic correspondents, as we so always do, and this one comes from Rob Green. Hi, Susie and Giles. Here in Ontario, Canada, we've recently been seeing lots of advertisements from our government about not disappearing down internet rabbit holes when you're going searching for answers to medical questions. And it got me thinking

about the phrase disappearing down a rabbit hole and whether or not its start was with the book Alice in Wonderland, which seemed the most likely place to me, or whether it was in usage before that time. And if so, has its meaning changed over time or has it always meant sort of the same thing? Thanks. You guys are doing a great job. Love the show. Rob Green, Fergus, Ontario, Canada.

Thank you, Rob. We love Ontario, Canada. It's one of my favorite parts of the world, except it's so cold in winter. Oh, I think Rob should do voiceovers. I could just start with such a mellifluous voice, I have to say. And it's a great question. So, the first reference to a rabbit hole is in 1667, and it is simply a hole in the ground inhabited by a rabbit. So, it's the same, almost as a

warrant, really. Nothing interesting to say on that front. And it was only in 1938 that it began to be used to indicate a passage into a kind of strange or slightly nonsensical or surreal situation or environment. So, the first reference we have here is, it's the rabbit hole down which we fell into the law. And this is with allusion to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which was from 1865. And of course, Alice, gosh, she just goes into a land of very surreal logic, doesn't she, by falling down a rabbit hole. And now I think it's kind of morphed a little bit, though not hugely, to mean not so much surreal logic, but also just a bit of a waste of time. So, if you fall down a rabbit hole, you're blinded to everything else, you're down there in the

darkness and you're burying into something that actually is not going to reap any reward. So, I think it's changed a little bit, but not too much. And definitely it is allusion to Lewis Carroll. It seems to me extraordinary that it's 70 years from the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with her, as you say, falling down the rabbit hole into this strange, surreal world, before it's used in other contexts. That does seem a long time, given the book was hugely popular in Lewis Carroll's own day. that lexicography is an ongoing process. So quite often words or phrases will have been recorded, what will have been around in speech, particularly before it was recorded in print. It may well be that we will antedate, as we call it, that particular, you know, word. We'll find an earlier record of it in print. So it can take a while for it to kind of percolate. And also, you will find that happening now, is my second point, that you will find people inventing new idioms whilst referring back to a work that, you know, was 100, 200 years

old. So, it's not entirely surprising. Good. Well, thank you, Rob Green from Ontario for that query. Who's up next? Hi, Susie and Giles. Love the show, and like many, have listened to the entire thing and always enjoy discovering new words and etymologies. I've recently been learning Spanish and I'd like to ask about the word ananas and why the Brits and Spanish seem to be the only people who don't use it to describe pineapple. Thanks, Sandeep. Oh, that's a good question from Sandeep Sandhu. Everyone else in the world seems to call pineapple ananas or a variation of ananas, except the Brits and the Spanish. So explain. So ananas comes from a native Peruvian name, apparently, because it was first seen by Europeans in Peru. And a monk who had gone there in 1555 described it in one of his journals. He

called it nanas. And as so often in English, a nanas then became ananas. Because if you remember by this process called false division, the N of the second word migrates to the A. Do you remember we've talked about this before? So we had an apron becoming an apron and so on. And a nickname was an ik name, an additional name, etc. So the N migrates because when we say it and we say it quickly, it's unclear which word the A belongs to. And that's what happened with ananas. It was a nanas. As to why we didn't have it, we might have done actually for a little while. But originally a pineapple, a pine apple, was the fruit of the pine tree. So what we would nowadays call a pine cone. But when the pineapple fruit, as exotic as it was, was the fruit of the pine tree. So what we would nowadays call a pine cone.

But when the pineapple fruit, as exotic as it was, was introduced in the early 17th century, eventually the shape and the kind of segmented skin of it was felt to resemble a pine cone. And you can see that when you're looking at it as a pineapple that's unpeeled. And so the name was transferred to it. So I think for a while we probably did borrow the anana, but it probably wasn't particularly easy for the English tongue. And a pineapple was more of a kind of folk etymology. And as you know, we have that all over the place with Jerusalem artichokes, etc. Pineapple, of course, is traditionally the fruit of hospitality.

