Something Rhymes with Purple - Namby-Pamby

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

What-ho Purple People! This week we’re ‘up to the eyebrows’ and having a good old ‘chortle’ at some of the words introduced to the English language by authors. Prepare to be ‘bedazzled�� by this ‘unputdownable’ episode where we’ll be looking into the inventions of PG Wodehouse, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Heller and many more, as well as hopefully avoiding falling into a ‘honeytrap’ or getting stuck in a ‘Catch-22’. Oh and we’ll reveal the origin of the word ‘podcast’ too. As always we’ll be answering the always fantastic emails you’ve been sending into us, Susie will expand our vocabulary with her weekly trio of words, and Gyles will leave us feeling inspired with his quotation of the week. Pip Pip! Susie’s trio: Shoulder-clapper: someone who is unnecessarily friendly and overfamiliar Ratiocinator: someone who reasons logically Dutch Feast: a party at which the host gets drunk before the guests A Somethin’ Else production. 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. This episode is brought to you by

LEGO Fortnite. LEGO Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of LEGO Play and Fortnite. Created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android

and play LEGO Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Hello, and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. With me, Susie Dent, and my co-host, Giles Brandreth, who currently can't talk because he's eating a bagel I bought for you this very morning because I know that you're favorite. It's a freshly baked bagel. Oh, you can talk now. I can talk now. I've swallowed my bagel.

I've got another bite to hear. I'm going to bite into it. While I bite into it, tell me about the bagel. Where does it come from, the word? It's a freshly baked bagel. Oh, you can talk now. I can talk now. I've swallowed my bagel but I've got another bite to here. I'm going to bite into it. While I bite into it, tell me about the bagel. Where does it come from the word? It's a Yiddish word, bagel. I actually first encountered bagels in Germany. Oh, they're just fresh bagels. And on the streets of Manhattan, getting a fresh bagel from one of those. Oh, you're a brave Japanese. Oh, I haven't actually been to as many places as I would like to, but yeah. I'm swallowing it now. Thanks for the cuppa. Oh, you're very welcome. I've been given a cup of tea. You have. Now, can you imagine actually being British and getting through a morning without a cuppa? Well, you'd have to if

it weren't for Sir Pelham Grenville Woodhouse, who first used the word cuppa in his 1925 novel Sam the Sudden. That's what I say. Am I right? I think you probably are right. I love P.G. Woodhouse because of gruntled. That's the word that he has added to my vocabulary, the fact that you can be gruntled as well as disgruntled. And what's extraordinary about words like these, or words created by Lewis Carroll famously, he was the coiner of many, many new words, is that when new words come into the language, only 1% of them are created out of nothing,

from the mind of an imagination of one particular person. Most of them are kind of mixing and matching existing words or giving new senses to existing words. But some of the ones that we're going to talk about today did come from a very specific individual and their imagination. B.G. Woodhouse, just to remind people who are not as into him as I am, 1881 to 1975, I'd say he was one of the 20th century's most delightful and prolific novelists. His use of vocabulary is very individual, highly entertaining, And he is credited with inventing only 22 specific words. But he picked up all sorts of slang words and vogue expressions and became the first writer

to put them into print. And his speciality was the substitution of a circumlocution for a well-known word, as in gasper for a cigarette. Okay. He also commonly converted words and phrases into different parts of speech, like your example. Ah, Shakespeare did that all the time. Well, gruntled and making it gruntled out of disgruntled. Yes. And upping with the lark. Ah, yeah. From the phrase to get up with the lark.

Yeah. Some of his that I love, to beetle around. You're familiar with that, aren't you? Beetling around town. Crispish, as in somewhat crisp. Aunt Delia, having spent most of her youth in the hunting field, had a crispish way of expressing herself. I like that.

And crumpet is a term of endearment, given we're having bagels. Oh, you old crumpet. My old crumpet. Oh, it just might be a bit like pumpkin or, you know, you right, crumpet? I like that. Dirty work, as an expression. An abbreviation of dirty work at the crossroads, which was an older expression. Oh, wow. And I think he popularised pip-pip, as in cheerio, pip-pip, for goodbye. Yes, toodle-pip. So that's replicating the sound of the car horn as you're leaving,

isn't it? Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Oh, is it? Yeah. A pip-squeak, he popularised that. An insignificant person is a pipipsqueak. Wasn't a pipsqueak originally a bomb? Have I got that right? This is the first thing I'm going to look up now. So I'm going straight to the OED. You keep talking. Okay.

