Something Rhymes with Purple - Libido

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

This episode may not be suitable for younger listeners. Parental discretion is advised. This week we’ll be boinking, bonking, and banging our way through baby-making and its associated lexicon. Whether you prefer to make the beast with two backs or shake off the sheets, we Purple People aren’t here to judge. Gyles tells a fun buddy story from the ‘60s and Susie serves a decisive judgement on why you’d rather be Aphrodite than Venus. We’ll also be dropping F-bombs, developing an aversion to crumpets and discussing why Missionary life wasn’t for everyone… A Somethin’ Else production. If you want to get in touch with Susie and Gyles it’s [e-mail] Susie’s Trio Thankworthy- worthy of thanks or gratitude, meritorious. Concupiscence- strong sexual desire; lust. Microlipet- someone who gets all worked up about trivial things. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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. Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast that Susie Dent and I have been doing for nearly two years now. And each week we meet up, now virtually, me in London, she in Oxford. We're broadcasting from the United Kingdom. And we talk about words and language because we both love words and language. You know that language is power. It's, well, it's how we communicate,

particularly in a world where it's now considered dangerous to hug, to touch one another, how do you communicate? Well, you communicate with words. And so each week we gather to explore words. And we're going to have an episode today where we're going to talk about sex. If you feel, oh, my children like listening to this program, I'm not sure how they... Well, this is our parental advisory warning. We're going to have a no-holds-barred discussion on the etymology, the language. Some of it's slang. Some of it is technical. All to do with aspects of sex.

So if you think, well, in fact, what I advise you to do is if you are an adult, listen to this first before you share it with your children. You may feel it's an education for your children. It may even be an education for me. Talking about sex with Susie, I found is always an education. I think this has come about because we mentioned fornication, didn't we, on our recent pasta episode. That's right. We were talking about pasta or spaghetti puttanesca, which is in Italian,

pretty much the prostitutes or the sex workers spaghetti. And I was talking about fornication and how it is probably linked to fornix in Latin, which meant the arches. And very often bakeries in Roman Britain would be very near arches,

apparently. So it was a warm and safe place to stand. And the idea was that the prostitutes would stand near the fornix, and that is where we get fornicated. How interesting, near the fornix. So look, we've learnt something in the first minute, which is fantastic. Let's get down to basics and talk about, when we're talking about sex, what is the origin of the word sex? I thought it meant six in Latin. But when we're talking about sex, what is the origin of the word sex?

I thought it meant six in Latin. Oh, yeah. No, the Latin sexus actually first referred to the two genders. Well, two genders in those days. So sex entered the language in English, at least in medieval times. And in reference to sexual intercourse, it's only been used really since the early parts of the 20th century. So a really, really recent usage. And you can guess which writer was probably amongst the first to talk about having sex. Well, was it D.H. Lawrence in the 1920s? Absolutely. It was D.H. Lawrence. David Herbert Lawrence, playwright, novelist, famous because he wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover,

which was a banned book in Britain for many years until about 1960. Sexual intercourse as a phrase is a 20th century turn of phrases. Well, the use of sex, at least, to mean that. So the use of the abbreviation sex and to sex something up, to use it in a kind of metaphorical sense, that's only been around since the 1940s. And then, of course, in 2003, it hit the headlines again. Do you remember when the claim it was claimed that the british government had knowingly sexed up a report on whether iraq

possessed weapons of mass destruction and then people have been described as being sexy since the 1920s and that was transferred to anything from a kind of remote control flat panel TV to a LBD little black dress. That's the 1950s. So the kind of modern senses really are quite modern. We're talking 20th century for a lot of these. So sex is short for sexual intercourse, which we sometimes now say, you know, I'm sleeping with someone, meaning I'm having sex with someone. Is sleeping with old as well, as a phrase? No, I've only just looked this up and i'm really surprised by this so if you'd asked me just off the cuff i would have said probably

18th century maybe at a push do you know what it goes all the way back to old english and the anglo-saxons sleeping with implying sexual intimacy or cohabitation and to sleep around to engage in sexual intercourse casually with a variety of partners, that is more recent. So that's 1928. The first record that we have is Aldous Huxley, actually, not him sleeping around, but he's mentioning it in a novel. But yeah, sleeping with, surprisingly early. It's extraordinary. Well, now we've gone back to that Anglo-Saxon English, let's confront the word fuck, because we've touched on it a couple of

times. But just remind me of the origin of fuck, because that's the most familiar, as it were, slang term for having sex, isn't it? Yes. I mean, I think I said to you before, ask any linguist for the most versatile word in English, and fuck would be near the top of the list, really, because you can use it as a noun. I don't give a fuck, an intensifier, not a fucking clue. You know, you can have fuck me shoes. You can be fucked over. You can be a total fuckwit, fuck around, all of that. It is not an acronym for fornication under command of the Kings. Did you remember that story? So that was a, it's a lovely myth attached to it. And I get this on Twitter quite a lot.

