Something Rhymes with Purple - Panache

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

This week we are dipping our ink quills into the decadent world of calligraphy. Gyles’ spills all on the Royal Coronation invitation he received from The Palace, and Susie shares her pen-sational etymological knowledge on all things handwriting. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Ruffing: to applaude with your feet Dulcarnon: To be at a loss, to be uncertain what course to take Embrangled: To confuse or entangle  Gyles' poem this week was ‘If A Daughter You Have’ by Richard Brinsley-Sheridan If a daughter you have, she's the plague of your life, No peace shall you know, tho' you've buried your wife, At twenty she mocks at the duty you taught her, O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter. Sighing and whining, Dying and pining, O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter. When scarce in their teens, they have wit to perplex us, With letters and lovers for ever they vex us, While each still rejects the fair suitor you've brought her, O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter. Wrangling and jangling, Flouting and pouting, O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast, as most of you hopefully will know, all about language. And what else is it about, Giles? It's about your life pretty much, isn't it? I tend to keep my life back. It's about the use of language. And you say hopefully there. Yes. And is that a correct use of the word hopefully? To travel hopefully is what we want to do, to travel in hope. But explain to me the argument about the use of hopefully for a moment. Well, you're right. It once meant full of hope, as you might expect. And then if you are hoping that something might

happen, then you are hopeful. And so hopefully the advert from that makes sense. It's an extension, but you're right. There are some people, some might say they're pedantic, some might say that they're purists who only really prefer the original. And actually, it's quite interesting. Interesting. I think our subject today will take us to places where there is a conflict between older usages and the standard usage and new ones and how not everyone likes them. Good. If you're new to this podcast, it's called Something Rhymes with Purple because something does rhyme with purple. It's the word herple. It's one of the words that rhymes with

purple. It means to walk with a limp. This is a podcast all about words and language. I'm Giles Brandreth. My colleague is Susie Dent. She's the world's leading lexicographer in my book. And I'm just a friend of hers and have been for a very long time. And I chunter on and try and find out more from her and hopefully remember it. Or rather, it would be better to say, I try to remember it, hopefully, meaning full of hope, rather than I hope I will remember it. Anyway, what are we going to talk about? What's this subject you're teasing us with? Well, we're going to talk about handwriting and calligraphy, really.

And one of the catalysts for this really is that the only time that I actually really write by hand is when I want to be creative, when I find actually writing things down rather than typing them onto my computer much easier. when I find actually writing things down rather than typing them onto my computer much easier. But also I find when I'm signing something or actually writing a card, I've almost forgotten how to write because I'm so used now to using my keyboard that it's quite difficult. When I'm sitting next to a guest on Countdown, the program that I work on, if I found a, say I found an eight-letter word, you'll know, Giles, because you sat next to me you never need this but I might just sort of put my paper over subtly so that the guest can see sometimes not so subtly and very often they cannot read my writing in fact it's become a bit of a standard joke in Countdown that my writing is atrocious so I thought it would be a good subject to look back on

all the terms associated with it. How is your handwriting? I suspect very good. I love handwriting. I love writing with a real pen. I've still got one or two real pens with ink that I love to use. And when I'm signing books, I much prefer if I've written a book and someone asks for a signature inside it. I love to do it with a real pen.

I find that very satisfying. And when I was a child, I spent, I was going to say days, it was probably years, practising, I was going to say days, it was probably years, practising my autograph, my own signature. Did you do that as a little girl? Yes. And my kids do that too. Now, it's quite an important rite of passage that, isn't it? I have to say, I never perfected it. I'm not mad keen on mine. Is yours legible? Mine is, I think it's quite important. You and I, we both write books. We do a lot of signing sessions.