50-50. Is it half and half? Up to the eyebrows. Again, first used by him in 1925. Yeah. Elbow. Is to give someone the elbow. Get rid of someone.

So he introduced that as a verb, didn't he? Pottiness. The state or condition of being potty. Silliness, madness, craziness. Oh, it's a potty situation. To shimmy, to dance, as in he shimmied into the room. You know, he ankled down to the club. I love it.

Toddle, to go. I'm toddling off to the club now. Toddling and tootling and poodling, all of it. I love all those expressions. Me too. Mooching. And you know he was honoured lastodling, all of it. I love all those expressions. Me too. Mooching. And you know he was honoured last year.

He is now in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. Well deserved. Just back to pipsqueak, yes. So in the 1900s, it was a type of small, high-velocity shell distinguished by its sound. So slightly lethal beginnings and then had a life in RAF slang. And then of course, now it's a slight sound or utterance or an insignificant person. So it was all about the sound. So it's because it was slight and insignificant, the bit squeak. And then that was moved on to the deadly company. You mentioned Lewis Carroll, obviously quite a few years before

P.G. Woodhouse, but again, one of the great immortal English comic writers, the Reverend Charles, do you know his real name? No. Remember? Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Yes. And he conjured up a lot of words. Chortle is one of his words.

I love that. You know what that's a blend of? Stood the test of time. Oh, it's a portmanteau word, is it? It is. Remind me. He actually introduced the word portmanteau because he had the idea of a folding suitcase. We talked about this, I think, previously. So portmanteau, a suitcase that opens

and has two sides to it, likewise a word that kind of brings two words or parts of existing words together to form a new one. So chortle is chuckle and snort. Well, that has stood the test of time, hasn't it? It really has. Galumph, another one. I mean, these days we tend to kind of trudge if we're galumphing. But for Lewis Carroll, it was galloping triumphantly. But I think because of its kind of slow, thudding sound, it changed its meaning. Slithy. People will refer to a slithy character. Slithery and what was that?

Slithy. I do know this one. It's lithe and slimy. Lithe and slimy. That's it. That's it. Mimsy. Mimsy. And Namby Pamby. That's another one, that's it. That's it. Mimsy. Mimsy and Namby Pamby.

That's another one. We'll get to that. Yes, Mimsy. That's another good Carol one. Flimsy and miserable. He was fantastic. Outgrabe. Well, nobody loses that now.

Lots of these words come from the poem, The Jabberwocky. Yeah. But it's extraordinary. Individual authors come up with words that then go into the language. I was using the word bedazzled the other day. Shakespeare. Oh, you know that? Yeah. I felt it would be more recent than that, but it is

Shakespeare. It's gorgeous, isn't it? Such a beautiful word, that. The Taming of the Shrew. Katerina says, pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, that have been so bedazzled with the sun that everything I look on seemeth green. Gorgeous. Catch-22. That's a much more modern word. Yes. Joseph Heller. It's one of those classics, isn't it? It's a bit like Moby Dick, et cetera,

that you just think, I'm going to go back and read this one. And Catch-22. Have you actually read it? I have actually read it. Have you? No, I saw the film. It's really good. You know, it was originally going to be called Catch-18.

It was a reference to a military regulation that keeps the pilots in the story flying one suicidal mission after another. The only way to be excused from flying such missions is to be declared insane. But asking to be excused for the reason of insanity is proof of a rational mind and bars being excused. Of a rational mind and bars being excused. Shortly before the appearance of the book in 1961, Leon Uris's bestselling novel, Mylar 18, was published. To avoid numerical confusion, Heller and his editor decided to change 18 to 22. So that's why it's catch 22.

Yeah. Because you know 1984 was going to be called 1948. I didn't. It was written in 1947. Oh wow. So why did he change it? Because he wanted to make it just a little bit more distant. I mentioned Namby Pamby. I like this one. So that wasn't directly coined by the poet Ambrose

Phillips, but by critics of his verse. Because he wrote quite wet and babyish verses which he dedicated to his friend's children. You know, some people liked it, but other people were quite mean about it, notably Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope at the time. So they ridiculed him for this, what they saw as kind of just kitschy, doggerel, really. Wrote a scathing verse about Phillips. I think this is another poet, Henry Carey, who described

him as Namby Pamby from Amby, which is a childish form of Ambrose. And of course, now today, anything Namby Pamby is a bit wet and weak. So it all goes back to Ambrose Phillips. Do you know about blah, blah, blah? No. We all talk about, oh, he went on blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. Well, as a slang word for meaningless talk, blah has been around since about the time of the 1914-18 war, so more than a century ago.

