Something Rhymes with Purple - Pingere

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

This week Susie and Gyles dive into the linguistic canvas of words. Join use as we explore the rich tapestry of illustrations and pictures as we trace the origins of these expressive terms. Together let’s uncover the hidden strokes of meaning as we paint a linguistic masterpiece, exploring the artistry behind the words we use to capture and convey the visual world. 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:  Eleutheromania: A frantic desire for freedom. Selcouth: Unfamiliar, unusual, rare; strange, marvellous, wonderful. Snuggery: A cosy or comfortable place, especially someone's private room or den. Gyles' poem this week was 'Musée des Beaux Arts' by 'W. H. Auden' About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience, and the Purple people often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language, where they came from, their joys, their idiosyncrasies, their gnarliness, and their occasional cause of irritation. But not often irritation, because I and Giles Brandes, my co-host,

absolutely revel in the joy of words. And I revel in the joy of you, Giles. I can see you on my screen looking well, but you have got a bit of a cough, haven't you? Because you've been touring. I've got a bit of a cough and I'm trying to shake it off. And I'm going to go to the doctor to see if I need antibiotics. But it's quite amusing because I'm also touring a show at the moment.

And occasionally, not at every performance, but I do occasionally have a coughing fit during the show. And I say to the audience, because it sounds worse than it feels, I say to the audience, this is the moment than it feels, I say to the audience, this is the moment, if you've got mobile phones, get them out. Because if I die on the stage tonight,

I want to be a global internet sensation. I want to go virally. So if the virus gets me, I want to go viral as well. So I urged them to get their cameras ready. And I said, you know, feel free to push your way to the front to get the best pictures. And off they go. And they're really quite excited. And then they're a little bit disappointed when I take a sip of water and I quickly seem to recover. I think they want me to die.

No. Yes. Well, I tell you, do you remember an entertainer called Cyril Fletcher, Well, I tell you, do you remember an entertainer called Cyril Fletcher? A famous British entertainer from the 1930s right through to the 1970s or 80s. A lovely man. Was he rather large, or am I getting mixed up with an MP called Cyril? Well, Cyril Smith, who was a very large Member of Parliament. Yes. A Liberal Member of Parliament.

No, I don't know Cyril Fletcher. We don't talk about him. But Cyril Fletcher we do talk about because he was a delightful entertainer, married to an English film star called Betty Estelle. People may remember him appearing towards the end of his life on Esther Ransom's program, That's Life. He would sit in the corner and read amusing clippings from the newspaper. his poems that he wrote and performed. And he was a delightful human being. And he explained to me when I told him that I worked for him, he owned a speaker's agency, and he would send people out to do public speaking. And I told him I'd gone to a dinner.

This is 50 years ago when I was in my 20s. I'd gone to a dinner and somebody had died at the dinner. He said, oh, that's marvelous news. Were you telling a joke? I said, actually, I was. He said, oh, that's marvelous news. Were you telling a joke? I said, actually, I was. He said, that's brilliant. We'll put on the billing for you. With Giles Brand, they die laughing.

Marvelous. He was very delighted about that. And I said, well, I don't think we really do that. He said, well, I can and I will. And he said, I never feel bad about people dying in the audience yet because when I was appearing in Pantomime, he was famous as Mother Goose, he said. I was doing Pantomime. I was doing Pantomime. It was somewhere like Cambridge, I think, or maybe the Isle of Wight. Anyway, he was appearing in Pantomime, he was famous as Mother Goose. He said, I was doing Pantomime. I was doing Pantomime.

It was somewhere like Cambridge, I think, or maybe the Isle of Wight. Anyway, he was appearing in Pantomime. And while he was appearing, a woman up in the gallery laughed so much that she gave birth. And he said, isn't that fantastic? He said, and the poor woman, she said, oh, I've given birth. And she said, I'm going to name. I'm sure she didn't quite say, oh, I've given birth. And she said, I'm going to name. I'm sure she didn't quite say, oh, I've given birth. I'm sure there was quite a lot of stuff that came before there.

There was a lot before there. When they got in touch later, in fact, she gave birth in the gallery and then was taken away to either hospital or home. All that was resolved. But he sent her some flowers and a message. And she then came back and met Cyril Fletcher. And she said, we wanted to name our child after you since we were laughing so much at you. But she said, we don't feel Cyril is a very good name for a girl.

