Something Rhymes with Purple - Lethologica

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Aghast that Gyles still thinks ‘YOLO’ is a new word, Susie talks us through the process of creating new words and, more importantly, how to get them into the dictionary.  Via oldies like ‘groupies’, ‘burtons’ and ‘velcro’ Susie discusses which words stick and passes judgment on whether new words like ‘Covidiot’ are here for the long haul.  She reminds us that you can’t campaign for a word to be added to the dictionary (as the Potato Council found to their disappointment)… but that won’t stop Gyles and his passion for the word ’snart’. We also go through your fascinating and mysterious nicknames for woodlice, Susie has her trio of wonderful words, and Gyles sends us off into the day with a lovely bit of Larkin. A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s trio: Forplaint - exhausted from weeping Interdespise - to hate someone as much as they hate you Lectory - a place to read. 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. Make your nights unforgettable

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 car and other conditions apply. Something else. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast presented by me, Giles Brandreth, and my friend...

Susie Dent. We're a bit slow there. Susie Dent. Well, she'll be behind me, but that's because she's down the line. She's in Oxford, close to the Oxford English Dictionary, where she used to work and which is now her constant study. She, of course, is famous for being the person in Dictionary Corner on the Word Game Countdown, Words and Numbers Game Countdown, on Channel 4. I'm Giles Brandreth, and I'm here because I'm her admirer. I'm one of her groupies. I agree. What's the origin of the word groupie? That's what we do on this show. We meet every week and we talk about words and

language. We explore the power of language and where language comes from, where it's going to. Groupies. I say one of your groupies. What's the origin of that expression? What does it mean? It means that you want to belong to that group, to the in crowd. And it first started with military slang, as so often. So it started in the RAF. And a groupie then was a kind of group captain. So that kind of makes sense.

But then quite soon after, about a decade after, it meant a person associated with a core group of famous people. So they're kind of makes sense but then quite soon after about a decade after it meant a person associated with a core group of famous people so they're kind of on the periphery and want to be on the inside and then in the 60s of course that's when you know that's when the groupie really took took over and because they pursued pop groups yeah if you were a Beatles fan yes you were Beatlemania exactly the people who ran after, and the people particularly ran after the Rolling Stones, they were their groupies. Exactly.

So it started in America, I think, with rock and roll. And then, as you say, it kind of, you know, the Beatles had to have groupies. And they've stayed ever since. So we're constantly using words that we don't know, well, that we know, but we don't know where they come from, like groupie. I was using one this morning, a phrase. I was on my daily walk. I do 6,000 steps a day, more about my tricycle later, but I was doing my 6,000 steps when I stumbled over a paving stone and I almost went for a

Burton. And I thought, what's the origin of going for a Burton? And I thought, Susie will know, what is the answer? Going for a Burton, well, the best theory for that is that it goes back to Burton's Ale that was produced in Burton upon Trent. And there was an ad, a poster at the time that said, Gone for a Burton. So if somebody was missing from a particular place, he would just leave a note or she would leave a note saying, Gone for a Burton. And then it became again, military slang, probably the RAF, when, it's a bit sad and black humour really, but when a plane went down in the water, it went down in the drink. And so people said they had gone, the pilot had gone for a Burton. So it's got sad beginnings, that one. What I love, and listeners should know this, is we don't prepare this. It may be clear that we don't prepare this.

But the point is, when I tuned in to Susie a few minutes ago, she had no idea that I was going to ask her about Garnt Roberton or groupies. She just has all this inside her colossal brain. I have a lot of rubbish stuff in there as well. And sometimes it doesn't come to the fore. So sometimes I have lethologica, which is when I can't think of the right word for the right moment. In fact, that happens to me. What's that word?

Lethologica. L-E-T-H-O, hang on, lethologica. O-L-O-G-I-C-A. It's the inability to find the right word at the right time. Now, what's the letho part? Because I thought lethy usually gave us sleep. Yes, quite right. So the river Lethe in Greek mythology was the one that made you sink into oblivion and to forget. And that oblivion could be sleep or it could be the erasing of all memories of the past. And that's why when you are lethargic,

it looks back to that river Lethe because you have nothing left almost. You are kind of devoid of everything, including energy. You see, this is the joy, in a way, I hope, of this podcast because we have wanted to be fun, but also it's incidentally educational. I learn things. So lethologica, lethologica means forgetting the word

that you thought you had. You just can't bring it to mind. Exactly. And do you remember tartle? Do you remember tartling? I do remember the word that you thought you had. You just can't bring it to mind. And do you remember tartle? Do you remember tartling? I do remember the word. We just, tartling is good. It's nice.