And that is that it comes from a time when the population had been decimated by plague, decimated in its general sense, and the crown therefore ordered its citizens to go forward and procreate. And they were told to hang a sign outside their door, F-U-C-K, fornicating under command of the king, to show others that they should not be disturbed by royal decree. But I'm afraid it is literally fucking nonsense, that one. The answer is far from simple. And in fact, a lot of etymologists will call fuck four letters in search of an etymology because we haven't completely nailed it down.

But our best bet is that it is all about hitting. We haven't completely nailed it down, but our best bet is that it is all about hitting. And the very first references to fucking in the OED are not about having sex. It's all about hitting people. And you can find that in surnames like Mr. Fuckbeggar, Mr. Beggar Hitter, who was clearly quite a violent citizen. And do you remember a wind fucker was an old name for the kestrel because it beats, it hits the wind with its wings. And in that case, that would take us back to the Latin pugnare, to hit, which means that fuck and actually pugnacious might share the same ancient root. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

And actually, if we're going to get really, really bad, you know, you mentioned Lady Chastley's Lovers. You know, in around the 1700 1700s if that was printed at all it was always f dash dash k and these dashes and asterisks continued in a pretty recently in fact in attempt to avoid any charge of obscenity and when there was an unsuccessful prosecution in the 60s of penguin books for the publication of lady chastity's lover the prosecution council urged the jury to hold hidden from your wives and servants, this is a rude sentence coming up, a book that contained 30 fucks or fuckings, 14 cunts, 13 balls, six each of shit and arse,

four cocks and three piss. That's how rude it was. Well, that's why I was only 10 or 11 at the time and I was away at prep school. I sent off for a copy. Did your school intercept it? They did. But it was returned to me when I left the school and the spine was broken.

So it clearly had been read by the headmaster, by the matron, by the sports master, by everybody, in fact, yes. Have you read it? Have you read by the headmaster, by the matron, by the sports master, by everybody, in fact. Yes. Have you read it? Have you read Lady Chatterley's Love? I read it years ago as well. Not as young as you.

I think it was in my 20s when I read it. Yeah. Then there are very, as you say, the word fuck, there's so many variations of it. I do remember once in the 1960s, I'd never heard this phrase. Somebody actually sent me a note saying, do you fancy a buddy fuck? Oh. Yes, isn't that interesting? Have you heard of this expression?

Yes. Fuck buddy I've heard of. I mean, we talk about fuck buddies these days. Oh, well, maybe I've misremembered this. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe they were offering to be my fuck buddy. How old is that expression? A fuck buddy.

What period was this that somebody was... This is in the 1960s in America. This could have been the most exciting part of my gap year, but I didn't seize the moment. No, you didn't. Well, if they did say this and they were ahead of the OED, because here the earliest reference we have is 1973. Well, there you are.

So I imagine it was university campus talk in the late 1960s. Was this a man or a woman? It was a woman. Because I think it was sort of, according to this, it says in early years it was particularly gay slang. So I don't know. Oh. I don't know. Oh, and maybe I've misremembered the whole story, but it was the late 1960s during my gap year.

So there you go. I have a brilliant friend called Jonathan Green. Do you know, have you heard of Jonathan? Of course I know him. So Jonathan Green is the slang lexicographer of our time. He has written what has been acknowledged as having written the OED of slang. And it's written with huge authority. It's absolutely brilliant. Anyway, he's written also, or pulled together from his vast database,

also or pulled together from his vast database amazing timelines of words for particular things from sex to police to death to drugs to being mad to alcohol but you know being drunk etc and his timelines are extraordinary because what you do is you just look at a particular subject and then you can see what people were saying back in you know the 1500s and then trace it all the way up to or all the way to the current day and i'm looking at the moment i'm looking at the one for um intercourse which starts 1500 pay a bill at sight melting moments to dance the irish jig to blow off the loose corns, to thread the needle. This is going right up to the 1800s. To be in a woman's beef, to lip one's nags in the gallop, horizontal polo, that's going right up to the 1900s. And the one you will have heard of,