I don't know that it's a very good name for a boy either. So they said, we're going to call it after your wife, Betty. So the baby was called Betty. Isn't that nice? Yes, that is lovely. Betty is a gorgeous name, actually. And we were only the other day talking about Betty's Tea Rooms, and we love it even more because of that.

So today, I thought it would be really fun, given that you have just come back from Venice, where you did finally have a bit of a break for your daughter's beautiful wedding. And we were talking the other day, you and I, about our favourite galleries. And I know that one of them is in Italy. And I thought it would be lovely to talk about art, to talk about pictures, to talk about illustrations, etc. What do you think? Almost all of my favourite galleries are in Italy. In Venice,

of course, the great Accademia, the Guggenheim Collection. But I've been to art galleries all over the world, from California to St. Petersburg, where one of the finest art galleries in the world is there. I love painting. I like doing it. I love looking at painting. Where does the very word painting come from, Susie Dent? Painting is very old. We got it from old French, as we so often do. But ultimately, it goes back to a Latin word, pingere, meaning to paint. Same thing.

So it's meant pretty much the same thing as being constant throughout its history. Illustration, though, is a lovely one because it wears its heart on its sleeve. It's one of those words that if you actually look at it for a few seconds you think oh of course because illustrate means to add luster oh isn't that gorgeous that is lovely but it kind of you know i think quite often we change the pronunciation of things so that they are hiding in plain sight and the example i always give you is secretary because at the heart of that is secret because secretaries used to keep secrets and breakfast um a lot of kids are like oh it's when we break our fast but we've changed the pronunciation so that obvious etymology is lost i think illustration is one of those as well

i love a good illustration you've been very lucky in your new children's book you've got the most wonderful illustrator who's done pictures for you harriet harriet hobday has just done the most glorious illustrations of the happy words in my book yeah i'm really grateful to her good so we love an illustrator illustrators work in different forms books used to be illustrated with engravings i suppose that's gravure i end graving that's going to be the origins that could be quite easy to i would would have thought, unravel. Tell me. Yes. Well, so it came actually via German. It sounds quite French, doesn't it? And of course, it travels through lots of European languages, including French.

But ultimately, it is linked to a German word, graben, meaning to bury. The idea is digging. You are sort of digging on the page when you're engraving. So that's the idea. So, yeah, a bit of a strange one, but it makes sense if you think about it. When you were a girl, did you do any art at school? Were you an illustrator? Did you paint? Did you engrave? I wasn't very good. You know how they say that looking at someone's doodle is the key to their soul and you can see exactly what they're thinking. I just doodled like so many other

people, just cubes. I would just do endless cubes and I have no idea what that says about me but I was never particularly good at art even though I really longed to be likewise we were lucky enough to have a pottery kiln at school and we had a wonderful pottery teacher and I just loved the feel the texture of the clay the sort of the whole ritual of that and the potter's wheel and I even got a potter's wheel for Christmas one that used had a treadle and you sort of peddled yourself and it would go round and round and round but I can't remember if I've told you this story but of a class of I don't know 25 girls we all made our own little pottery ceramic figures which then were fired in the kiln I did a little pig that was orange and purple, as one does. And a week later, when we went to a pottery class,

our teacher said, I'm afraid there was one pig that exploded in the kiln. Yeah, guess who's. So, yeah, I was just never very good, clearly. I don't know if I had too much air in it, I don't know what, but I clearly just made it spontaneously combustible. How about you? Well, I loved art. I loved the smell of the paint.

I loved playing around in the art room. We had a wonderful art teacher at my school called Mr. Cash, Christopher Cash. And he was very amusing. He smoked all the time. I think you could in those days and be a teacher. He was tall. He was elegant. He had a slightly drooping bow tie. But I wasn't good enough, really, to be one of his favourites. But I've discovered painting again in old age. I'd done a few pictures recently, and I'm rather enjoying it. I was very flattered. My daughter, Scythrid, whose wedding I went to in Venice the other day,

she very sweetly said for a wedding present, she'd like one of my paintings. So it's a nice thing to say, isn't it? How do you know you painted? Is there anything you don't do? Well, look, we can all do most things. And I say that to people who say, I could cook if I was,

and you've got to be interested to really do it well. But I mean, you know, I'm the person who has done a number of things. I mean, I've milked a cow and I've landed Concorde, the aeroplane, in New York. So these things are available to us all if you get the opportunity i like to paint a picture now painting a picture you've explained about painting a picture where does that word come from same actually completely the same latin verb

of pingare to paint and we didn't just get paint from that we got picture and we also got pigment so it was quite a productive one image uh which again is of course something that we talk about a lot whether it's photography or whether it's art that's the french word for picture isn't it image is a picture in french yes that's true actually um and ultimately again from latin it goes back to imago which meant an imitation or a likeness which gave us imitation it also gave us imagine, because imaginare in Latin meant to form an image of something, to represent something. So, when you imagine something, you are presenting a picture to yourself.