And I don't like the authors who just do a sort of squiggle and it's over. Yeah. I think that's not taking care of your customer. And sometimes in the olden days, I used to simply sign G. Brandreth. But I feel I want you to sign Giles Brandreth and it should be legible. Particularly, I mean, if you are a world famous author, it doesn't much matter because people will know it's you, they'll just recognise the squiggle. But if you've got my name, you really do need to write it carefully so that people know it actually has been written by you. I think you've got lovely handwriting. I love your signature.

And you write quite carefully. Well, thank you. Which is good. Thank you. Well, that's our subject. And I think calligraphy does still flourish. So there are people whose job it is to write wedding invitations, for example, because their handwriting is so beautiful. So should we start with calligraphy itself? Please, if I may, you know, people who are new to the programme may not know that name dropping is one of the features of this programme. I hope people realise that I'm often sending myself up. But I did receive, because I think you know this,

I went to the coronation a couple of weeks ago. And if you were invited to the coronation, you got the most beautiful invitation card. It really is sumptuous. I'm going to frame mine. It is so lovely. Wonderful design. But each invitation had in beautiful calligraphy,

beautiful script, your name, which seemed to be, you know, individually written. Well, it had to be individually written because there were 2,200 people there. And it was so beautifully done. Is calligraphy different from writing as a word? Does it mean the same thing? Well, it's adding a layer of elegance and beauty. So calligraphy is defined as the art of giving form to signs or language in an expressive, harmonious and skilful manner. So, you know, I think there's sort of graphic design concentrates often quite heavily on calligraphy, memorials, birth and death certificates, that kind of thing. And it simply means the art of beautiful handwriting.

So it comes from the Greekreek for beauty which is kalos and then to write which is graphene so graphene that gives us everything else like autograph is your self-signature biography biograph is what is biograph writing a life an autobiography is writing about one's own auto very good oneself very good henry ford the great car manufacturer when he wrote his autobiography, it truly was an autobiography. Just invented that little trope as we went along. Okay, so graphy is writing and calligraphy is beautiful.

Yes, exactly right. The art of beautiful handwriting. What do we do the handwriting with? Pen, ink, interesting origins of those words? Yes, I think so, because obviously both are very, very old and look back to ancient writing methods. So pen is related to both penash and also pene, the pasta that we eat. So they all go back to the Latin penna, meaning feather. And of course, the earliest pens for writing were made from a feather with its quill sharpened.

That quill is split to form a nib, which was then dipped in ink. So that explains the writing tool, the pen. And then pen A, the pasta, is supposedly shaped like feathers. I can't quite see that, but that's where it comes from. And then pen ash looks back to the feathers in the hats of those who would sort of swagger and be quite flamboyant. Panache has come to mean something more than just the feathers in the cap, hasn't it? Oh, yeah. Famously in Serrano de Bergerac, the play by Edmond Rostand, written in the 19th century,

but about an earlier era, and still for me, one of the greatest plays of all. Serrano talks about his panache. And it means more than the feathers, it means his style, his elegance, his approach to life. Yes, but it has got a bit of flamboyance about it, hasn't it? It's not a sort of quiet elegance. It's that outward display of a flair and fashion. But anyway, yeah, that's where that one comes from. So the pen is the panache. So pen really is an abbreviation of panache or former panache, which has to do with feathers. And I always marvel when you think about William Shakespeare. So the pen is the panache. Yeah. So pen really is an abbreviation of panache or former panache, which is due with feathers.

And I always marvel when you think about William Shakespeare. He wrote all those plays with a scratchy pen, with a feather. It's extraordinary, isn't it? With a goose quill. Yeah. It's amazing. Fantastic. You mentioned the word nib there.

Is there an interesting origin for that? I love the word nib. Just completely digressing. I like the word nibbling for your nieces and nephews your nibbling yes yeah it's it goes back to um actually we still have it in english dialect neb meaning a beak so in some dialects in britain you might hear someone say stop sticking your neb in stop sticking your beak or your nose in so because a nib is beak shaped if you look at it that gave us us the idea. That's what we write with. What about ink? Yeah, ink is an interesting one. So it takes us to purple, which of course, it's the colour that we love. And first of all, it goes back to a Greek word, meaning burnt in.