to grope for trout in a peculiar river. I would urge people to look up the timelines of slang because they are absolutely brilliant. Jonathan Green, Jonathan with an O. But it's fascinating to see how we have created both kind of, you know, funny slang, but also real euphemisms for sex since very, very early on. Alternative words to fuck include things like bonk and boff and bang and shag. What's the origin of shag?ag well shag is a word with lots of meaning so shag as in shag pile carpet which actually has nothing to do with the sexual sense of shag goes back to an old english word for rough matted hair so no surprise there it's related to a viking word meaning a beard and then you've got the bird that's called a shag and that's probably

because of its shaggy crest but the sexual intercourse sense is first recorded in the late 1700s, probably goes back even before then. And it probably is related to another verb meaning to shake. So it's simply all about movement, that one. Whereas the sort of boff, boink, bang, bodge thing is all about onomatopoeia and sound, apparently. thing is all about you know onomatopoeia and sound apparently i've never actually heard bang bodge boink and boff as the sound of sex but obviously some people did clearly your lovers have all been quiet people but no but actually it's quite interesting isn't it because it takes you just just talked about the history of fuck and how it might be related to hitting all of those too can be used if you bonk somebody if you boff somebody it can also be used for hitting so that

that sort of connection is still there slipped boink in there i mean i've heard of bonk i've heard of boff i don't think i might have made up boink boink boink that's a funny kind of sex do you fancy a quick boink you're a bit piggy about it yes that's marvelous do you remember those there were things that you would sort of, big orange things that had ears that you would bounce around on as a child. Space hoppers. Space hoppers.

They go boink, boink. I don't think that's quite what happens. I think we go bonking and we go boffing. We even go banging. I haven't heard about bodging. I think bodging, it must be going wrong. Do you fancy a quick bodge? That doesn't sound that much fun.

Oh, I'm going to look up bodge. Now, I've not heard this either, actually. To bodge is to patch or mend clumsily. There's no sexual sense in this, but there might be in Jonathan's dictionary of slang. I'll have to look that one up. But like you, I would definitely not say any of those. And there's things like, well, there's the real euphemism,

making love, isn't there? Now, this confuses a lot of people because making love, people go to a restoration play and they hear somebody saying, oh, I made love to her. And they think because they're modern people, oh, they had sex, but they didn't. Making love up until the 20th century, really, was giving expressions of love. It was. It was to woo or try to seduce people, wasn't it? And then the sexual sense came in about 1927. Originally, US again, to engage in sexual intercourse, especially considered as an act of love. So we've got nookie as well. Nookie is a strange one

because... I love the idea of nookie. It sounds very sweet, doesn't it? But actually, originally it was offensive. Do you remember Nookie Bear? Oh, Nookie Bear. Nookie Bear was a character that the ventriloquist Roger de Courcy used to have. And the original Nookie Bear is now with my Teddy Bear Museum collection at Newby Hall in Yorkshire. So if you want to go and visit Nookie Bear, he's still there. Why was he called Nookie?

Well, it was naughty. He was a naughty bear. And Nookie loved a bit of Nookie Bear. He's still there. Why was he called Nookie? Well, it was naughty. He was a naughty bear and Nookie loved a bit of Nookie. When does Nookie come in as a term for sex? Well, it's related to a nook as in an interior angle that you might find, like a corner, a recess in a room. That's where we think it comes from. You've got ingle nook, etok etc but nookie first referred to a woman considered as a sexual object so it was pretty offensive um 1928 was um that one and then very soon after it began to refer to sex but you'll see from this one this is from a novel in 1930 you'll see that it's still pretty sexist um hendrick said he picked up with a skirt that was a warm baby and

he was getting his nookie every night. So just to call the woman a skirt is, you know, tells it. But it's interesting. These new terms and this language seems to be mostly 100 years old. We're celebrating, this is coming in the 1920s. All the people who've mentioned Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, this last example, these are all late 1920s. There are older terms like copulate