And does the French word dessin, which means drawing in French, give us design? Yeah, that's linked. So, it actually, again, I mean, honestly, you can tell the influence of Latin and French here. And very often when it comes to culture, we do look back to French and we do look back to Latin. Designare in Latin for the Romans meant to draw up a plan. So we think that the word design initially was used as the sense of a plan on a paper. And in fact, the characters apparently used to write the word for design in Chinese have exactly this meaning, to draw up on paper. And when you're drawing, is it because you're drawing a pencil or a pen or a paintbrush across the page? Is that what the draw comes from? Absolutely. And that in turn is linked to the Latinin trahare which was an incredibly productive word meaning to draw but it

is has relatives in um germanic as well so we have tragen and dragen in dutch um which also gave us draft in both the senses which is all about drawing air or it's all about drawing a sort of basic design for something the first design a draft so you can see it's quite sort of tangled webs all of these one that you probably wouldn't guess at just i don't do um do you draw on a canvas you have lots of them blank canvases i have canvases uh which i put on an easel i have paints which i put on a palette so these are words with which i'm more familiar but i don't think i know the origins of any of them, actually. Well, let's start with easel, because that's actually really fun.

But you know how we have a clothes horse, as if it's a horse carrying stuff? Well, easel has the same sort of idea, because it goes back to the German easel, meaning an ass or a donkey. Because it's just sort of supporting something, which again, you know, looks back to them as working animals. So that's easel. A pallet is, now that is straight from French, but goes back to them as working animals so that's easel a palette is um now that is is straight from french but goes back to the latin palette meaning a spade because a spade or a shovel is kind of palette shaped if you like and canvas believe it or not is a sibling of cannabis

because cannabis which is um also known as hemp gave its name to the fabric because both go back to a Latin word, cannabis, exactly that. And canvas that occurs in political campaigning when you are canvassing someone actually looks back to the use of the verb, meaning to toss someone as a punishment on a canvas sheet. So to just sort of toss them about and you know you'd be actually quite painful if you were being flung about in the air also part of a game sometimes but because of this idea of sort of being bruised it came to mean to beat someone or to criticize them severely which is quite a strange sort of step on the way to the idea of discussing an issue and then proposing it for discussion but when you're canvassing for, I think the idea is that you're putting it up for discussion. Thankfully, not punishment, but the idea is that things are tossed and turned nowadays in our, you know,

in our minds and in our mouths rather than literally on a canvas sheet. Strange, isn't it? Yeah, though the electorate can punish you and quite cruelly, as I know, to my own cost. Yeah. Give me some of the materials that people work in what is gouache oh gouache yes so this is a method of painting that uses pigments that ground in water and then that thickens it becomes quite gluey and that simply goes back to an italian word this time a guazzo meaning the same thing i don't know what the ultimate origin of that is actually i need to look that up but it came to us via Italian. We also have chiaroscuro, which is light and shade, isn't it, in drawing and painting. And that goes back to Italian as well. Chiaro meaning clear and bright,

and then oscuro meaning dark or obscure. Lovely. You used the word chiaroscuro there, and it made me think suddenly of my favourite painting, and I'm going to try and remember who it's by. I saw it in St Petersburg, and it's the only time I've seen a painting, and I was immediately moved to tears. I think it's a painting of the prodigal son, the return of the prodigal son. I'm going to look this up for a moment, OK?