So I have a feeling maybe that Roman emperors who would use purple ink or purple fluid for writing their signatures, maybe they heated it in order to make it sort of, you know, remain on the page. I'm sure purple people who know more about history will be able to correct me on this. But that's where ink comes from, the Greek enkaen meaning to burn in. And then you have the sort of black liquid that a cuttlefish or other fish confuse predators with. That's been called ink as well for quite a while because it's that dark, dark liquid that comes out. I believe inks can be created rather like fragrances, perfumes of infinite varieties, so that you can have inks of all sorts of colours. You know, I mean, the invitation to the coronation I read in the paper, the ink used for that is some unique colour that was some special royal blue that was individually created

for this particular event. Ah, lovely. And it's a lovely idea to make a unique ink so we could all create our own inks as well as our own perfumes. Did you at school ever make ink bombs? Do you know what an ink bomb is? Oh, yes. No, I didn't. I was far too well behaved. Did you?

Well, I think I probably did. I went to, when I was about eight or nine, I went to a boarding school. And it was an all-boys boarding school. And you made out of, like origami, you could make a little sort of square with paper from a notebook. And you could make it into like a little box. And you would fill the little box that you've made

out of paper with ink because we wrote entirely with ink we had ink wells in our desks and wooden pens with a nib on the end that we used so we would pour ink from the ink well into the little paper square and we would use that as an ink bomb and we would throw them around the classroom much to the consternation of your teachers, I'm sure. Those are the days. Very good. I mentioned Shakespeare writing with a quill. What's a quill?

So quill is actually, I think goes back to a very old word, meaning the shaft of a feather. And ultimately, if you take it back to its ancient root, probably to pierce. So because, you know, something sort of quite sharp which is um quite obvious when it comes to quills so you can see i mean i sort of love this really about ancient writing methods because it takes you right back to that civilization and they used what was important to them and that kind of thing and i'm sure i think we're going to do a bonus episode where we look at things like paper book book, that kind of thing, and just how rooted they are in ancient civilizations. So yeah, so that's the quill. We have, well, cursive writing. Explain that to me. What is cursive and non-cursive writing?

So cursive writing is one that is joined up, essentially. So cursive scripts, you know, when children start learning to write, they don't join their characters up. And then eventually, they learn how to sort of add those flourishes and those joins. And that goes back to a Latin verb, carere, meaning to run. And boy, that has given us so many different words in English. So you have a career, you have a course, you have a current, you have to incur, to conquer, to recur, you have an excursion. Oh, loads and loads of things. And the whole idea is that, you know, if you have the cursor on your screen, it's like a running messenger on your screen. That was the original meaning of it. It runs where you want to take it. And yeah, that's also behind the cursive script because

it runs together. So cursive writing is simply joined up, what we used to call joined up writing. We got it joined up, didn't we? That's true. We did. This is not the place to go into the names of different scripts. We could do a whole episode on that, where they all come from, Boldoni, Bold and all that. What are we writing in?

Are we writing in a Roman hand? What's the difference between italic and normal writing when you're doing handwriting? So you can see the importance of the Roman Empire, obviously, in all of these, because italic means in the manner of Italy, italicos, from Italia. And then the writing sense dates from the early 17th century, but it was a specific type of handwriting that was modelled on Italian handwriting, which was cursive and sloping, and it had sort of pointed letters and that kind of thing. And then the non-Italic, as you say, is called Roman. And Roman is, well, we've got the Roman alphabet, for example, but it's a plain,

upright kind used in ordinary print. So that's distinguished from Italic and from Gothic. And it simply means from Rome, because that was the Roman style. Very good. Of course, there's a famous line in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, where Malvolio is fooled, gulled into thinking that he's received a letter from Olivia, the lady he pines over, but she has no interest in him. And he picks it up and he recognises the handwriting and he says, I think we do know the sweet Roman hand, meaning that he recognises her handwriting. So, Italian and Roman have existed for hundreds of years, but it's Gothic.