But I think that we can credit the lyricist Ara Gershwin. Oh. Yes, who was the brother of George Gershwin. People often think it was the wife, but it was the brother, with popularizing one of, well, it's one of my favorite phrases, blah, blah, blah. It's the title of a song with music by George Gershwin, originally written for a show that never got off the ground. East is West. Then it was brought out of the trunk by the Gershwins for a 1931 film, Delicious.

And this is the best of the Riggs case like this. I researched this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, moon. Blah, blah, blah, blah, above. Blah, blah, blah, blah, above. Blah, blah, blah, blah, croon. Blah, blah, blah, blah, love. Wow. Anyone just tuning in?

Feel free to take a break. We're going to, but we will be back with more normal talk about words and the authors who gave them to us. Absolutely. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, now too basic. Hi there. Still no. Absolutely. 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.

You know that feeling when you're like, why isn't there more of this? The show is so good. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler that I think is just incredible. Oh, we, yeah, it's coming back. It's coming back. And this is The Anime Effect, the show that allows celebrities to nerd out over their favorite anime, manga, or pop culture. The Akatsuki theme

song, you know what it is. I listen to that one all day. That thing go crazy. That thing kill me. The Akatsuki theme song. You know what it is. I listen to that one all day. That thing go crazy. That thing kill me. Be in the gym going and they're like, what is he listening to? Oh, it's not even in the gym. I be on the field.

I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. Find out which live action anime adaptations David Dostmalchian is praying he'll get to star in. Or how Jamal Williams uses the mindset of Naruto for his NFL career. Listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back, purple people. We took a break because Giles started singing. Frankly, that was the only reason why we had to go. But we're back and we're talking about words that were coined by specific individuals and notably authors and just...

I would make a prediction, but I've been gagged. She's put some sellotape over my mouth. She's tightening the sellotape now. We genuinely actually had a conversation in the car on the way here, right once I picked you up from the station, that we ought to dedicate an entire show to the act of murder. And who knows? I might be the only one talking.

So, more words coined by authors. Yahoo is another one. Yahoo. We mostly know it these days, don't we, as a kind of email provider and server. Oh, that's Yahoo. Google. Yahoo. Yes.

Oh, I say Yahoo rather than Yahoo. Yahoo. I associate it with the most prolific author of the 20th century, who was Frank Richards, real name Charles Hamilton, who created the Billy Bunter stories. I didn't know he was the most prolific. Yahoo, Yahoo, Gadzooks, that sort of thing. Okay, so Yahoo is what I should say.

What is the origin of that? Is that Jonathan Swift? It is Jonathan Swift, yeah. Tell us more. His fantasy satire, Gulliver's Travels. So it was a race of kind of quite brutish humans and then went on to refer to any hooligan or rowdy. Hooligans is another name.

Was that named after a family called the hooligans? Yes, the hooligans. That's absolutely right. An Irish family that were in a comic, I think, weren't they? Anyway, yes, nowadays we know Yahoo mostly with.com after it. But it's quite strange to name your search engine or whatever after a loutish individual. But I don't know the history of that. But I think also it is like a cry, like Yaroo. Yahoo! That's the call, isn't it? that's the call isn't it uh hooligan young street rough this is in the oxford english dictionary origin unascertained hmm the word first appears in print in daily newspaper police court reports in the summer of 1898 several accounts of the rise of the word based apparently on first-hand evidence attribute it to a misunderstanding of hooli's gang So the name hooligan then first appeared in a musical song

of the 1890s, which described the goings on of a rowdy Irish family and a comic Irish character in a series of adventure in Funny Folks, the magazine. Yeah. So who Hooley's Gang was, I'm not sure, but clearly they were in trouble and they were up to no good. There's a song in that, who's Hooley's Gang? Street gang, Hooley's Gang. Honey Trap. Do you know the origin of that? I don't. It's a 20th century author. Honey trap. Do you know the origin of that? I don't. It's a 20th century author.