I'm going to put St Petersburg. It's a famous, it's a very, very, very, very famous artist it's by and we'll see. Okay, so I will talk about my favourite paintings. I just have so many. I love Van Gogh. I love the way that, I don't know if it's called impasto, I'm not an art expert, but the sort of the layering of the colour on the canvas is beautiful. And actually there is a fantastic Scottish artist called John Larry Morrison or Joe Lomo who does the Scottish Isles and they're very Van Gogh-like. I love Whistler, Whistler's mother, just an absolutely beautiful painting. I love Howard

Hodgkin who was one of the first painters I fell in love with because when I was travelling after I was maybe one summer actually, when I was at university, just interrailing to various places, I went to Venice and they had an art exhibition called the Biennale there, and Howard Hodgkin was representing Britain. I love, talked about Jack Coulter before,

who is a fantastic modern artist, who has synesthesia, so he paints according to music. He hears music as colour and shape, and the results are just beautiful. So, I have many. You have many, and I share the ones you like. I mean, you've got a broad taste there. The picture I was thinking of is the one picture I remember seeing

and being moved to tears by it, is The Return of the Prodigal Son. It's an oil painting by Rembrandt, of course. Created in the 1660s. It's now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where I saw it. It's one of the great Dutch master's final works, likely apparently to be completed within a few years of his death. Anyway, that movement. But I like painting from all periods. I mean, you mentioned Whistler. His British contemporary was John Singer Sargent. Yes. I adore his portrait.

Oh, yes. Absolutely. No, I'm with you. And I once had an exciting experience. I thought I was going to be painted by Lucian Freud. Oh, really? Well, that would have been interesting. Well, it would have been interesting. It would have been interesting and extraordinary.

One of my favourite modern paintings is Lucian Freud's portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles in his soldier's uniform, in his dress mess dress uniform with the jacket undone. It's a fantastic painting. It was sold for something like, I'm not exaggerating, something

like $100 million at Christie's in New York a few years ago. A quite fantastic amount of money. And it is a fantastic painting. Anyway, Lucian Freud, when he was alive, used to dine regularly at a restaurant in London's Piccadilly called the Wolseley. And he always sat at the same corner table. And one night, my wife and I were also having dinner there sitting two or three tables away from him and my wife went to the loo and I was just gazing around the room and I saw Lucian

Freud looking at me this is some years ago when I was younger and prettier looking at me and smiling at me and then I realized that he was actually beckoning me towards him his little finger was sort of cocked and he was beckoning me towards him. I thought, this is unbelievable. I'm going to end up on Lucian Freud's canvas. I'm going to be painted by the great Lucian Freud. So was he readily recognisable as well? Oh, yes, of course. I mean, if you know anything about art, if you're interested in art, you would have recognised Lucian Freud. And he didn't, he wasn't a shy person. He was quite happy to be sitting there. And that was always his table. And one, he was referred to as Lucian Freud's table. He was quite happy to be sitting there.

And that was always his table. And it was referred to as Lucian Freud's table. Anyway, this beckoning figure. So I got up and slowly I moved from my table towards his. And just as I was reaching his table, from behind me came the most beautiful blonde girl you've ever seen, who was sitting at the table just behind mine. So he'd been beckoning her and not me.

What did you do? Did you just sort of nonchalantly kind of walk past? I did. I nonchalantly walked past and walked down to the basement where I joined my wife outside the toilet. And when we came back up, Newsom, Freud and the girl were engaged in conversation. And my wife and I, we were engaged in conversation too. I have had my portrait painted.

Have you had your portrait painted? Never. Oh, come on. No, I I have had my portrait painted. Have you had your portrait painted? Never. Oh, come on. No, I've never had my portrait. I don't think I'd want my portrait painted. Well, I say that. There was a lovely Countdown viewer, actually, who did send in a sort of pop art version of me and I think Harold Vorderman and Richard Whiteley when we worked on the show together. But that's as far as it went. i would i don't think i would find it almost impossible to sit for a portrait because i am so restless well i've sat for many portraits

i think we've got time to talk about that today but i've sat for many portraits for interesting people my favorite artist was a man called john bratby in terms of people who paid pin portraits of me who used in the 1950s 60s ands. He was a famous painter in his day. Not so well regarded now, though I think his time will come again. And John Brappy would write to people. He'd find their names and who's who, or even the radio times and say,

I see in you a unique personality. Would you come to my studio and be painted? And my wife will supply some bacon sandwiches on the side and no obligation to buy. And you'd go down to his studio in Hastings and you would be painted and he'd painted all sorts of people from you know from the queen mother uh upwards and downwards every variety of person he had painted and he painted me uh I didn't buy the portrait I didn't particularly like it but he painted me and I became friends with him and And what I noticed while

he was doing the painting is that every few minutes as he was painting, he would call out to his wife in the kitchen and he would call out, he'd go, blue paper, blue paper. And she'd come into the room and she would give him a little scrap of blue paper. And he would then look at it and then scramble it up and throw it onto the floor and carry on painting. And this went on all day. And in the afternoon, he went out for a cup of tea or to go to the loo. And I thought, I'm going to see what's going on, what these blue papers are. Oh, yeah. That must be what you wanted to do.