It's a more recent script name, I would have thought, but maybe not. Yeah, actually, I don't actually know the history of the Gothic script in terms of, you know, obviously we have Gothic architecture that you'll find between 12th and 16th centuries and that kind of thing. And Gothic script is derived from that time, I'm guessing. So it's a sort of angular style of handwriting

and it's got the broad vertical downstrokes. And it includes the fractura script that a lot of early German texts were written in. And that's from the Latin fractura, fracture, because of its angularity. And that, of course, became very much associated with Nazi propaganda. So it was kind of very much harnessed by them because they saw it as this sort of pure Teutonic script. Well, handwriting does tell a story, you know. You can read people.

There are people who do. What is it called when people interpret your handwriting? It's graphology. A graphologist. Years ago, I had my handwriting interpreted. It wasn't very difficult because my handwriting is big and loopy. But very elegant. I thought it was quite elegant.

And I felt it was quite easy to interpret the sort of person I was from my big, large, loopy handwriting. But they went into a lot of detail, the way you crossed your T's and your I's and all of that. I think mine's quite reflective of my personality in that I have these sort of sudden flourishes. So I will go large and then I'll sort of retreat again, which I think is quite emblematic of me, really.

I have to say your handwriting is very elegant and very attractive. Well, that's very sweet of you. Why is it the doctors have this reputation for an appalling script? Yeah, I actually don't know. Maybe because they're just doing so many prescriptions and so much writing. And of course, nowadays it would be done online anyway. Good. Look, script, prescription, this all script. Script means what? Remind me.

So script goes back to the Latin scribere, simply meaning to write. To prescript is to, I mean, almost it's to kind of write before, but it's essentially kind of directing something is the idea that you are, you know, a prescript was a law or a command. So when a doctor fills out a prescription, they're commanding the pharmacist to law or a command. So when a doctor fills out a prescription, they are commanding the pharmacist to give you this medicine. And actually, do you know, do you ever noticed on prescriptions, they have capital R, sometimes a little X, but an R. Have you ever seen that? No, I've never looked closely at the prescription. Oh, okay. I think the abbreviation within medicine for a prescription is R and then X.

And the big R actually stands for recipe, because recipe in Latin means take. So obviously, you know, you are taking this. It's instructions for taking a particular medicine. And then it became a set of instructions for preparing a particular dish. But it's not really take actually, it's more receive. It's kind of receive these instructions and then go ahead and fulfil them. That's very neat. We haven't touched on the, what you write on. We've done the nib and the pen, but parchment, vellum, paper? Yeah. Should we come back to that after the break?

Let's take a little break and then come back with more, well, the things we write upon. So quick break now and then more on that. I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And this is Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. We are a new show breaking down the anime news, views, and shows you care about each and every week. I can't think of a better studio to bring something like this to life. Yeah, I agree. We're covering all the classics. I don't know a lot about Godzilla, which I do, but I'm trying to pretend that I don't.

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You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. say something rhymes with purple and incidentally you know Susie we're back on stage soon we are tell us more at the Cambridge Arts Theatre I'm glad I'm telling you put it in your diary please we want you to be there it's 2 30 apparently this time we're normally at two but it's 2 30 tickets are now on sale 28th of May at the Cambridge Arts Theatre a theatre I know well because in 1986 I put on a play there that I'd written with a man called Julian Slade, who wrote a famous musical, Salad Days. We wrote a show about the life and times of A.A. Milne. And Christopher Robin, as a child, appeared in our show.