A honey trap. You know where somebody is caught. They've set up a honey trap. Yeah. The phrase first used by John le Carré in his 1974 classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Okay. You see, long ago when I was a little boy, I made a mistake and walked into a honey trap. That's where the phrase first comes into the language.

That's recent. This is a really ancient one. Stentorian. If somebody's got a stentorian voice, it's loud and booming. And that's from Homer, who also gave his mentor, incidentally, from Greek mythology. But this is from his Iliad. And stentor was a herald in the Greek army during the Trojan Wars, and he had a thundering voice, which has given us that adjective today. Hard-boiled? Dickens? No, that period. Exactly the same period, but it sounds American because it is American.

A term documented, at least, as being first used by Mark Twain in 1886 as an adjective meaning hardened. In a speech, he alluded to hard-boiled, hidebound grammar. Oh, interesting. I've told you about pamphlet, haven't I? No. I think I have mentioned pamphlet before because one of my favourites- It's not always listening, bear that in mind. No, I'm beginning to realise this. Pamphlets have a really long literary history, even though most of us don't really associate pamphlets with any kind of glamour,

but it was a really racy poem in its day. It's a comic love poem, really, that dates from the 14th century. It was written in Latin. It was called Pamphilus or Concerning Love. And I still haven't read it. I'm trying to find a copy of it. I'm not sure it's particularly politically correct

from the sounds of it in terms of the male and female roles, but it was so loved in its time that it was printed over and over and over. And the little booklets were called pamphlets, little pamphletses. And yeah, they gave us the, I mean, it's not quite a word coined by an author, but it's in honour of a hero. And syphilis. Oh, I wondered when you were going to bring that up. You're in that sort of a mood. Yes, syphilis. Famously blamed by every nation on each other. So for ages it was called the French pox,

French measles. The French blamed it on the Italians. It was called Neapolitan bone ache. Yeah, not very nice. But syphilis has its origin in a poem from around 1530, I think it was. And it was an Italian physician called Girolamo Fracastoro. A terrible pronunciation, probably. But syphilis is a shepherd boy, and he was afflicted with this French disease.

Poor lad. I know. Shall I raise the game? Please do. In a serendipitous way. Oh, serendipity. Serendipity. Horace Walpole. Horace Walpole. Horace Walpole, not Robert. Hor do. In a serendipitous way. Oh, serendipity. Serendipity. Robert Walpole.

Horace Walpole. Horace Walpole. Not Robert. Horace. Invented the word. And the three princes of Serendip. 1754. Yeah.

Serendip being an old name for? Sri Lanka. Yes. Walpole, prolific letter writer, and he explained to one of his correspondents that he had based the word on the title of a fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The Three Princes were always making discoveries by accident and by sagacity of things that they were not looking for. So they discovered things by chance, by accident,

and by, you know, thinking laterally and differently. And there we are. Happy discovery. Almost always, if not tops, it comes very close in the nation's favourite word, pole. So serendipity is up there, discombobulated quite often. And it rarely budges from that top spot. It's interesting, isn't it? What's your favourite word?

Oh, what's my favourite word? Gongoozle. And I think of it most days because I've now got, I drink permanently from my Something Rhymes with Purple mug, which are available. And how do people get hold of them? I forget that. There's a way in which they can get hold of them. They go to some website.

I happen to know the answer to that. It's purple.backstreetmerch.com. So you can go online and order them there. But they are sweet. They are super. Yeah. I find that unputdownable. Oh, nice.

Where does that come from? Raymond Chandler came up with the word in 1947. They are super. Yeah. I find they're unputdownable. Oh, nice. Where does that come from? Raymond Chandler came up with the word in 1947. Excellent. Yes. So, interestingly, before that... Did he give his gumshoe as well? I think he did. Maybe.