I picked up the blue paper and I opened them and opened several of them. And the blue papers read as follows. John, this is your best picture ever. Keep going, John. This is a wonderful painting. And he was looking. Who has written these? He was looking for encouragement from his wife to keep going. And she kept coming into the room.

She was called Patty. And they were a lovely couple. They'd met through the Lonely Hearts column in Private Eye. He was a novelist as well as an artist. He did landscapes as well. His favorite subject was Patty. And I remember going to a retrospective of his work at the national portrait gallery not long before he died and finding that most of the

paintings in this retrospective were portraits of him by him of his lovely wife patty often wearing leather so oh you have to tell us then what you actually think of the portrait what was it like in the end? Well, maybe it was good. Maybe that's why I didn't like it. I did acquire, he also did a portrait of our mutual friend, you knew him as well, Kenneth Williams. Wonderful portrait.

I didn't actually, no, he came on Countdown before my time. I never met Kenneth Williams, sadly. Oh, well, he did a brilliant portrait of Kenneth Williams, which I think has been lost. Nobody knows where it is. And it really was stunning. And he did do a portrait of my Williams, which I think has been lost. Nobody knows where it is. And it really was stunning. And he did do a portrait of my friend Cyril Fletcher. He did a portrait of Cyril Fletcher, which I did buy because I liked it very much.

And we have some paintings by him of scenes in Venice. So he was a fine portrait painter. But I've been lucky enough to be on the Sky Arts Program Portrait Painter of the Year. So I've had portraits of me done. In fact, I had three people painting my portrait at the same time. And I've also had my portrait painted by a man called Andrew Festing, who has done portraits of all sorts of contemporary figures, members of the royal family, you know, the current king, the late queen, all of those. He's done several pictures of me. So I'm very, very lucky. I love being with a portrait painter. Yeah, I would find it really hard.

I mean, for how long did you actually have to sit still? Oh, with some of them, for days. I mean, with this last portrait painter, literally for days I was with him. But I enjoyed it. It was an excuse to sort of just sit. Okay. And you didn't feel twitchy?

Do you literally have to freeze? Yes. I'm quite good. No, you don't literally have just sit. Okay. And you just, you didn't feel twitchy. Do you literally have to freeze? Yes. I'm quite good. No, you don't literally have to freeze. And I've sat for several people who've painted the late Queen Elizabeth II and they always told me she was quite difficult to paint

because she wouldn't stop talking. She felt obliged to chat to them to make, you know, make genial conversation. And that must be very, very off-putting, actually, if you are a portrait painter, I would have thought so portrait the word portrait where does that come from yeah so portrait is quite a nice one actually we talk about different sizes don't we portrait and landscape but this is from this incredibly useful and multitasker of a latin word trajere

meaning to draw which gave us tractor because it's drawn along it gave us protract it gave us retract it actually gave us retreat as well it gave us train it gave us a trainer honestly so many different words but in the sense of portrait it is simply something drawn something that is drawn across the paper so So it's that same idea as that German word, you know, tragen, which gave us draw itself. And landscape is simply a scape used as a suffix. It's quite similar to ship, actually. And it just means a form,

the form in which you will find something. Are you any good at looking at this? I'm going to show you a picture now. See if you can recognise this. This is a picture of me done by a wonderful artist called Anthony Williams. Can you see that picture? Oh, picture oh yes that does look like you but you look older there and you're doing real life well that often happens i mean the picture that was done of me was portrait artist of the year i looked like myself 30 years from now i looked as i was going to look

like when i'm dead but this is another one and actually williams painted me twice this is rather an interesting one do you see this is me when i played claudius in the play hamlet oh that does look like you actually from what i can see yeah and do you see he's put that interesting fox in the background oh yes what's the fox doing i love foxes i like foxes i'll tell you about that maybe we should take a quick break then i'll tell you about the fox and you can tell me about the word foxed in relation to paper and printing and things being forced. Oh, in relation to paper, yeah. Okay. Let's take a break.