yes they've been around that straight latin coitus also um that is straight latin that simply means bringing together they all mean bringing together and completing really like to consummate to consummate our union yes same thing so it's interesting we use the term making love because of course much of what we're describing is making lust, or rather the act of lust rather than necessarily an act of love. Is there a heritage that's interesting of love versus lust? Liebe and it gave us libido and it also gave us leave as in to take leave if you were a soldier because it was all about trust really the real Ur root of this the original root was all about giving someone permission because you trusted them so furlough believe it or not goes back to the same root furlough being a word that we heard of so much this year. So love is related to Liebe, it's related to libido. And lust, simply, if you say in German, ich habe Lust auf whatever,

that just means I would like something, I want something. So lust means desire. But in German, it can mean all sorts of different things. And if something is lustig, it's funny, because it's desirable, because it's funny and and makes you laugh so lots and lots of siblings along the way very good are you in favor of love and lust or lust without love do you take position on this that's a very deep deep question um i think there's room for both isn't there yeah and it's best when they come together well Speaking of which, coming together. Yes. Oh, that's really good. We're steering clear of any kind of obvious. You're back to the Groping for Trout in the Peculiar River. And actually, do you know, that was a Shakespeare It involves corruption in high places and taking physical advantage. It's a tough play on sexual relationships. Completely fascinating.

Shakespeare has a whole range, doesn't he, of euphemisms. My favourite is making the beast with two backs, which I know... That's Othello, isn't it? Yeah, that is Othello. And Othello is full of the most amazing animal imagery of a sexual nature. And in Act 1, Scene 1, Brabantio asks Iago, what profane wretch art thou? And Iago responds, I am one, sir, that comes to tell you

your daughter and the moor are now making the beast with two backs. And that is because he's saying that Desdemona, who was the daughter of Rubantio, and the moor of Venice, the great leader, military leader Othello, are, well, in fact, they've got married. And actually, it's a very vivid image, isn't it? If you see an animal with two backs, because obviously they are doing it traditionally in what is known as the missionary position. How old is the missionary position as an expression? The missionary, isn't that strange, the missionary position? I've always found it very, very odd, even having gone to a convent.

I'll look it up and see. I hope that the editor of the OED is not currently looking up my search history. But he's probably used to it, to be honest. Right. 1929. It's all in the 1920s isn't this interesting it says sexual life oh gosh this is just this is awful totally imperialistic but it's obviously a chronicle it says the sexual life of savages it's not awful and it says the natives despise the european position and consider it unpractical and improper. So that is obviously they're talking about the missionary position here. But how interesting that people regarded it as improper

and was it unsaid and impractical? Impractical. But yeah, so 1920s, you're right. There is definitely a kind of timeline going on here, isn't there? I mean, there are some others that are probably around the same time. So and quite often they are quite sexist. So a bit of crumpet, for example, or a bit of how's your father? Oh, yes. A bit of how's your father. Do you fancy a bit of, oh, slap and tickle, a bit of crumpet, a bit of how's your father? Yeah, crumpet's not, crumpet derives from a really misogynistic view of a woman. So it was women regarded collectively as a means of sexual gratification. But we love crumpet.

Don't you love a crumpet? Well, I do love a crumpet, but not in the sense that whereas it's dismissing women. But yes. Of course not. So that, and then how's your father? That sounds to me a little bit like the sort of Victorian euphemisms for trousers. Do you remember those? My sit-upons and my unmentionables, my inexpressibles, my round-me-houses.

Oh, that's 1968. Now, you will like this, actually, Giles, because Alan Corrin is the first record in the OED in Punch. If you're after a bit of How's Your Father, he said evilly, you can't go wrong with Tori Melinos. He was a very witty writer anybody wants to enjoy good comic writing look up the works of alan corin the father incidentally of giles corin and victoria corin mitchell as she now is and i'm proud to say he was a friend of mine years ago now look there are other euphemisms let's just rattle through a few euphemisms before

we take a break some of us may need to go and lie down. Shaking of the sheets without music. Yeah, that's medieval, that one. That goes back to the Middle Ages. I think so, yeah. There apparently was a dance of the time called that, but the bit in brackets was kind of, you know, nod, nod, wink, wink thing, the innuendo.

In fact, innuendo, just to let you know, goes back to the Latin nuere, meaning to nod, because you're nodding in the direction of something rather than actually saying it out loud. Ah, so shaking of the sheets, brackets without music. So when we were shaking of the sheets, that's a fun thing to do. And of course, it's actually as you, the sheets go up and down. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Speak for yourself.