It's like rambling. We are rambling free. We're going down the odd cul-de-sac. Remind me about tartling. Yes. So tartle, I think it was one of my trio once. Tartle is a great Scots word, and it means hesitating before introducing someone because you've forgotten their name.

Oh, that happened to me once with my wife. What had happened was there was a group of 10 people and I'd done brilliantly. I introduced the first nine, getting their names absolutely spot on. I thought, I'm genius. And then I got to this last one and I said, and here is this beautiful creature, this amazing woman, this fantastic. And somebody said, stop being so patronising. I said, oh, well, she's my wife. I could not remember her name. That's bizarre. Quite terrifying. But just for a moment. Now, one of the problems with remembering words is there's so many more to remember than there used to be because the language is growing all the time. What is the size of the English language today, as opposed to, say, 500 years ago in Shakespeare's

time? Gosh, I was really hoping you weren't going to ask me that question. Well, it's a really boring answer when everyone says, how many words are there in the English language? The sort of smart answer to that would be three, the English language. But moving on from that, it's almost impossible to give you an answer, Giles, because what is a word? I mean, would you say that run, runs, running, runner are all different words or part of the same word? And then it becomes impossible. But there are, compared with Shakespeare's time, of course, there are sizably more words because the language grows. And he probably, we talked about this when we talked about Shakespeare, didn't we, and how many words he had at his disposal compared with ours. And I think it was probably about half of what our daily vocabulary, well, not daily vocabulary, but our entire

repository of vocabulary is today. You know, what he did with it was quite amazing. This is extraordinary. We have twice the vocabulary that Shakespeare had, but we can't even write half as well. No, it's true. Now, what I want to find out from you today is how words get into the dictionary. For example, this week, I've come across a couple of phrases that I think will end up in the dictionary. Well, one will end up in the dictionary, taking the knee. Familiar words, but the expression taking the knee will appear in the dictionary, I imagine, because 100 years from now, people will need to know what that meant, how it came about. But there's another expression I came across this week that

made me smile, which was getting on your wicks, which is an amusing play on words. And it's what unnerves you or irritates you when there are people next door who are playing Joe Wicks too loud with their children in the morning, always getting on my wicks. Now that I think won't get into the dictionary because it's amusing. Who decides at the OED? I imagine once a year they decide we've got a new edition coming up next year. What are we going to put in the dictionary? Or maybe now it's rolling because of it being all on the internet. Who decides whether and when taking the knee goes into the OED?

I'm just checking actually, Giles, because it might already be in i remember doing a program with channel four back it was 2017 where they were looking at all the new words that were bubbling under and actually then starting to simmer and um extending a really bad metaphor but we talked about taking the need then and i'm just looking to see i'm sure it will be in current dictionaries i'm just looking to see if it will be in the oed because as we, that takes a little longer because once a word goes in, it never ever comes out. I can't find it at the moment, but I might have a look for that later because I wouldn't be surprised. That's interesting. That's rather like two things. Once the word goes in, it doesn't come out. It's a little bit like who's who. Once you get into

who's who, they don't drop you. Really? Yeah, they keep you there. What about if you're disgraced? I mean, is there any unpersoning involved ever? No, there isn't unpersoning involved because it's a work of reference. It's not judgmental. They're not censoring. If you're in, you're in. Similarly, do you remember the late, great David Frost?

Did you know Sir David Frost? I didn't know him, but I know you've talked about him before and I know exactly who you mean. Yeah. He was a pioneering broadcaster, started out in the 1960s. He was also a very nice, generous human being. And he gave parties, legendary parties. And one of the great things about his party is once he invited you, he always invited you.

He never dropped anybody from the list. His parties must have become huge. Did he have to keep giving venues? Well, fortunately for him, people did die off. The venue was vast at the end, you know, a huge public garden. People did drop off the perch.