For a detective. Yeah. Before then, people used to describe a good book as unlaydownable. And he made it unputdownable. Yeah, that's better. Have we done whodunit? The book critic Donald Gordon created the term in July 1930. and he made it unputdownable. Yeah, that's better. Have we done whodunit? The book critic Donald Gordon created the term in July 1930 in the American News of Books when he said of a new mystery,

half-masked murder by Millwood Kennedy, a satisfactory whodunit. That's when it began. Got into the dictionary in 1939, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary people. You probably don't rate them because they're American. No, they're good, yeah. They're good, are they? They say, at least one language pundit has declared it already heavily overworked and predicted it would soon be dumped into the taboo bin. Well, history has

proven that prophecy false. Why do some things last, Susie, and some things don't? Why did whodunit, which Merriam-Webster thought in 1939 wouldn't survive, why does everyone talk about it as a whodunit? I mean, it's the kind of holy grail, isn't it, for anyone who kind of invents a word, A, to try and get it into popular usage and then for it to last. And the answer is we honestly don't know. Do you remember we talked about hobbies in a recent episode and we talked about a bird's jizz, which was not rude. It was a bird's kind of

indefinable characteristics that will sum up a bird so that somebody can identify it immediately. Spell how? Jizz. Jizz, J-I-Z-Z. And it's almost like that with words. It's indefinable. It's not something that you can just say, it's got this, it's got this, it's got this. I mean, certainly, you know when a word's about to take off because people riff on it. And so that in itself kind of perpetuates the success of the first word, Grexit, Brexit. Megxit. Megxit, Mugxit, you name it. It's pretty toxic, but it's lasted. But it's so difficult to know why a word will suddenly

get picked up and then last. I wish I had the answer to that. It has to be easy to say. I mean, that's, you know, that's fairly obvious. But if it's difficult to kind of pronounce and difficult to remember, then that's the first hurdle knocked over. It's just so hard. It just has to kind of fill a gap in the language and sum up quite often the kind of preoccupations of a particular time as well. That's, you know, words can bottle history like nothing else, more than pictures even. So if it does that and fulfills the need in that way, then it's really strong. But you can tell I'm waffling really, because the answer is we don't know. Waffling is rather a good word. Waffle. Yeah, that's what I'm going to speak entirely.

Waffle, waffle, waffle. Oh, because it sounds like it. Yeah, it does, isn't it? A bit like blah, blah, blah. Very good. Words that have captured the moment. Oh, because it sounds like it. Yeah, it does, isn't it? A bit like blah, blah, blah. Very good. Words that have captured the moment. Podcast. Where does that come from? Well, yes, yes. I remember when it first started to appear.

Well, various people have kind of claimed to be the first coiner of this, but we think it was in 2004 by a Guardian journalist called Ben Hammersley. And he did exactly what Lewis Carroll did, and which in fact most people these days do if they want to create a new word, and that's blending, creating a portmanteau. And it's a mixture of iPod, simply, and the cast of broadcast.

And of course, broadcasting had its roots in agriculture, where farmers will still talk about broadcast. It's the wide scattering of seeds. So the dissemination of information far and wide was's the wide scattering of seeds. So the dissemination of information far and wide was like that initial scattering of seeds over a ploughed field. So yeah, iPod and broadcast. You mentioned the word pod, makes me think of peas in a pod. You told me something that I find almost impossible to believe, and that is that the P, P-E-A, the solo P, is a mistake. It really should be a P's, P-E-A-S-E. Yes, yes, because it comes from the Greek pison, P-I-S-O-N.

Do you remember in the olden days you used to have P's pudding and P's pottage as well, I think? It's spelled P-E-A-S-E. And because it sounded plural, but it had the S at the end, people thought, well, there must be a single P then, if there's P's. So they kind of worked backwards and created the word P. So P's isn't the plural of P. No, it was the one P originally. P is hilarious. And then the other words like that.

Yes. So another obvious one is cherry. So we didn't have a cherry in the first place. We had a cerise or cherries as it was in old French. And now cerise, of course, is a colour that we borrowed from there. Cherries sounded like cherries and they thought must be plural. So we made a cherry from it. I learned so much from you. It's cute that. Are the listeners wanting to learn more? Have they sent in any questions this week? We had a lovely thing from Debbie Pennell. I hope that I pronounced that correctly, Debbie. As a latecomer, I'm currently binge listening and slightly dreading the time when I'm all caught up and only get one new episode a week. I have my own trio of words for you. One is a cheat, she says,

that I'd love to hear more about. One is mizog, how you might describe the day if the weather is a bit miserable, damp, chilly, fine, misty rain, et cetera, rather than bad weather. That's a bit like fobbly mobbly, which is if you're feeling neither well, not unwell, it's just a bit. An odd me dod, a snail. So she thinks that's Suffolk dialect. I need to let that one up. I love that, odd me dod. I know that an odd man dod is a scarecrow in dialects that might be related to that. And a knee back, spelled G-N-I-B-A-C-K, a word my friend Glenn invented whilst a drink had been taken to describe the back of the knee. Addressing his assertion that there is no known word for this area. Is he wrong? Well, yes, he is actually, Debbie, because there is a word for the back of the knee. It's popliteal.