And he was played by the young Aled Jones. Oh, wow. So for me, it'll be a trip down memory lane. I just wanted to say that I have been to two theaters, which you've told me about in terms of their beauty and you were not wrong. So I went to Richmond, which is stunning. And I went to Harrogate, which is also just gorgeous. So yeah, there are so many beautiful, beautiful venues in this country. The Cambridge Arts Theatre is not as old as a Frank Matcham Theatre, but it still

is full of history and heritage. And it'll be full of us on the 28th of May. So come and be a purple person. Our theme is going to be sleep. We'll do our best to keep you awake. Let's hope so. Oh, incidentally, Susie, I'm listening to our podcasts now late at night. Oh. Which is lovely.

And it does send you to sleep. No, it doesn't send me to sleep. It rather stimulates me. But because I don't take long in the shower late at night, I'm playing the podcast at speed and a half. I can't do it all with this. And I have to say. That makes me laugh.

Should we be recommending this to our listeners? Well, I don't know. It really works terribly well. I mean, we're really sharp at speed and a half. We really seem to be on top of it. You seem to know so much so quickly. I ask you a question and as soon as it's out of my mouth, you've got this reply.

And people must think, my gosh, this girl is brilliant. Well, you are brilliant. But you don't seem to know so much so quickly I ask you a question as soon as out of my mouth you've got this reply and people think my gosh this girl is brilliant well you are brilliant but you don't seem to think about anything I press the button by mistake that does this the first time and then you thought I'm going to stick with this but going back a bit we're talking today about writing I suppose calligraphy beautiful writing and the best writing is done on the best paper in my view paper vellum parchment where do these words come from? Well, I think I mentioned, didn't I, that these all look back to the ancient world, which I love. So paper and papyrus are relatives, really,

because they both go back to a Greek word, papyrus. And papyrus, the reed, was basically the material that the ancient Egyptians used to provide writing material really so the pithy stems of that plant so yeah papyrus actually means paper reed really and that's where that comes from book purple people will remember actually is linked to the German buche which means a beech tree because it was from the bark of that tree that ancient writing materials were made which I think is also quite beautiful and parchment actually goes back to Parthica Pellis in Latin which was sort of Parthian skin it was a kind of scarlet leather and papyrus was the usual material used but people sometimes also use treated animal skin as a writing material. And

that was said to have been invented by a king of Pergamon, an ancient city. And yes, it was kind of writing material from here and from Parthian. And Parthia, I'm sure we've talked about this on the show, but a parting shot originally was a Parthian shot. Do you remember this? No, this is my problem. I don't have much that you tell me. In some ways, it's a good thing because it means you can tell it to me again and it feels fresh.

Oh, well, I'm going completely off script here because it's got nothing to do with writing. But Parthia was an ancient kingdom, really. So I think you'd find it in present day Iran. And their horsemen were incredibly skilled warriors. And one of their strategies was to leave a battlefield as if they were retreating. So they would turn their horses round and gallop off. So the enemy relaxed thinking that's it, they've surrendered. But actually the Parthian horsemen would then turn round in their saddles and fire their arrows, shoot their

arrows from there, killing many. So that was a Parthian shot. And obviously, Parthia became lost in the midst of time. And so parting shot seemed to make just as much sense. But it goes back to that ancient battle method. That's a most ingenious story. I love that one. Now, you can answer something for me. I have heard this phrase and I think it does occur even in Shakespeare and I've never known what it means. Inkhorn, inkhorn words. Oh yes, yes. Okay, so inkhorn really is, you know what I was talking about, the conflict between those who are happy with language evolving and those who would rather it stay still. So an ink horn word is one that is newly coined by writers, so it's a neologism as we would say, and frequently borrowed from another language. And long, very latinate words that were created

by scholarly writers became known as ink horn terms, and it derives from the early ink containers that were made of animal horn and these lengthy words took up much more ink than their shorter old English counterparts so one example would be we have fire from old English it's a Germanic word whereas from Latin we have a conflagration so something like a conflagration would have been thought of as an inkhorn word sort of unnecessarily long which was essentially you know that that sort of conflict between the neologizers who thought that new words would enrich the english language those that just sort of thought no we don't need this this is this is just actually confusing things and we need to stick with plain english and you'll find that a lot won't you these days as well that sort of people who say well why do we have to use 10 words when you can

use three? So yeah, today I think we would use inkhorn words for those that are primarily used in academic writing. But for a while, it was the source of great contention. And Shakespeare would have been caught up in this because, of course, he was such a neologizer, or at least he popularized a lot of neologisms that were around at the time. And there would have been people that just thought these were newfangled words that were completely unnecessary, and we could just make do with what we had. Wonderful. You are brilliant. Now, look, we'll make another episode all about fonts. Yes.