So that's a good rule. So once you invite people, don't drop them. Once the word is included. So how does a word, how does a new word get into the dictionary? The thing about lexicography

is that its terminology is incredibly off-putting and really quite cold, which I think is a shame because lexicography is that its terminology is incredibly off-putting and really quite cold, which I think is a shame because lexicography is anything but, you know, boring and sterile. So I'm about to use a really horrible word, which is corpora. And a corpora is the plural of corpus. And each dictionary publisher has access to usually its own corpus. has access to usually its own corpus. And inside corpus meaning body, inside this body of data is the most amazing, fascinating material. So into it will be fed, you know, from evidence of

modern writing. So it could be text conversations, including emojis. It could be, you know, track room conversations. It might be a transcript of a conversation overheard on the street, you know, track room conversations. It might be a transcript of a conversation overheard on the street, right down to scholarly journals, historical novels, literature, etc. So as much written evidence as dictionary publishers can find are fed into these corpora. And this is what dictionary makers use to write their dictionaries. So say, let's think of a, well, the reason I wanted to talk about new words today, we should say, is that I remember hearing you on an interview,

I think, saying that you love the new word YOLO. And I thought, Giles, that's been around for too long. We need to talk about new words. It's new to me. When you're my age,

anything is new that's happened in the last 10 years. Well, take YOLO. Obviously, you only live once and it's a great philosophy in life. And I'm sure it's yours because of the energy with which you tackle life. But, you know, say that was a new word

that was bubbling under. A dictionary maker would look to see how often it's being used, first of all, how many different contexts it's being used in. So it wouldn't be any good if it was just being used on one website because then it would probably be the invention of that website owner.

Then, which other words it's being used with. So is it being used as a verb? So could you say, oh, I really YOLO'd last week, or is it just an acronym and it will remain a noun, acronym, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So we will study all the evidence of how a word is used. And if it looks like it has longevity and it is being used by enough people in enough different contexts, then it has a very good chance of going in. But the one thing I would say is that I'm always asked, is it a word? You know, people say it's such and such a word. And the answer to that is always, yes, anything is a word. I think what they want is an authority because we don't have an academy or

authority governing English and how it develops. So what they really mean is, is it in the dictionary? In other words, is it legitimate? But as you know, and as we've talked before, dictionaries reflect how we speak. They are a democracy. They don't tell us what is right and what is wrong. Is YOLO in the dictionary? Definitely. YOLO is in the dictionary, as is FOMO and all of those. In the olden days, when I first became familiar with the Oxford English Dictionary, it was then the editor, and I know I've mentioned him to you before, was a lovely man called Dr. Robert Birchfield, who was a New Zealander. We're going back to the 1960s, 1970s. And I remember he

told me that he had a team of readers around not just the British Isles, but the British Commonwealth and America. And they were distinguished people. I remember one of them, I met her, was the novelist Marganita Lasky. She wrote a wonderful novel called Little Boy Lost. People are looking for a lockdown read. I recommend this. It's a post-war novel set in Europe by Marganita Lasky.

Anyway, older listeners will recall this lady. She was on things like The Brain's Trust in the 1950s, 90s. A highly intellectual woman who I'm sure read the Times Educational Supplement, the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. And she would cut out, when she saw a word that was unusual, she would cut it out and put it on a postcard and send it to him. And he showed me these boxes he had of postcards from around the world. And that's how they, in those days, we're going back 50 years, evaluated the currency of new words. So it's a modern way of doing that thing. Yeah, they were called slips. You can still find the slips from the very first Oxford English Dictionary. They're in the Oxford University Press Museum.

And, you know, they just, they had to, they took up so much room, you can only imagine. And of course, when a new record of a word was found, the editor had to go back to that particular slip and then write in a new thing. So it is incredible how much digitalisation has really helped lexicography. But, you know, and in so doing also,

the definitions have become more and more objective because Johnson, Samuel Johnson, would, you know, either be very rude about the Scots, as we know, or he would call, he would define strumpet as a sort of harridan and a woman you do not want to consort with, etc. And in modern lexicography, you don't have any of that. It's all really objective. And that's partly because we have all this evidence now, which is, yeah.