P-O-P-L-I-T-E-A-L. We don't know where it comes from. It's definitely Latin, but we don't quite know where the Latin word came from. Popliteal. Popliteal. Back of the knee. Very good. Yeah.

So that's that one. Have you got any? Blowing a hoolie. Oh. Tessa Wheatley, Hydra Isles and Susie. Love the podcast. Look forward to it every week. Thank you very much, actually.

Yeah, thank you. We're both actually more insecure than you'd realise. So we do appreciate those opening sentences. It's quite easy to think that no one's listening to us whatsoever sitting in my front room. You know, we've had more than a million downloads. I know. Nearly two million. I know.

It's amazing. Most of them from me. I was speaking to a friend the other day and referred to the weather as blowing a hoolie, at which point they nearly spat their tea at me. They'd never heard the term and refused to believe that it's a phrase. Please can you confirm that it is and where it comes from? That's Tess Wheatley, blowing a hoolie. Yes, well, I used it when Storm Kiara came in and we had Storm Dennis as well, didn't we?

I mean, really so windy here. It was scary, in fact fact and i'm sure it was for lots of people okay well hooli our best guess is it comes from an orkney shetland orkney word hulan which is a scandinavian word for a blustery gale but it's got that wonderful element of howling in it as well isn't it so bling a hooli yeah uh so that's our best guess we're not completely sure but it would make sense oh dear creating my own sound effects here because

okay you can shut me off by giving me your trio of words for this week I've got one more question or should I come to it actually you might come to that next week because next week we're going to do a whole episode

devoted to people's queries and questions we are and thank you very much for them we do appreciate it we do and we won't cover them all by any means next week, but we're keeping them all.

We're saving them all up because there were some brilliant ones on there. What's your trio of words this week? Do you remember I mentioned the word cherubimical, which describes the happy drunk, so the drunk that goes around hugging everybody. There's a kind of equivalent, but the slightly annoying person

who goes around basically hugging or clapping you on the shoulder, who's unnecessarily friendly and that's a shoulder clapper oh he's a real shoulder clapper that's annoying isn't it yeah that's sort of hearty oh i know more words more words suzy more words uh there's a ratiocinator we've been talking about words um from literary figures this one sums up sherlock holmes if there's one word that sums him up it's a ratiocinator so it's spelt r-a-t-i-o like ratio and then cinator c-i-n-a-t-o-r and it's a person who forms judgment

by a process of logical reasoning so that's sherlock holmes very good yeah um and then a final one for you complete change of tone a d Dutch feast. Any idea what a Dutch feast is? No. A Dutch feast is one at which the host gets drunk before the guests. I just love that. That's very good. There you go. There are three lovely words.

You've got a quote for us. I've got a quotation. Because we were talking about writers who've given words to the language, I came up with the word scaredy cat. Oh, yes. And so I'm going to celebrate two female writers. Scaredy cat, you know who originated that phrase? No. It's an American writer, a poet, a novelist, a short story writer. It comes from her short story, The Waltz. Dorothy Parker came up with Scaredy Cat. She is an amazing and

witty writer. But speaking of not being a scaredy cat, having courage, here is another quotation about courage, about being brave. Anais Nin. Do you know what I mean by her? I think she was French, Cuban, American. Anyway, a writer and a diarist. I think this comes from her diaries. I think this is where I found this. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. So true. Remember that, Susie. It is true. Be brave.

Yeah, because that's so true. So much to say about that and no time. But thank you. I love your quotations. I'm glad we introduced those. So don't forget to send us a nice review, recommend us to a friend if you'd like to. And if you have any questions you'd like us to answer, you just want to get in touch, you can always email us at purple at somethingelse.com. That's something without the G. I do always get asked, have you missed out the G in that email address? And it's because it was a jazz album called Something Else. That apparently is the story behind the naming of our lovely production company who produced this and it was produced by lawrence bassett with additional

production from steve ackerman and of course where would we be without gully oh and all that jizz