Oh, is it? Didn't you know that? Which is why you find it if you go to people's houses, sometimes in the doorway, it's incorporated in the architecture of the doorway or in a gateway, you'll find on the gate, pineapples, the fruit of hospitality. I've just found actually some lovely records in the OED that do confirm that we did call it by its native name for a little while before it became naturalised. So in 1613, there is a record of someone saying, of their fruits, ananas is reckoned one of the best, in taste like an apricot, in show a far off like an artichoke, but without prickles,

very sweet of scent. And then in 1714, you have the first ananas or pineapple that was brought to perfection in England, grew in Sir M. Decker's garden at Richmond. Oh, not that far from me. If it's Richmond in Surrey, not Richmond in Yorkshire. I had a neighbour here who, during the early days of the COVID pandemic, bought a pineapple and I saw her conscientiously, bless her uh washing it well we didn't know we didn't know yes she was on her doorstep before she took it into the house uh washing her pineapple wiping every spike didn't you do that with all your fruit i did that with everything every single delivery i got from the online grocery thing i just oh it took ages to

wash it and leave it to dry did you not do that no i prayed i didn't it's a oh i think most people did to be fair lord oh i'm so sorry i did bring it into the house first but um yeah because we were told that it could stay on surfaces for you know for weeks it's a funny period to have lived through isn't it oh dear i know we look back at it now and laugh but actually it was deadly serious at the time wasn wasn't it? We weren't aware. It was just not knowing what the future holds. I was telling you the other last week, I think, or the week before, how I was reading the diaries of Chips Chanon, this is 1940s.

And it's fascinating reading a diary of this period because, of course, they don't know what the future holds. And here they are in this diary, it's set in England, he's writing in London mainly, thinking that the enemy may win, that it is extraordinary when you don't know what the future may hold. No, that's total lack of control. It's very, very strange. Going back to Richmond, I'm doing one of my shows there actually quite soon.

Oh, I love the Richmond Theatre. It's built by a brilliant architect. Do you know who it is? No. The great frank matcham who built all the loveliest theaters that anybody ever want if you ever asked any performer any actor what their favorite theaters are even if they don't know the name of the architect they name theaters that happen to have been designed by this man frank matcham who did

everything sort of round and curved and that's why they feel they feel more intimate and he built wonderful theaters there's all over the country, even in Guernsey. No. Gorgeous. Is it Guernsey? Jersey. Anyway, certainly on the Isle of Man, there's one. The Buxton Opera House is built by him.

And the theatre in Richmond is a Frank Matcham theatre. When are you there? I must come and cheer. That is very kind of you to ask, and I'm not completely sure because I don't have it in front of me. Well, I'm giving you an opportunity to flog your show. I know. Soon.

It's going to be in April. But I'm very much looking forward to it. Well, we're looking forward to it. Do you actually? Seriously, just let me know in case we're free. We can come. Oh, I'd love you to come. Yeah, and cheer.

Ask questions. Yes, you can ask questions. So there's a little word surgery bit at the end where people can pop their question into a little box. And I open as many as I can at the end. Lovely. Yeah. It's a bit like having as many as I can at the end. Lovely. Yeah. It's a bit like having you on stage with me at the end, asking all these tricky questions.

The box we want to open now, Susie Dent, is your trio. What are three words have you got that are special for us this week? Well, I should just say, sometimes I do appreciate that the spelling of these is not particularly obvious, as you will see from my first choice. And if you do need to find the spelling, and if you're interested in learning more about the word, you can find the programme description blurb of each episode, along with the title and author of Giles's poem, you know, wherever you get your

