Something Rhymes with Purple - Pity Me

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Do you know your Bournes from your Burghs, your Casters from your Chesters, your Kils from your Kirks? This week we’re having another look at place names and the fascinating stories behind some of our nationally treasured locations. Gyles and Susie tell us why Plymouth Hoe is not a misogynistic slur, why the God Thor never visits The Devil’s Punch Bowl and and where the oxen used to cross the river. Plus a hair-raising story from Halifax and a cry for compassion from Durham and Cornwall! Susie's trio: Quignogs- ridiculous ideas or conceits  Finnying- timid or fearful  Nickerers- new shoes that creak  A Somethin’ Else production If you would like to get in touch with Gyles and Susie with any questions, please email [e-mail]. Our fabulous new range of merchandise is now live at https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple PLUS for this first week we are giving you 10% off all items if you use the code purple2021. So whether you’re buying a treat for yourself or a gift for a Purple loved one then now is the time to do it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This is a podcast where each week Susie Dent and I meet and we talk about words and language. And well, Susie, how have you been this week? Have you had a wordy week? I always have a wordy week, you know me. To my own shock and horror, I've actually embarked on a new book, Flying Sworn, that I wouldn't do another one for a while. But actually, I'm really enjoying it. I won't tell you too much about it yet in case it all goes horribly wrong. But it's fun. So I've kind of got into the swing of things how about you well it's good to have a discipline I mean in these lockdown days one could go a bit loopy if it weren't for actually having some order to the day so I'm writing a new book too only because

I know that if I sit down at eight and don't get up from the chair until five except take some exercise I can complete my thousand words in the day. And that's the discipline. It's like in the evenings, I plan my TV viewing now. I don't just sit down there and watch anything. I only watch one, I have one dose of news a day. And then I like to just watch one program and make it an event. I've been through a whole raft of Netflix stuff. Yeah. Schitt's Creek, I know you love. Schitt's Creek, all of that I love. But I'm now doing, through something called Talking Pictures, old movies.

Oh, I watched a Beatles film. Hard Day's Night? Hard Day's Night. A black and white Beatles film. I'd never seen it. That film was the first to give us the word grotty. Oh. It's a shortening of grotesque.

So at least that definitely popularised it when it was used in that. Well, how interesting. Well, there we are. I discovered the word grotty. It's a delightful film made in black and white, directed by Richard Lester, who went on to make two of my favourite films, the one, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. But I tell you, two things surprised me. One was that the leading character almost seemed to be Wilfred Bramble, playing Paul McCartney's grandfather. There's a very funny sequence with my friend Derek Nimmo who doesn't say anything in it, but he's very amusing. But Ringo is so good. Ringo Starr emerged as the sort of star of the movie from my point of view. Anyway, I'm enjoying

going into old movies and I'm getting most of my news from the newspaper. Yeah. And I want to share this with you because Facebook had to apologise to Devon residents for censoring posts after it mistook a popular picnic area for a misogynistic slur. This all relates to Plymouth Ho. Well, I've been to Plymouth Ho. It's lovely. But apparently, the ho in Plymouth Ho was giving difficulty and this sort of algorithm on Facebook that censors all these things saw the ho and began taking posts down. Well, this obviously was an

error to do so. But get to the grips of this. Pmouth hoe the HOE is what so the HOE in Plymouth hoe apparently goes back to the old English hoe HOH which meant a heel of a foot or a kind of projecting ridge of a land if you like so I haven't been to Plymouth hoe it sounds lovely but it looks apparently like a sloping ridge maybe shaped a bit like a foot it's a grassy ridge yeah with a little bit of a hump in it yes yes. Nothing to do with the hoe that you will find in rap songs? Ah, explain to me, because I didn't know that.

I mean, I thought Father Christmas, ho, ho, ho. I didn't realise that hoe was an offensive word in any shape or form. What is the word hoe and why is it offensive? Well, because it's a variation on or a certain kind of pronunciation of whore, essentially. So, yeah, or a certain kind of pronunciation of whore, essentially.

So, yeah, so it's kind of, it was a prostitute or in kind of broader terms, it's used for a woman who, you know, apparently has lots of different sexual encounters or whatever. So, yeah, definitely derogatory and to be avoided. Well, some of the people were quite upset by this. Somebody was asked, are you sure you want to post this? It may be deemed offensive to some using the idea of Plymouth Ho. But others saw the funny side and referencing a local pub, Jane Greenwood sent out a tweet saying, wait until they see the Admirals hard. Oh, well, we don't need to go there. No, it's honestly, where are you on this? I mean,

just be relaxed, aren't you? I mean, obviously, we don't upset people and offend people unnecessarily. No, I just wish that, you know, for all my love of AI and how it's kind of helping us in so many different ways, you know, there must be a way of introducing nuance to these kind of things. But, you know, I'm sure honest mistake and hopefully it's all been rectified now. It's difficult. You and I wouldn't be offended, but other people probably would be. So I guess they have to tread a very fine line. Wherever you're listening to this, be it Plymouth Ho or Plymouth Sound,