So you can tell me about Calibrian, New Times Roman, and all the rest of it. So let's leave that. And maybe we'll talk some more about this in one of our Purple Club episodes. Yes. Can I just add one more? I'm just going to add one very, very quick one. You can add as many more. This is your show. Add as many more as you want. No, it's the word album, because you wouldn't necessarily think of an album nowadays as something on which to write. We think of it as a sort of music album, you know, as was. But actually, it was once a blank tablet. So I suppose we have photo albums, which are blank, and then we put photos in. But the idea which was a tablet on which public

notices were written in Roman times, often made of marble. But it looks back to the Latin albus, meaning white. So that white was used to mean blank and empty until somebody wrote something upon it. And it's linked to albumen, the white of an egg, and also albion, the old word for Britain or England, the literary term, because that looks back to the White Cliffs of Dover. This is gripping. I have photograph albums going up to about the year 2000. And then we stopped because with the advent of keeping our photographs on our phones and on our computers, you don't have albums. My parents kept separate albums for each. They had five children and there was a photo album for each child. And it tells the story of that child from, you know, from birth to about 15,

16, 17. And it's just a lovely record in one place. I love a proper photo album. My daughter, one of my daughters, every year, she does kind of photo album of that year. She takes all the photographs from her computer and from her phone and gets them printed up in a beautiful book. I think it's quite expensive to do. She says it's relatively easy to do. It takes time, but you take it all from, take the pictures down and put them into a programme. It's a wonderful thing to have. Yeah, but it's a brilliant idea.

It's a brilliant thing to have. I feel like one of my daughters has a record of her life in albums and the other one doesn't. She'd have to go to the computer. And yeah, that is quite sad, really. Did you keep scrapbooks as a girl? Oh, I did. I love scrapbooks. I mean, they're basically books in which you paste scraps from your life. Postcards, photographs, in my case, menus, bus tickets, little souvenirs. Sugar

packets, empty sugar packets. I have no idea why I put those in my scrapbook, but I did. I used to collect the, I used to go to France a lot on sort of French exchanges when I was a little boy. And there was cheese called vache qui rit. There were little triangular wedges of cheese. Like Derry Lee. on them and I collected these by the score and loved them and I kept them in an album too. Anyway. Oh, we were very sweet. If you have accounts of what you kept in your scrapbook, whether you keep photo albums or whether you've got any queries about the world of writing, paper, all of that, do let us know. We love to hear from you. You get in touch via, well, could they write us an old-fashioned letter? I don't know that they could. They've got to get in touch by email, typing it up. I'm not sure that that's the right way to do it.

But anyway, at the moment, it's still purple at somethingelse.com. When we find a postal address, we will let you know. Who's been in touch with us this week, Susie? Well, we have Ian from Essex to kick us off. Hi, Susie and Giles. It just occurred to me that the word cryptocurrency contains the word crypt, which of course refers to the chamber underneath a church is there any relation between these two seemingly wildly

different things many thanks for your excellent podcast ian from essex yes it is all connected so um you refer to go back to the g word krypta, which meant a vault. And from that idea of a vault, you get the idea of something hidden, really. So a crypt in the sort of traditional sense, that makes sense. Quite often it's underground, it's hidden. And crypto essentially also means concealed or secret. So a cryptogram is something that is written and is concealed. And cryptocurrency is a digital currency, as we know. And it's, as I understand it, its records are maintained by a system that uses cryptography