Yeah, well, it rather dates me when there were sheets. That's true. It's been a long time. Yeah, exactly. Or it has been. Shaking of the duvets. But can I say, it's easier to talk about than to do at my age. Dancing the Paphian jig. Yes. So, Paphos on Cyprus was sacred to Aphrodite, and Aphrodite was the goddess of sex and love who gave us aphrodisiac, whereas Venus, unfortunately for her, gave us venereal disease. Oh, of course it did. Well, there's another one, To Wind Somebody's Little Ball

of Yarn. Have you heard of that one? Well, that one apparently featured in a 19th century folk song where the singer asks a pretty girl if he can wind up her little ball of yarn, which is just one of the worst euphemisms I've ever heard. But yes, it's slightly menacing, that one, I would say. But yeah, I've never heard that one. I don't think that one's used these days. I've heard things like horizontal refreshment, rumpy-pumpy. I like that one.

Don't you quite like horizontal refreshment? I guess so. Rumpy-pumpy is another one, isn't it? That sounds like a real carry-on to me. Oh, let's have a bit of rumpy-pumpy. Let's have a bit of rumpy-p Let's have a bit of rumpy bump. Sid James. It's a fun idea, isn't it?

Oh, dear. What about rogering? Oh, yes. Oh, poor Roger. Poor Roger. As you know, the advertisement for Viagra that says, take Viagra, it won't make you Sean Connery, but it might make you Roger Moore.

So Roger was an old word for a penis, a bit like Johnson, really, was coarse slang, as it said in the OED. That goes back to, gosh, so many different words for this, for 1644. Good grief. And perhaps Sir Roger follows Mrs. Bride to her apartment where he uses pungent and pressing arguments.

That's from 1679. And then rogering, meaning having sex, well, usually of a man at least, is from 1600s again. Yeah, the master rogered such a one. So why poor Roger was chosen for this, I'm not sure. But the word again, like fuck, was sometimes written with asterisks and dashes to avoid the charge of obscenity. What I think is interesting about all this, Susie, it's one of the reasons that etymology is so fascinating, is that whether we like the terms or like the way they were used or not, they are history. They tell us a lot about people's attitudes to different subjects, don't they? And we're learning a lot about people's views of sex and relationships in these words.

What about see a man about a dog? Well, see a man about the dog. I've never, ever heard in the context of having sex. I've always heard it in terms of needing the loo. There's a brilliant sketch with the Monty Python people. In our euphemisms episode, which Purple People can find again in our archive, they talk about all sorts of euphemisms for going to the loo. And the one that sticks at the end was visiting the doughnut in Granny's greenhouse.

But they mentioned seeing a man about a dog. Visiting the doughnut in Granny's greenhouse. Oh, I love it. But I am going to look up now, seeing a man about a dog, and I've never heard it ever in terms of sex, but you obviously have. Okay. While you look that one up, let's take a quick break. We've got a Viagra advertisement coming up.

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Rated ESRB E10+. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple, where we are talking the language of sex and i think the last thing that giles mentioned josh brander sitting opposite me by zoom anyway was viagra i think that i'm not sure this is completely true but i've heard that that jiles comes from the word viagra comes from sanskrit for tiger not sure if that's true or not as in put a tiger in your tank. Maybe, because that was a famous advertisement once upon a time. That was for petrol, wasn't it? It was, but the phrase was put a tiger in your tank and maybe that's what Viagra is supposed to

do. I have no idea. I think Viagra comes after that. But is it true that Viagra was first intended for use as a, was it heart medicine? But its side effect was the one that people enjoyed the most. So they switched its application. Is that true? I've no idea. I'm not a student of Viagra. As you know from our episode on lotions and potions, I try to avoid all pills of every kind. So go to see a man about a dog. What's the origin of that? Okay. So going to see a man about the dog, it seems that it can be used as a euphemism for all sorts of things. So you might, you know, where you don't, you don't want to sort of say out loud where you're going

and what your destination is. So you might then say you want to go to the loo and you'll use it that way. Apparently Donald Trump used it on The Apprentice and of course then claimed to have coined it because he has all the words. But yes, it's an undisclosed appointment. And so it can be, I think it's more often used for the loo.