wherever you are, welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. We thought we'd talk about place names some more today we did yes because we covered quite a lot didn't we in our first episode we covered quite a lot of london place names and so we thought we would we would go further afield because obviously it's a huge huge topic and we can but scratch the surface but we have so many emails and questions about particular place names that we thought we would, as you say, just branch out, cast our net a little wider and see where it takes us. I thought I'd start with the kind of building blocks of place names, because although there are so many idiosyncratic and individual ones, you can sometimes use a toolbox to kind of decode particular places. So, Chester, for example, that you'll find in Manchester, or you might find it as Cester, as in Worcester, Worcester, or Caster.

Winchester, Lancaster. Yes, exactly. That just means a fort or a walled town. So, it was a kind of like an encampment, I suppose. So, Manchester was a Roman fort. The man, actually, or it was originally mam of like an encampment, I suppose. So Manchester was a Roman fort. The man actually, or it was originally mam, means breast shaped. So it was a fort in the shape of a breast. That's where Manchester comes from. So anything with Chester, Castor, Sester, that kind of thing, it was a fort or a walled town. Bury, B-U-R-Y, as in Banbury, that also denotes a military camp or a fort.

Canterbury. Canterbury, you also find it in Burr, as in Edinburgh, B-U-R-G-H. Yes, lots and lots. Edinburgh. Oh, I'm loving this. It's a great game to play. This is a very good game to play if you have difficulty getting to sleep, which I sometimes do. I go through the alphabet and I'm not going to go through the alphabet trying to do A,

B, C, ending in Bury, Bur in berry bird or chest or chest or castor so i'd do aldebaran that's good wouldn't then i do berry on its own then i would do um castleborough that would be good for c d what could i do doncaster yeah e i could do ed Well, wait, because we've got lots, lots more that you can add into the game. So, barrow was a grove or a wood, as in barrow and finesse. And same for dairy, in fact, and dare, as in kill dare. All of those meant a kind of grove or a wood. Born, you can probably guess, B-O-U-R-N-E or B-O-U-R-N-E. As in a brook, as in a river.

Yeah. Bornmouth being the mouth of Yes. As in a river? Yeah. Yes. Born mouth being the mouth of the born. Exactly. Stream or spring. Sidmouth. Exmouth. Ben, as in Ben Nevis.

Mm-hmm. A hill or a mountain. Cut or coat. So C-O-T or C-O-T-E as in didcut or didcot, however you want to pronounce it. It's a shelter or a cottage either way. So it could be like a shepherd's hut, a body, or it could just be a single cottage. But it always suggests something that started, a settlement that started out very small. Suffolk, have a guess, would be Suffolk's folk.

Suffolk, folk, folk, folk. As in Folkestone, maybe. Is it the same one, Folk the same one yes i guess it would be actually folk folkstone norfolk uh people is it people exactly norfolk so suffolk are the people from the south yeah norfolk the people from the north why they make those jokes about them all being related i do not know um normal for norfolk um yes same Suffolk. And so are there other Folkestone? Is there anywhere else that we can think of? I think Folkestone was, I'm just looking this up now. So it was a classic example of somewhere that was founded by one particular person and that

person's name remains in the name. So this was Falker's Stone. So the stone may have been the marker for a meeting place, example so you will find in nottingham nottingham used to be used to be snottingham i think i may mention this to you before nottingham used to be snottingham and it was the hamlet the ham of a man called snot snotting so you'll find lots and lots of of hams hamlets with a personal name in front. Mond, as in Richmond, meant a hill. So just pen, as in Penrith. So you've got Mond and you've got Ben, for Ben there was Pen, for Penrith.

Dun, D-U-N, was a down or a valley, as in Dunstan, the valley with the stone. Kil, K-I-L, as in Kilmarnock. Kil was a church and a kirk was also a church. K.I.R.K. Ford as in Oxford was a water crossing. Oxford was the place where the oxen crossed the river. A brig is a bridge. So you'll have brigate in Leeds. B.R.I.G.G.A.T.E. which was the road towards the bridge and kirk gate i mentioned that kirk meant a church was the road to the church which is nice oh and so it goes on but they're really really useful can i ask you about the slaughters well i just wanted to linger a bit on which w-i-c-h or w-i-i-c

because to go back to the beginning lingu, salt is absolutely everywhere and sometimes where we least expect it. So just to go off on a slight tangent, a salad for the Romans was a dish of salted vegetables. Salami is salted meat. Salsa was a salted sauce and so on. And it was such a prized, prized commodity. commodity. There's a bit of, I would say, debate over whether Roman soldiers were actually paid in salt or whether they actually spent quite a lot of their money on salt because it was so highly prized and that that explains salary. A bit of a debate about that. But one word that you wouldn't put in this list, primarily because it doesn't begin with S-A-L, is which, W-I-C. And that comes from the Latin vicus, meaning a compact settlement but you'll also find it in

other languages including the scandinavian languages the vikings and other norse marauders and they used vic v i k to denote a kind of creek or an inlet or a cove and in so many cases these coves were associated with brine springs or wells that had the function of providing salt and producing salt. So, so many English places carry that suffix, which are historically related to salt. So, there's Middlewich, Nantwich, Northwich, Droitwich. They're known as the Doomsday Witches because they're mentioned in the Doomsday Book. And all of these were really important salt working towns in the economy of the region. And with the words, names of places with S-A-L at the beginning, is that true as well?