And also, is there less intellectual snobbery? Why do I think, and I may have got this wrong, that Virginia Woolf's father was involved in the early days of the Oxford English Dictionary? Am I imagining this? I don't know. That's one I didn't know. Tolkien worked on the Oxford English Dictionary. This is before that, because the OED began in the 1890s, didn't it? Yeah. Tolkien, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie. I mean, lots of really, you know, celebrated figures have worked or have begun their sort of careers on the Oxford English Dictionary. What I'm asking, is it now more inclusive, more generous? I've just got a feeling that a hundred years ago, perhaps there was certain words wouldn't have been thought of. I guess that's true. Not so much slang. Johnson

didn't include slang and nor did the, you know, the early lexicographers, unless it was a dictionary of slang. And we have to remember that the very first dictionaries were dictionaries of criminal slang. But no, you're right. You wouldn't have found a swear word, for example, and now you can freely look up whichever word you want, because let's face it, a lot of people want to look up exactly those words. And if it's slang, also, the whole idea of slang is that you can't really understand it, because it's meant to be the tribal thing that other people can't comprehend. Now, do you think that the coronavirus crisis will have introduced a lot of new words to the vocabulary? And which ones do you think lot of new words to the vocabulary. And which ones do you think will make the grade to the dictionary?

Well, some have already gone in. So this is how quickly dictionary makers move now. When I started out at Oxford University Press, the standard amount of time that you would wait was about five years. That's not the case now. And I remember it beginning to change with Chav. Do you remember that? Yes. Chav just exploded onto the scene in 2004 and it had

to be explained and it had to be what we would call glossed in um in a dictionary which means defined so now we move very very quickly and uh things like wfh working from home flattening the curve hot zone social distancing etc have all gone into the oxford's current dictionaries very recently there will be others actually been around for for a while so quarantine we talked about didn't we coming from phoenician dialect in 40 days because that was the original quarantine things like self-isolation the whole idea of self-isolating because of a virus is about the 1940s so some of them have just come back into currency. And that's how new words work. Not all new words are new. In fact, loads of them are just a recycling of a word that's either had a different meaning in the past, or it seems to fit

our new reality. So we bring it back. What would be your top two or three that you think might go in? Because I think the ones that I've enjoyed won't make it in the end. I mean, I've loved the expression furlough merlough, the amount of drink that we're consuming during this troubled time. Yes. Are there any that will go in, do you think? Of the more lighthearted ones, as I say, because quite a lot of the COVID vocabulary is already in there and has just gone in.

I think COVIDiot might stand a chance, so somebody who behaves stupidly. But things like clap hazard, you know, we talked about that. The clap hazard is the person who, when applauding the NHS, just stood a little bit too close to you. I don't think those will. How, I mean, of the new words that do come in and last, quite a few of them have been portmanteau words. Those words that are called portmanteaus because in Victorian times, there was a portmanteau that was an overnight case called portmanteau because in it you put your coat, portmanteau, carré, coat, manteau. And we've discussed before,

you know, Lewis Carroll, how he pioneered them with words like galumph, combining gallop and triumph. But there have been more recent ones. Any recent any recent ones yes the one that i quite like to remember we talked about anti-suppointment really looking forward to something so much and then being disappointed when it actually comes or it can be really looking forward to something but actually knowing it's going to be a bit of a disappointment and so you get that kind of pre-gret um as another one of kind of regretting it before it even happens. I also like prob-solutely.

If someone asks you if you're going to do something, you can just say prob-solutely, which is a definite maybe. But putting portmanteau together and blends, as they're called, is one of the most productive mechanisms for creating new words. So I would say they account for probably about at least 10, 15% of all new words. And only 1%, Giles, only 1% of new words are creations by one person in one moment of time. You know, as in entirely new, they haven't taken an existing word and put something together with another one. They've actually created something entirely new. And that is very, very rare.

What about Velcro? Do you know the origin of that? I don't think I do. No, I know it's a trademark. It's a portmanteau. It's velvet and crochet. Ah, okay. And of course, twerk. Twisting and working. Something and working, isn't it? Twisting and jerking. And jerking.

And the queen of the twerk in the early days was Miley Cyrus. Yes. And as you know, I love to do a little bit of name dropping. No episode of this would be complete without it. Of course, to say I met her, I travelled in a lift with her. I've travelled in a lift with some interesting people. And this was at the BBC. She was going in to do Radio 1, Radio 2.