I think I was right there. But if you want to use it about sex, that's absolutely fine with me. But not with me, obviously. Well, I think that's all we need to talk about sex for today. If you've got queries or questions of a sexual nature that you want to share with us, If you've got queries or questions of a sexual nature that you want to share with us, Susie will do her best to give you the benefit of her wisdom. And get in touch with us.

It's purple at somethingelse.com. Something without a G. Yes, we didn't even talk about jiggery-pokery. Didn't we talk about jiggery-pokery? We didn't talk about jiggery-pokery. We'll do that next time. Fancy a bit of the other? There's so many. This isn't this. Well, but it's because it's a fundamental thing sex yes that's why of course it is of

course you know we could do loads of episodes about sex and about death we did do it we did do a show on death but i think it was mostly to do with you know as i say the sanitization of it so in a way it's nice that we don't sanitize sex all the time because as you say it is fundamental and i think people speak much more freely about it these days, which is only a good thing. Is it only a good thing? Or is there... You think the romance has been taken out of it?

Well, I wonder also if reticence isn't quite nice at times, being too upfront about things. I also, I have to say, we've used the F-bomb endlessly here today, but I hope we did give a health warning at the beginning, because I know there are some people who don't like these words. And I've occasionally been, I travel on the bus a lot, not so much at the moment, but I used to travel all the time on the bus. And occasionally I'd be sitting with some older people and there'd be some younger people on the bus using F-words, C-words, bad language. And I know i could sense with some of the people near me they found it uncomfortable i think it's because it can come across as being quite aggressive

so i think i i totally understand that because i think if you are if they're just throwing it in for effect or in a sort of lazy way i'm with you i don't really like it either for me a good swear is one that you do for yourself. You know, I've often talked about lelokesia, that relief of stress and frustration, et cetera. And for me, it's very much a kind of self-utilizing thing. I don't use it to kind of make myself sound clever or whatever. And if you hear kids coming out of a secondary school, I wince as well, because they're just saying, oh, come on, you know, you don't have to do this. So I think spare it for the proper occasion. That's what I would say. Well, fuck me, Susie. We've almost run out of time. And we haven't dealt with people's

questions this week. And we've got lots of people getting in touch with us. Who do you want to, whose letter do you want to share with us first? Oh, well, we have a nice email from Mark Pielas, who thanks us for the podcast, because he said it injects some excitement into the long covid weeks which is lovely to hear and he asked if we could discuss the origin and usage of words that generalize an item like gadget gizmo thing and widget and i think i've talked about thing before because it started off meaning something so important in languages like icic and Scandinavian

languages, where thing was an assembly of really important people where you would discuss a very essential issue of the day. And you still have the other thing in Iceland, which is the parliament. But thing for us has gradually declined over the years and the centuries to mean literally anything. It's just kind of catch-all, isn't it? Which I think is quite sad. Though, interestingly, to interrupt you, is that a thing is now an expression that people use. And that's almost elevating it back to what it was. Is that a thing? Meaning, is that something important? A lovely observation. Yeah, that's a lovely observation, actually. Quite right. It would be interesting to see if it goes back the other

way. So I'm going to start with gizmo.mo 1940s we genuinely don't know where that one comes from we do know that sailors were the first people to talk about gadgets and the word started out in nautical slang and and there already it was a general term for any small device or mechanism or part of a ship you remember that the word gremlin began in the RAF with pilots who would use a gremlin for any kind of mechanical malfunction. So Gadget is doing pretty much the same thing. It's a catch-all for any small mechanism. 1886 is the first recorded use we have. And they refer to lots of other things, actually. I'll read you the quote. Then the names of all the other things on board a ship. I don't know half of them yet. This is from a nautical log. Even the sailors forget at times. And if the exact

name of anything they want happens to slip from their memory, they call it a chicken fixing, or a gadget, or a gill guy, or a timmy noggy, or a whim wham. So it may come from gachette, which in French is a lock mechanism, or they also have a gage for a tool so it might come from there widget is an alteration of a gadget so it began meaning a small gadget a weenie gadget it then remember it became this device used in beer cans to um to give it to give beer a creamy head because it introduced some sort of nitrogen into it that was the widget so um so there you go yeah look we have so many of those. Ask anyone what they call the remote control and most people will have a different answer. They're families.