podcast. So just click on the episode description and you will find it there. So I'm going to start with the word skeuomorph. Okay, so that is S-K-E-U-O-M-O-R-P-H. And that is something that kind of looks back to an earlier technology or an earlier process, even though the technology has advanced exponentially since then. But it's designed to look as though it does the job it's supposed to do. So Apple, for example, are famous for this. So do you have a Mac? Yes, I do. I have a raincoat as well. So if you're moving something to the trash, you actually put it into a trash bin. Their notepad app looks like a real paper notepad. It's not always visual. So if you have a digital camera, you'll hear that fake shutter click. Those are all skeuomorphs, you know, and also you can get

them in language. So when we hang up a phone, when we dial a number, we don't do any of that anymore. But it looks back to that old technology. The next one is a poindexter. Do you know what a poindexter is in US English? Well, it sounds like I felt there was a flower called a poindexter, but I'm thinking of something else. Oh, poinsettia. Forgive me.

Poinsettia. What is a poindexter? I think poinsettia is an eponym. I'm fairly sure. I'm just checking this. Really? There was a person? How interesting. Yes, it was the name of J.R. Poinsett, who was a US minister to Mexico. Goodness. And so my next one is also Poindexter is also an eponym of sorts, albeit a fictional one, because Poindexter was the name of a character in the TV series Felix the Cat, who was well noted for being very brainy and for using scientific jargon.

But unfortunately, Poindexter has achieved the status of a nerd, but only in its negative senses for somebody who's boringly studious and a little bit socially inept. People of my parents' generation loved Felix the Cat. He kept on walking. He was a black and white cat and he had his hands behind his back. He walked on his, he was a biped, and he could actually at four feet, but he walked on his hind legs. Oh, I remember Felix the Cat. Marvellous. Okay. Well, there was Poindexter in there. And so any nerd is also sometimes called that in US English. And finally, I have a rhetorical device for you as my third. Paralypsis. Do you know what this one is?

Paralypsis. Well, I'm familiar with paragliding. I'm familiar with an ellipsis. Is it something that combines something that is overall like a parachute and an ellipsis? What is, am I in the sort of right area? Of course, I think it's kind of hovering above a subject without actually touching it. But in so doing, you were drawing attention to it. So, it's the device of giving emphasis to something, even though you're professing that you're not going to say anything about it. So, as in, well, he didn't perform that very well, not to mention

his previous disastrous performances. So, you're saying not to mention, but that's exactly what you go on to mention. Or, you know, he's a terrible politician, not to mention his unpaid debts of several millions, that kind of thing. So, that is Paralypsis. What I love about particularly Skeuomorph and Paralypsis is What I love about particularly skeuomorph and paralysis is these are words that are actually useful. Some of the words you come up with are amusing, but a bit arcane. But these are ones where actually we could use them every day. That was a good example of paralysis,

or that's a skeuomorph. I mean, it never occurred to me that the click when you take a photograph with your cell phone or mobile phone is just an artificial sound to make you feel you've taken a photograph. Is that the idea? Well, exactly. Exactly just an artificial sound to make you feel you've taken a photograph is that the idea well exactly exactly right so just to show you that you've done it and to hark back to that previous technology yeah so it just it's interesting that we still i don't know when at what point we'll we'll move on from the skeuomorphs but it's as you say nice

to know that we have a word for it and do you have have a poem for us? I do have a poem. And it's a poem inspired by, we began this particular episode talking about rainbows, and we talked about The Wizard of Oz. And I thought, well, Yip Harburg wrote lyrics for songs that were as good as poems. And I think this one is, though a song, it's a poem too. Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. Someday, I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me, where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops. That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, why can't I? Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly, birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh why can't I? If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh why can't I? It's just beautiful. And then my favourite line is, where troubles melt like lemon drops,

away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me. Pretty good going. So well done, Harold Arndt and Yip Harburg, who created that song for that amazing film. It's gorgeous. And so are you, Purple people. We love you and love the fact that you keep listening to us. So thank you so much for being with us.

And just a reminder, there is a Purple Plus Club for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus episodes on words and language. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Deo with additional production from Chris Skinner, Olly Wilson, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale and... What do you think is the original skeuomorph? Someone designed to look as though they do the job they're supposed to do. That's gully.