I was going as well. We went up and I showed her my twerk. Oh dear. She didn't say very much. And in order to make conversation, I tried to, she didn't know. The point is she did not know the origin of the word twerk. She knew that she was the queen of twerks, but she didn't know. Are you telling me you actually cut through the silence of a lift and said, hello, you don't know who I am, but I'm going to tell

you the origin of twerk. Did it work that way? It did work a little bit that way. I did not need to say who I am because she greeted me as though she didn't know me. And it was at the height of the twerk craze. I did a little bit of twerking and she said, oh, oh, I don't think she said much more than that. I was going to pretend she said, oh, that's lovely. Or isn't that cute? She didn't. She went, oh. And I said, do you know the origin of the word twerk? And she did say no.

And then the lift doors opened and that was that. Yes. So I think the sum total of our conversation was hello, oh, no, goodbye. That's from that last time I encountered. With Miley Cyrus. Very good. Brilliant. What about about, we must take a break, but Faux Mange? Do you know that one? Faux Mange. Fake cheese? Vegan cheese? Yes. Isn't that clever? It's vegan cheese. It's Faux Mange.

If any purple people can recommend to me a really lovely vegan cheese, please could they let me know because I'm still on the hunt. This is what Something Rhymes with Purple is all about. It's the lifestyle of Susie Dent. And if you can help her, you just get in touch. It's purple at somethingelse.com, something without a G, because we like to be a little bit different. Purple at somethingelse.com is how you can get in touch with us.

And I'll give you, after the break, the origin of this word snort snort please don't 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. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet.

Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers Internet. Visit Rogers.com for details. We got you. Rogers. Imagine a world, a world just like our own, but importantly, not our own. Is it the alternate dimension or are we? And does it have podcasts? The Last Post. Hi, I'm Alice Fraser, bringing you daily news from a parallel universe. It's a sweet, sweet dose of satirical news coverage,

some of which will sound pretty familiar. He defended him, saying he broke the lockdown rules on a father's instinct. And I just think if Boris had shielded his a** as much as he's shielding Cummings, he might actually be in a position to give parenting tips. And some of it is just pretty weird. Air in space is becoming much clearer, Alice. And it's quite shocking because there is no air in space. It's empty space.

So join me every single day alongside great comedians from around the world, including Andy Zaltzman, Nish Kumar, Tiff Stevenson and Will Anderson. Good luck to you. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple, where Giles Brandes and me, Susie Dent, or I, I should say, are talking about new words. Because if there's one question I always get, whether it's in the countdown audience or emails or tweets, it is, can I get this word in the dictionary? Giles, is there one that you're burning to have within the pages of the Oxford Dictionary? Snart. Oh yeah, tell us about snart.

S-N-A-R-T. This is the word I want to have in the dictionary. It's a combination of sneeze and fart. It's when you, as it were, break wind at both ends at the same time. It's to commit a snart. That's a through cough, remember? A through or thorough cough. I do remember that. I know, it's your thorough cough. That's an old and cumbersome word, thorough cough.

Snart is short and snappy. Other people will know a ruder variant on that, which involves different activities of the body but let's leave that there i want to get snart into the dictionary i imagine it isn't the hunting of the snark the snark might be because it's in that famous poem by lewis carroll but also you can be snarky can't you um oh is that is that does that go back to the hunting of the snark sorry about that being snarky with my mouse. I think, I'm not sure actually, I think they might be different. Snarky to me sounds onomatopoeic, but I might be wrong. So I'm just looking now,

it is onomatopoeic and it goes back to the 19th century. It's a sibling of German schnarken and eventually schnachen, which means to snore. So it's a kind of snoring, snorting sound. And so by being snarky, you're being a bit snorty. Very good. So what chance have I got with snort and how do I get into the dictionary if I'm really determined? Okay. Well, it's hard, this one, because you cannot petition for a word to go in the dictionary and then, you know, get a thousand signatures or a million signatures and then get it to go in. What needs to happen is for people to use it. So usage is queen. You need to get lots of people using it in lots of

different places, written and spoken, and to hopefully imbue it with enough meaning that it will become instantly recognisable to people. And the ruder equivalent of this, which I will now mention is shart. And you can imagine what that means. That the ruder equivalent of this, which I will now mention, is shart. And you can imagine what that means. That probably isn't in the dictionary, in the official dictionary, but you'll find it in the unofficial dictionaries. So I think, I'm not sure how much luck you'll have with that one, but people have in the past campaigned very vociferously to get the word in the dictionary. So do you remember I mentioned the British Potato Council who wanted to get a word in the dictionary. So do you remember I mentioned the British Potato Council, who wanted to get rid of couch potato. And so they stood with placards outside the offices of the Oxford English Dictionary, couch slouch. They wanted to replace couch potato because they