rather than any kind of central server. So it's all encrypted, which is another word, obviously, that is linked to. And there's one more word in here that you might not add to this family, but it does belong there as well. And that's apocryphal. And apocryphal, we have the apocrypha, which were essentially biblical or related writings in ancient times that were not seen as being part of the accepted canon of the scripture. And from there came the idea of writing or reports that were not considered genuine. Thus, they were thought to be hidden writings. They were thought to be hidden away,

and their authenticity was then questioned. Very good. Thank you for the question, Ian, and thank you, Susie, for the answer. There's another one here from James. Hi, Susie and Jars. I've long wondered about this. As I sit here, I was about to take a sip of tea, long wondered about this. As I sit here, I was about to take a sip of tea, only to find my cup empty. Is there a word for the feeling of disappointment for unexpectedly lacking a beverage? I use the term melon coffee. I like that. Thank you. And I wish you a full teacup, James. I love melon coffee. I think melon coffee is very good. And it also reminds me of procaffeinating. Do you remember that? Which is procaffeinating is to put everything on hold until you've had sufficient cups of coffee.

I love that. I suffer from permanent melon coffee because I gave it up 20 years ago. Oh, yes. When I cut out caffeine. But I do still miss it. Oh, I miss the idea of it. Anyway, clever, James.

Thank you for that. Oh, now we have a voice note. Never mind people not writing letters they're not even sending emails now they're actually speaking to us across the air let's hear from paul bradbury hi suzy and giles i have a question relating to the game of snooker i'm recording this message as i watch the annual world snooker Championships on television here in the UK. And I've always known from my earliest childhood that the individual games of snooker that make up a match were known as frames. But it's never occurred to me until now to ask why that was.

And I wondered if the English dictionary could shed any light on the origin of why individual games of snooker are called frames. Really love the podcast. Keep up the good work. Paul Bradbury in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Well, I love that. So first of all, snooker, we think snooker itself was a bit of an insult really to describe inexperienced military personnel, which is a bit strange. So you might say you've been snookered which kind of almost harks back to that idea and because snooker was much played by new recruits in the British army particularly in India when they were stationed out there it came to be applied to the game that

it's very sort of misty the origins of that but it's quite interesting frame is not as interesting as you might think because I think it literally just looks back to the frame that is used to set the balls out right at the beginning of the game and then it was applied to a round or the particular game itself I have to say I'm not a snooker fan which is becoming incredibly obvious as I talk but this championship I have gathered from the news is absolutely fundamental I think Mark Selby scored maximum break of 147 for the first time in a championship I do know that which was extraordinary but I wish I could say more about how it sort of came across but I think it literally is all to do with that frame that is actually physically used in the game and then was applied to the game itself. Well, you weren't snookered by that, were you? Well, I was a bit because I don't know the game very well. But when does that phrase being snookered reply to other things come into general

currency? Oh, that's a really Yeah, let me look it up for you. So in the OED to snooker someone as in to play someone in an impossible position to stymie them 1889 and it says if each pool ball is covered by a pyramid ball the player is said to be snookered so from that game of uh you know being in an impossible position in the game itself it came to mean just you know not being able to move essentially goodness by a whisker it's a 19th century turn of phrase yeah just about yeah 1889 now you like old words, you like new words, you like words of every kind. And every week you introduce us to three words that you think are rather special and you'd like to share with us. What have you got as your trio this week, Susie