We may have to have a whole gadget gizmo widget episode. Here's a letter from Jean Shute in Auckland, New Zealand. I love the way people listen to this programme all over the world. Thank you for being with us. I was rereading an old favourite novel and came across a phrase used by an elderly character who said, I felt it in my waters. I understand the meaning. I think it's similar to, I felt it in my bones. But why waters? What waters? Do you have any idea of the origin of the phrase? I've noticed it's often used by older women. Well, it's interesting. I mean, it could refer to the sort of fluids in our body. You know, so many references to that. Do you remember hysterical goes back to the idea of a floating

uterus, one that wasn't in its correct place. The Greek for a womb was hysterous or hysteria. And so the idea was that you were hysterical if your uterus wasn't quite, you know, it was floating around. So it may refer to the waters of the body. And if you look up to feel something in ones, there are lots of different variations. One of them was the marrow, to feel something in one's marrow. So the tissue of your bones, which are really sensitive to extremes of heat and cold and that kind of thing. And for all of these, the idea is it's the innermost part of your being well staying anatomical just time for one more communication from marjorie critch hyam and um she's one of our regular listeners and she says hello susie and charles while cutting across a park field with our beautiful dog bonnie my

husband and i both said keep your eyes peeled we were desperate to avoid dog poo i'd love to know why we use the word peeled. This one has always, always got to me. It just makes me squirm even saying it because I'm just very weird about my eyes. Well, this one too has got many variants on it. It goes back to 1844, the first record we have. So not too old, this one. But one of the variants that it was riffing off is to keep one's eyes skinned, which is even worse. I know, awful. But the idea is that you remove any barrier so that you absolutely keep a very, very close lookout for whatever it is that needs to be found. Well, I keep a close lookout every week for your trio, the three words that I want to put into my vocabulary. And I've discovered the only way to make this work is to write the words down when you say them

and then to try to use them during the week. Otherwise, they just slip from the memory. So tell me what are the three words I've got to write down this week and why? Okay. Well, one I just think is always nice to remember and it's just a very pithy way of describing somebody who deserves credit or gratitude and there are so many individuals that you know wow this year are really deserving of both of those things and that's simply thank worthy oh so you say a thank worthy individual yeah it's just really pithy i mean you understand it completely immediately but um it's good isn't it this other one i suppose is slightly in keeping concupiscence oh concupiscence i'd say it concupiscence oh there you go concupiscence

spell it for me jazza this is a challenge for you oh con c-o-n yeah q q c-u-p i s-e-n c-e it's s-c-e-n-c-e so you's S-C-E-N-C-E. You just missed out the C, but very, very good. No, not very good. Wrong. It simply means having the hots. Oh. So it's lust, really.

To concupiscere in Latin meant to desire vehemently or ardently. So that's what it is. It's an old, slightly masked way of saying lust. Ooh. And what else was it the last one well i think this this applies to me sometimes actually not very sexy in the context of what we're talking about today so try not to be a micro lip it m-i-c-r-o-l-i-p-e-t a micro lip it is somebody who gets all worked up about trivial things oh Oh, a microlipid.

Well, that could apply to sex, couldn't it? All worked up about trivial things. Oh, for goodness sake, what was all the fuss about, mate? I'm a natural microlipid. I like it. There was concupiscence from him, but you were the microlipid. Yes, well, he's certainly not thankworthy. That's the way to use it.

I think what one should do is take the three words and try and work them into a story or a sentence, if you want to remember them. Every week on Something Rhymes with Purple, we get a treat, a trio from Susie Dent, new words to enhance your life. And this Christmas, if you want to give a present to somebody, I recommend her book. It's called Word Perfect, and it's got an interesting word for every day of the year. I'm going to finish with a little poem written by a friend of mine. And it's got, I felt it was an appropriate poem for this week. It's a, it's a limerick. It's a limerick about language.

And you know how some words sound so similar, but actually have different meanings. I know how some words sound so similar, but actually have different meanings. This is by my friend Mike Plum, who is one of the leading lights in the Queen's English Society. You lied, or you lay, or you laid. Let me speedily come to your aid. You laid tables and plans, lay in bed or on sands, and you lied about having got laid. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you managed to get through it with a smile on your face. Do let us know and obviously let us know if there are any themes that you would like us to touch on actually or any subjects that we haven't covered yet. The email is purple at somethingelse.com.

Something Rhymes with purple is a something else production produced by lawrence bassett with additional production from harriet wells steve ackerman ella mcleod jay biel and well i just refer you to those timelines i was talking about earlier it's gully he's thankworthy oh he is always