thought it was denigrating to the poor potato, which is a nutritious vegetable. So that was one that didn't work. But there was another campaign, which was by Soccer AM, I think, for the word bounce back ability to go in. So that was a kind of resilience, really, of someone, whether it's a ball or a player or whatever. And they campaigned for bounce back ability to get in the dictionary. And the campaign itself didn't work. But interestingly, it got picked up by enough people, the word, that it did eventually go in. So all is not lost. When I was a little boy, I had a toy called Nozo. Now Nozo was taller than me when I was very small. He was three foot, three foot six. It was a plastic doll,

like one of those Russian dolls where you keep opening, you know, so it was a round Russian-like doll. It was a clown, clown's face. And it had a soft nose and you punched the nose and it fell over. And then it always bounced back and it hit you. So you pushed it over, it came back and bopped you. It had bounceability. That sounds fun. So what are words? Actually, fascinatingly, just to finish off on bouncebackability, So what are words? Actually, fascinatingly, just to finish off on bounce back ability, I thought it was because of the kind of increase in usage due to that campaign by Soccer AM.

But looking at it now in the OED, as these editors so often do, they've dug and they've dug and they've dug and they've found earlier records than you might think. So there is a record of it going back to the 1960s. So there you go. It flew below the radar, a bit like chaff that I mentioned earlier, that is at least 200 years old and actually was quite a nice term once upon a time. And then it suddenly comes back up onto the radar and it might have a new meaning

or it might just suddenly become popular again. And that's very much how language works. Are there words and phrases from your family? Nozo is one from my childhood. If you bounced back, you were doing a nozo. Are there words and phrases from your family nozo is one from my childhood if you bounced back you were doing a nozo are there words and phrases from your childhood or your family that you remember that were particular to the dent household yes i used one actually i was um talking to scott mills and chris stark from the radio five Live program this week. And I was talking about the podcast and they did this kind of, is this true or false about your life? And they've just said, we found the following facts about you. Are they true or not? And I was really worried about this, but actually most of them were true. And one of them was, did your dad break your leg while

he was tickling you? And the answer was, yes, dad, you did. Because I hate being tickled with a passion. I just hate it. And you know, there are two types of tickling, gargalesis and knismesis. And gargalesis is the heavy kind, the one that really induces laughter. And I hate gargalesis. Anyway, he did break my leg and it was during something we call roughhousing. And so I said to Chris and it was during something we called roughhousing and so I said to Chris and Scott did you call it roughhousing and they said uh no so that's what we called kind of mucking about in a sort of physical way so it's like physical play fighting but then there are the ones which I think are just born of the sweet things that kids say so for example we

always call Huddersfield FC which which is an English football team, Hugglesfield, because that's what my youngest still calls it. Things like that we have kept as a nod to their childhood. How about you? I don't think we do have any. I mean, curiously, I felt there should be some acorns. Remind us what acorns are. Okay. So acorn itself is a mishearing of acorn. And it's the sort of things, it's the slips of the ear. So it's something that you grow up thinking is one word, but actually you're completely mishearing another. For years, I thought God, you know, up in the sky, I thought he had a name. And I was asked once,

what do you call God? And I said, well, my dad calls him Harold. They said, Harold. And the teacher said, Harold? Yes. I said, yes, because I've heard my dad. I know what's coming. The Lord's Prayer. Our Father. Yes. Which art in heaven, Harold.

That will be thy name. So I thought it was, because I sort of heard this mumbling going on. So actually, if anybody has got an acorn like that, what's a mondegreen, by the way? Yes, this is what we'd love to hear, actually, from our listeners. Mondegreens are mishearings of song lyrics. Ah, yes. Oh, God, we've all got some of those.

So me going to a convent, it's quite similar to your Lord's Prayer. I was convinced for years that I was singing Lord of the Dance, Seti. But Mondegreen itself, the word goes back. Well, maybe we'll leave that because we're going to do a programme about Mondegreen, We covered Edcorn, didn't we? One of our very first episodes. So people can go back. Actually, it's all there, by the way.