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of prints and i mentioned the word foxed because sometimes people talk about paper being foxed what does that mean do you know yeah it's funny isn't it we we turn to these animal metaphors when we talk about uh things like well books as well because we talk about things that are dog eared as well don't we which is quite strange so if if um pages are foxed they are often discolored with brown spots so the idea is simply that they look like the coat of a fox um which i'm not sure is completely true but that is how it is but also if you're foxed also you are sort of slightly perplexed aren't you or you're being you're confused you can't quite work something out. And I think that's to do with the wiliness and the cunningness of foxes, idol foxes. The idol foxes too. The word came into play just now because Anthony Williams, who's a major

contemporary artist, did this portrait of me when I'd appeared in the play Hamlet, played the part of Claudius. And he thought it was ingenious to include a fox in the painting. He works with a method called egg tempura. That's what he uses to paint his pictures with. It's very painstaking, takes a lot of time. What does egg tempura mean? So, tempura itself, if you're talking about the Japanese dish, which is usually fried in batter, isn't it? It's kind of fish or shellfish or prawn tempura, etc. That goes back to a Portuguese word meaning seasoning. An egg tempura, I think, must just be.

I actually don't quite know what the process is because obviously it involves real eggs. But let me check it here. It's mixing egg yolk with powdered pigments and a little water, apparently, and traditionally applied to wooden panels. I wonder if it smells, does it? No, it doesn't particularly smell. And I think he was using canvas, but it's a very old way of painting.

Must be. And he feels, well, he loves working. It's the method that he uses. Speaking of panels, people often speak of a triptych. And I know that's three panels, isn't it? Triptych, it's a trio. It speak of a triptych. And I know that's three panels, isn't it? Triptych, it's a trio. It is absolutely a triptych. Have you ever had one of those?

No. The sort of early man and then the current man and then the older man. Oh, that's a good idea. Maybe I could get one. Yeah. Yes. But I think people have forgotten what I looked like when I was young. And they've really forgotten.

So I could just have old, very old, and really... Well, people do have death masks, don't they? There are paintings of people when dead. Of course, there are many paintings of Jesus Christ when dead because so many of the great painters were engaged by churches to create works of art for churches and cathedrals. So there are many depictions of a dead body. It's very true.

Well, the tick bit, if you're wondering about the tick, is from a Greek word meaning folded. And so usually this is a relief or a carving on three panels, isn't it? And they're hinged together, often used as an altarpiece. But it's like sort of folded in three, really, is the idea there. Oh, can I tell you about a vignette? Oh, please do. So, I like, a vignette has been applied to so many different things,

including there might be a little vignette in a novel, a little sort of scene, or you might have a vignette in a film. But originally, it was an architectural or an artistic term for a representation of a vine. And in book production, a vignette was little depictions or quite decorative depictions of foliage and then it became a design in art that shaded off into the background without a sort of definite border much as a sort of vine might have its tendrils everywhere and then it came to be in

a sort of brief but quite evocative little episode but it's that it's had quite a little journey but it does just mean a little vine i I love it. A little vine. Yeah, pretty. We're talking about different substances that people use to do their paintings. I remember when I was a child, I used crayons and pastel. Pastel. Some people like pastel. What is pastel? That is simply a little diminutive of pasta, meaning paste. And that's actually the pasta that we eat, believe it it or not also comes from there

because it is a paste that is then made into pasta so pastel and paste are both linked and i mean crayons i was absolutely terrible with crayons they used to go everywhere but actually that goes all the way back to a latin word meaning chalk and it's linked to the cretaceous period which was the geological period when chalk was laid down so crayon and cretaceous actually are sisters or brothers in arms al fresco is how i sometimes like to eat that i think means in the fresh air i think you mean al desco don't you al desco is eating at the desk i do quite like to do that i mean in an ideal world i like to be up very early in the morning, do some work, and then have an Al Desco breakfast and carry on working. That's my idea of heaven. But al fresco can be quite pleasant eating out of doors. But I'm wondering what the connection is between al fresco and a fresco, which is, I think, a painting on a wall, isn't it? Yeah, beautiful frescoes everywhere. So it's done very quickly in watercolour on wet plaster on a wall so that the colours penetrate the plaster