Lind? Okay, so I have, well, the first one I just like because some of the comedy shows that I work on, the applause, not for me, but for the comedians, is such that people stamp their feet. People ever done that to you? Just loved your show so much that you get a lot of stamping of feet? No, I have had the odd stampede of people leaving the theatre. But no, the stamping their feet, that does sound exciting. Well, it's just called roughing. There is a word for it. To rough is to applaud with your feet, which I quite like. And is that spelt with an F or with a U-F? Oh, to rough. How interesting. Yeah. Then we have a dulcarnon. Now, this is a really strange sounding phrase. It's D-U-L-C-A-R-N-O-N. And it basically comes via many different permutations, a Latin word for having two horns. And it's linked to the horn of

a dilemma because it means not so much a dilemma itself, but somebody in a dilemma. So if you're really not sure what to do, and you don't know which way to turn, you are in a dulcanon. You are a dulcanon, I should say, which I quite like that there is a word for it. And just simply describing my brain at the moment is the word embrangled. It sounds a bit like entangled, and that will lead you in the right direction, because it means to be sort of entangled, but in a very confused, a perplexed kind of way, to be embrangled. And that's pretty much how I feel quite a lot of the time. Well, thank you for those three words, embrangled. I think my mind has been a bit like that always, but it's nice that there's now a word for it. I've just come back from Ireland,

Susie. I spent four wonderful days in Ireland and I visited Dublin and I visited Cork. I went to Cork because my wife's family, one of their most distinguished members, is an Irish writer called Frank O'Connor, a great short story writer but also wrote a famous autobiography. A remarkable man. And so we were going back to the family home in Cork. But we went to Dublin too where I recommend when you next go a new museum which is called the Museum of Literature Island, which they pronounce Mollie

or Molly. Maybe it's said Molly because it echoes Molly Bloom, because James Joyce is central to the story of that particular museum. It's a wonderful creation, a wonderful place. And before I went there, a friend of mine, Angela Murphy, gave me a little book of Irish poetry. And I came across in it, I'm going to be sharing some Irish poems, I think, over the next few weeks, because I've loved dipping into this book. And I came across a poem by one of my favourite writers, who is Irish.

Some of the greatest writers' wits, particularly uses of language, were Irish, from Oscar Wilde through Jonathan Swift, to this man, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751 to 1816, famous as a playwright, of course, the author of The Rivals, a wonderful play, School for Scandal, another glorious play. And this poem, which is quite a cheeky poem, it's about a daughter.

And I'm assuming that Richard Brinsley Sheridan had a daughter. And it's called If a Daughter You Have. And basically, it's about an obstinate girl. And I'm not dedicating this to either of my brilliant daughters. But some of you who have daughters may recognize some of this. I don't know. I don't recognize my daughters in this, but I love the poem. If a daughter you have, she's the plague of your life. No peace shall you know, though you've buried your wife. At twenty, she mocks at the duty you taught her. Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter! Sighing and whining, dying and pining.

Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter! When scarce in their teens, they have wit to perplex us. With letters and lovers forever they vex us. While each still rejects the fair suitor you've brought her. Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter. Wrangling and jangling, flouting and pouting. Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter. Well, I'm going to stick up for my daughters. They would not appreciate that at all. And I'm never going to go to the trouble of finding them a suitor, I have to say.

No, you won't. But he may have found them suitable suitors. But what interested me about the poem, too, is it includes the word teens. They were scarce in their teens. And this would be Sheridan, you know, writing in the 1780s, 90s. That's extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah. There you are.

So it's a poem called If a Daughter You Have. Some people with daughters may secretly recognise some aspects of this because there is an element, some people say, of the teenage daughter not always being the easiest. But I know yours were very easy in their teens. Well, let's remember sons as well I'm going to address the balance there but thank you yeah that is interesting I'm going to go away and look up the first mention of teams because that's the sort of

nerd that I am thank you to everyone so much for listening to us today it's always a joy to have your company and if you have a struggle with any of the spelling in my trio, by the way, just to say it is in the programme description, blurb, and keep following us. Please keep recommending us to other people. And please consider to the Purple Plus Club where you can listen. Add free to some exclusive bonus episodes

on more language. Something Rhymes With Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Deo with additional production from Chris Skinner, Hannah Newton, Jen Mistry, and, well, Olivia is rather special. She makes a contribution that's unique.

So does, if I may say so, Richie. Yes. I don't really want to mention the unmentionable. He's not here anyway, so let's just leave him out.