We've done 63, 64 episodes. You can go right back to the beginning. We covered Edcorn's yonks ago. And we're going to be covering mondegreens in a couple of weeks. But if people have got made up words that were family words or phrases, ones that their family use, their friends use, we'd love to hear about them. And we are global. That's the joy of Something Rhymes with Purple. We have a global audience. How do they communicate with us? Remind me. Well, the best thing to do to get in touch is to email purple at somethingelse.com.

And as you said at the beginning, something does not have a G at the end of it. So it's somethingelse.com. Last week, and let me deal with some of the correspondence to do with wood lice. Oh, my goodness. Because last week we had an email from Diana in Somerset who wanted to know why people call wood lice Billy Bakers. We didn't know, but we put a call out to you, the purple people, to see what you call them and whether anyone knows where Billy Bakers comes from. Sadly, no one yet can answer the Billy Baker question, but we've had some fascinating alternative names sent in. Karen in Aberdeen calls them Slaters.

And this is backed up by Jim Wiggins in Dumbarton. Is that a Scottish thing? I mean, not that Aberdeen and Dumbarton are that close. That's really interesting, Slaters. Okay. I've got another one here. Ellie Muggleton. I'll give you all of these.

Ellie Muggleton from Guildford called them cheesy bugs when growing up. And she adds that she and her brother used to make Lego cities for the cheesy bugs to run around in. It's an amusing idea, isn't it? That's cute. Cockney Eric says growing up in Romney Marsh, they were known as monkey beetles. There are a few more. Chicky Pig is the phrase Selina Haslett from Devon is familiar with, whereas Alex Cook from the Mendip area of Somerset swears that woodlice are called daddy gramphors.

And finally, Rebecca Locke from North Hampshire didn't realise until she was 10 years old that the word woodlouse existed. They were always known as curly bobs in i love that in our household i love that um yeah well it's really interesting as i say i've done i've done a bit of looking first of all i didn't know this but there are 40 different varieties of wood lice did you know this or wood louse no okay um but actually there's an even greater variety of names for them so pigs come in a lot there's slunker pigs wood, penny sows and sow pigs. Why? I don't know. Maybe because they're thought of being quite cute. Who knows? In Cornwall though,

we get this idea of a kind of almost half pig and half grandparent because you get a grandma sow and then that grandparent kicks in, as one of our correspondents has said, and there is granddad gravies, granny grays, granny granchers, granphy krugers as well, and all sorts of amazing variations. And you can see how it works is that one child hears something and then they kind of, maybe mishear it or they twist it a little bit. And so it goes on. And then in the Southeast where I grew up, there's a real dairy theme. So in Kent, they call them cheesy bugs, as we heard, cheese rockers, cheese logs, chisel bugs. And then in some places, the monkey comes in. So there's monkey peds, monkey peas, monkey pigs, sour bugs as well, because apparently you can eat a woodlouse if you are so interested. But then Northern Ireland and Scotland, and in fact, New Zealand and Australia as well, perhaps because they have Scottish and Irish communities, call them slaters, as we had in slaty beetles.

So it's fascinating. And as so often with dialect jars, because it's oral, we don't have so much written evidence that we can unpack and say it came from here. But for me, the kind of predominant, the thing that unifies all of them is that they're quite cute, all these names. And it's just I love the fact that there are so many names. But I'd also love to know if in the US, and we have a lot of listeners in the US, whether in fact they also have a huge variation of words for them. As a born again vegetarian, I have to say I'm shocked at the idea of people eating woodlice. Though once I was in North Africa and was offered as a kind of sweet meat with my coffee, chocolate coated cockroaches, bees, wasps and other insects. Apparently the crunch

combined with chocolate made them delicious i didn't partake no i decided not to with chocolate colored coffee beans they're amazing if you want to get in touch with us please do from wherever you are in the world we'd love to know more about this we'd love also to have your familial words and phrases we don't need to be told that it's a leslie stephen the father of virginia wolf was not involved in the Oxford English Dictionary. It was the Dictionary of National Biography. Oh, interesting. That he was a pioneer.

Okay. So I remember that during our little break. Time for one more quick letter. Yes. And then I want to hear what your trio of words is. Okay. Dear Susie and Giles, Christy Spencer Polk from Portland, Oregon here.