and then they become fixed as it dries. And this rapidity and speed is behind the word, really, because fresco means fresh. So al fresco in the fresh air, you are eating outside. And the method of painting frescoes, particularly during the Renaissance, was done on the fresh air you are eating outside and the method of painting frescoes strictly during the renaissance was done on the fresh plaster so it was done very quickly while that plaster was still fresh my favorite fresco ever is in the sans crevini chapel in padua this is beautiful fresh

frescoes by giotto i have to say i't seen very many, but they are absolutely beautiful and moving. Gorgeous. I haven't seen many frescoes in my time, I don't think. I think you're marvellous. I'd love to go on a little art tour with you. Great fun. Oh, I'd love to learn a lot. Yeah, we need to, where there's so much to learn. I need to learn a lot, yeah. I love going to see art with somebody who knows about the art, because you can stand in front of

a picture and enjoy it. But if you're with somebody who really knows about it, they can point you in the right direction and you can discover so much more, which is fantastic. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's why I love being with you because I learn so much more about words and language. And that's why people get in touch with us. And please do keep getting in touch with us. If you've got words that you'd like Susie to unravel, delve into their heritage for you, she will do that. And if you would like to share with us some of your favorite paintings, or indeed some of your stories about when you had your portrait painted, how it went well or didn't go so well, do get in touch. It's purplepeople, all one word, purplepeople at somethingrhymes, all one word, dot com.

Purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Has anyone used that email address to get in touch with us this week? They have. Hello, Susie and Giles. I am writing from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and I have been listening to your delightful podcast for about a year now. Recently, I was on holiday with family in British Columbia, and we went to Fort Steele. In one of the buildings, we came upon a sign that included the word slantendicular. We were all rather amused by its usage, and my father-in-law suggested that I write to you two about it. A casual internet search didn't reveal much more than a basic definition. Can you tell me anything about the history of this lovely portmanteau? Cheers, Janelle Reimer. What a fascinating letter, and I love British Columbia.

Have you been to British Columbia, Susie? I haven't. Oh, it just looks so beautiful. Can I tell you, talking of eating al fresco, go up for a picnic at Squamish and you will find a fantastic time to be had. Oh, yeah. Okay, now give her the answer.

Well, I was amazed because like Janelle, I thought this was a sort of slightly jokey blend or portmanteau as she rightly calls it. But actually it is in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is recorded from 1832, where it's described as slanting and sloping, neither perpendicular nor horizontal. And one of the first quotes given is from 1840 which actually gives

you the mechanics of it because obviously it shows you how it was made i mean we know it anyway but it says i took particular care to slew the buttons at the knees well forward in a slanting dicular direction so it originally was north american and it was chiefly humorous as we might guess but it has been around for a very long time, which just shows that one of the most productive ways in which we coin new words, which is this creation of blends, mashups of existing words. We've been doing that for a very, very long time, including in this case from 1832, so almost a century. Thank you, Janelle, for that. And from closer to home, from the beautiful city of Chester,

Chloe has written, I recently discovered your podcast. I'm obsessed. I listen every day when working from home and have started a list of some of my favourite words from episodes I've listened to. Her personal favourite is Snollygoster. It's one of our personal favourites too, isn't it? I don't normally write into shows, as I doubt that I will get a response, but there is something special about your podcast that made me write, and there's something special about you, Chloe, that's made us respond. My question is this. Why are some words considered swears? Where does their power to offend come from? Is there a certain timeline of when words became inappropriate? Why are certain words such as, and she gives some examples,

block your ears now if you don't want to hear them, dick, fuck and shit, offensive, when humans give words their meaning? Sending my very best wishes to you both. That's Chloe from Chester with an intriguing question. Why are some words considered swears? They're just a combination of letters, aren't they? They are. And I'm sure Chloe has listened to our extensive episode on swearing,

where we do turn the air blue, but for good reason, because we are talking about the fascinating history of swearing, which is such a hot topic academically, medically, in lots of different fields. The reason, Chloe, and it would take more time than I have, I think, for us to debate this, but I think the reason is we have always needed rebellious language. We have always needed the language of anarchy. We have always needed slang because we need somewhere to go when we can't embrace formal language because what we want to express is kind of slightly, is different. It is rebellious. It is slightly, well, it's rude. It might be designed to insult. I mean, swearing can have lots of different uses. It might be used to express joy,

but it is that sort of earthy, sleeves rolled up type of language that we've always needed. And it's just that the taboos that we've chosen have really shifted over time. they're very revealing of what we were squeamish about which is what we talk about in our swearing episode so in ancient rome and ancient greece it was definitely bodily functions similar to what we have now if you look at graffiti from pompeii for example absolutely obscene even to modern eyes then in the middle ages it was religious profanity was the absolute no-no and our current taboos were a little bit improper but not very very rude and nowadays we've gone right back to bodily functions including in the ones that you mentioned as well but the reason is we have always needed it

and i would also recommend chloe jonathan green who i give a shout out to as often as i can because he is the slang meister really when it comes to English he has written so many books on slang it's evolution what it is and including why we need it but it is all about I think having a different place to go when we want to rebel against current norms and that is just human instinct. Fuck me Susie you nailed that now it's time for your trio. Three intriguing words with which to tease and delight us. What have you got in store? I have a rather strange one to start with. In fact, I've got two strange words for you. The first one is eluceromania.

Okay, so bear with me. It's E-L-E-U-T-H-E-R-O-mania, illusoromania. And it describes the frantic desire for freedom. And whenever I think of this word, it'd be lovely to give it a sort of very poetic, wistful meaning of somebody who is just desperate to escape the confines of their life, etc. And of course, you can apply it to that. But I just think of a moth bagging against a glass window or a wasp trying to get out for me it's that kind of futile repeated effort to escape somewhere and being unable to so sort of slightly sad one eluthera mania the second one is all about strangeness because it is selkuth selkuth s-e-l-c-o-u-t-H. And it means unfamiliar, unusual, marvellous or wonderful. So it's seldom couth,

seldom familiar is the idea. Couth originally meant fitting, polite, of course, because we have uncouth, but also familiar, normal, that kind of thing. So sell couth is rather a lovely one. And I'm going to end with a place

that we would all like to go to in the autumn and possibly the winter, which is the snuggery you remember we have lots of names for for rooms that kind of riff on the same theme there is also the growlery where you can go and let off steam if you're in a bad mood but i love the idea of a snuggery i want to be as snug as a bug in a rug i love the idea of snuggery and if people find the spelling difficult to recall, I know Susie tells us what it is,

we do the trio on the program description blurb for each episode. We always spell out each of the words. And indeed, we give the title and the author of the poem that I've chosen. And this week, inevitably, I've chosen a poem about the world of art and painting. And it's a poem by one of my favorite poets, W.H. Auden, Whiston Hugh Auden, a remarkable man. He had a remarkable face. If you don't know what he looked like, listeners, do look him up. And particularly what a picture of him when he was an old man, his whole face crisscrossed with lines. I think he described his face as looking

like a wedding cake left out in the rain. Anyway, this is a poem he wrote, I think, when he was maybe still in his 30s. It was written in 1940, and he was born about 1907, died in 1973. It's called, and it evokes, the Musée des Beaux-Arts. About suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters, how well they understood its human position, how it takes place while someone else is eating, or opening a window, or just walking dully along. How, when they aged irreverently, passionately, waiting for the miraculous birth, there always must be children who did not specially want it to happen skating on a pond at the edge of the wood

they never forgot that even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course anyhow in a corner some untidy spot where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Bruegel's Icarus, for instance, how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster. The ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, but for him it was not an important failure. the forsaken cry, but for him it was not an important failure. The sun shone, as it had to, on the white legs disappearing into the green water. And the expensive, delicate ship that must have seen something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to,

I had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. So if you listen to the poem again, maybe on your laptop or Google, Bruegel's famous painting, Icarus, and you can see how well Auden here is both describing the painting and making us look at the extra elements within it. Fantastic. It's gorgeous.

The white legs and the green water absolutely got me. Beautiful. Well, I loved that. I hope you loved it alongside us. Thank you, as always, for following the show. Please continue to follow us. Please recommend us to friends if you think it's something that they would enjoy too. And just a reminder, there is the Purple Plus Club if you fancy some ad-free listening

and some rather looser bonus episodes on words and language. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Deo, with additional production from Naomi Oiku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mistry, and, well, didn't look like Richie, looked like somebody quite different today. It's Teddy, who has steered us beautifully through the galleries.

And, well, Giles, I think it's time for the gift shop. Coming?