Oh, talking about our international followingolk from Portland, Oregon here. Oh, talking about our international following. Hello, Portland, Oregon. I absolutely loved your most recent episode, Euphuism. Oh, do you remember? This was the word I introduced you to. Yes, love that. Not often that I get one up on you. Anyway, Euphuism. Thinking that Orwell came up with this idea of unperson so many decades before the internet and the concept of ghosting ah yes and the emergence of cancel culture oh this is this is suddenly very topical yeah as a contemporary means of digital unpersoning yeah leaving my spine tingling would love to hear you speak about both

aforementioned contemporary terms on something rhymes with purple so basically what christie's after is a discussion of ghosting and cancel culture explain that to people who don't know what ghosting and cancel culture are i mean have they been adopted are they now new words yeah so the word cancel this century at least is it's been pretty much used of people hasn't it as well of events if you someone, particularly on social media, you boycott them. You basically do unperson them. You kind of almost make them into a non-entity by withdrawing all attention from them or following of them because you disapprove of something that they've done recently or quite often in the past. It is fascinating because we've had the statue toppling, you know, globally recently, haven't we?

Which, you know, almost gives a new layer to unpersoning, I suppose, because we're, you know, to unperson, just to remind you, in Orwell's day was to basically strip somebody of any level of existence. It's to remove them from the history books as a way of rewriting history. It was to pretend they never existed. It was to vaporise them in Orwell's terms. And then it came to mean to regard them as of no social or political importance. And it's interesting what's been happening with the statues, because obviously this time it's not the state, it's the people who are saying these are no longer worthy of history, or at least their history needs to be remembered in very, very different terms, which is fascinating. Is ghosting part of the same phenomenon?

So ghosting is more a kind of romantic thing. So if you're ghosted romantically, it means that someone that you're involved with suddenly disappears. They don't contact you. They don't, yeah, they literally disappear. You have no idea where they've gone. And it's a horrible phenomenon.

Are they becoming a ghost or are you becoming a ghost? The origin of the phrase. They are becoming the ghost. So suddenly they just literally suddenly disappear. Ghosting itself as a verb goes back centuries. It didn't mean it in this way. It was literally to pretend to be a ghost. So this is quite a new thing.

But I think in the 2000s already, people were talking about I've been ghosted. But yeah, it's that removal of existence that runs through all of this. And it is so, so topical. And of course, what Orwell was protesting against was the fact that the state can decide or any authority can decide what is the truth. And, you know, the state can decide what is worthy of recognition and what isn't. And it's a fascinating subject, but also really painful at the moment. I want to see a statue put up to you, Susie Dent, because you are just amazing.

A statue, oil painting, the works. I now want you to give us your three words of the week. This is Susie Dent's trio. Let them trip off your tongue. Well, yes, they will trip off the tongue if i don't forget them which uh is quite possible i will i'll have the left logical at the wrong the wrong moment but one of the ones talking about pain that i have been thinking of recently is there's an entry in the oxford english dictionary that has four for in front of a lot of different

adjectives which basically means exhausted by. So if you are for swunk, you are exhausted by too much work. If you are for wallowed, you are exhausted from tossing and turning all night. And if you are for plaint, P-L-A-I-N-T, you are exhausted from weeping. And I think a lot of us have been feeling real sorrow in recent weeks so four plaint is my first one the next one is these are a bit negative sorry about this but there's interdispite i remember reading this in the oed and it kind of made me smile but it doesn't so much these days is to hate someone as much as they hate you into despite that uh mutual dislike so i'm going to finish with a more positive one because when everything gets a bit

too much we've talked about the growlery before which is the place in your house where you can just go and growl and let it all off uh let it all go and we've talked about frontistry frontistry which is a place for contemplation but this one is simply a lectori, which is a place to read and escape in a book, literature, whatever is your choice. Lectori. Well, in my lectori this week, I've been dipping through Dancing by the Light of the Moon, my anthology of poems to learn by heart. And I came across this poem, which I included, that I'd forgotten. And I think I'm going to try and learn it this week. It's by Philip Larkin.

It's called Days. What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us, time and time over. They are to be happy in. Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question brings the priest and the doctor in their long coats running over the fields.

Wow. That's my poem. And that's been Something Rhymes with Purple. And it's been exciting to be here with you. If you want to be in touch with us, please do. Purple at somethingelse.com. Do tell your friends about us. We're very honoured.

We've been in the running for best entertainment podcast in the podcast awards, and we've been in the top 10 of podcasts in the UK. We want to do that globally. So that's our lot. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Grace Laker, and Gully. There you go. Who's snarting away in the background.