Salisbury, Salford, Salkham? Well, that's a really good question. And I'm going to have to take that one away with me. I mean, I know Salkham in South Devon, which is the most beautiful, beautiful place. It certainly did have associations with salt because early trades from there were coastal. And so they sent salted fish back to Europe and salt to Newfoundland and et cetera. So leave that one with me because that's fascinating. I was focusing too much on the witch, but it's really, really interesting. And why witch? The earliest known to producing salt was in shallow pans on the seashore. And in Northern Early English, a wick or a witch was also the kind of bottom of a kind of shoal bay, if you like. So you're going back to that idea of a creek.

And then, you know, there's sort of the brine pits and the salt mines, et cetera, more inland. sort of the brine pits and the salt mines, et cetera, more inland. But it's just fascinating that even in the Doomsday Book, there is this connection with salt, which I knew absolutely nothing about until I researched this. What about stow, as in stow on the world? I think that's linked to stowing something away, putting it in a place or a spot. So I think it literally just meant place or spot. So a very kind of generic word that one but you know beautiful beautiful places with the name obviously still on the wall this good world is gorgeous i mean should we turn to the gory words which are quite interesting because you mentioned um the slaughters and it's strange that there are so many words or place names in english that make you think oh

i wonder where that came from but, sometimes they're linked to lovely stories and sometimes they're not. Have you heard of the Devil's Punchbowl in Surrey? Of course, of course. Driven through it many a time. Have you? But there's a legend attached to it that the devil spent his time here tormenting the god Thor by pelting him with earth and that the hole he left behind left the great crater in Surrey that visitors can see today, the punch bowl shape. It's an area of outstanding natural beauty, isn't it? I must go and see it. So there's Devil's Dyke as well, which is in Brighton, just among the South Downs.

That is apparently associated with the legend that the devil dug it in an attempt to drown the locals. I mean, that's all really grim. So that's not particularly nice. But you mentioned slaughter. That actually goes back to the old English for a miry place, so a kind of swampy place. And the link there is to the tiny river Ey, which is a tributary to Windrush. I have to say, upper and lower slaughter are the most beautiful, beautiful little villages. And the Windrush Valley is also gorgeous. And it's not too far away from me. Yes. It wasn't just me asking about the slaughters. We had a letter from Ben Legg, also inquiring about them. And we had one from Dean McIntyre, too, who wanted to know about

Bally, as in Bally Money and Bally Mina and those places in Northern Ireland. What's the Bally who about Ballymena and those places in Northern Ireland. What's the Ballyhoo about Bally? I suppose it's a bit like Stowe. It's fairly generic. It's from the Irish Bally, I hope I pronounced that properly, B-A-I-L-E and then Na, N-A, meaning the place of, simply. So, again, I think probably this is related to personal names and the place of a particular person who was the founder of the settlement. But then there are places that don't seem to have any of these.

I mean, I love this collection of, you know, Chester or Castor, Barry or Barrow, Bourne, Ben, Cott, Dunn, Kill, Stowe, Ford, all these that you can add suffixes or prefixes that mean something. But then you get to somewhere as simple as, say, Leeds. And where does that come from? Leeds. What a funny name. Yes, it is a funny name. The first record we have is Lloydus. So L-O-I-D-I-S.

And that's around the 8th century. And if you heard of the great historian Bede. Of course, the venerable Bede. The venerable Bede. He mentions it. It's in the Doomsday Book of 1086. But no one completely knows where it comes from. But it may come from a really ancient route, meaning flowing, relating to the river.

But it's thought, you know, the Leeds Loiners. So inhabitants of Leeds are called the Loiners. And that may look back also to the Loidis, L-O-I-D-I-S, the earliest record that we have of the name. While we're up in Yorkshire, what about Halifax? Oh, this is a lovely one. Halifax is from the Old English Halifax, which meant holy hair. And the story is that a clerk of Horton, as it was once called, actually, it's not a lovely story, it's a horrible story.

He was jilted and then murdered his girlfriend his sweetheart and this is awful actually i don't know why this is a lovely story because he cut off her head and hung it in a yew tree but apparently the head then came to be looked at as a holy relic and of course the thing that survived the longest was little filaments of hair that spread out between the bark and the body of the tree, like these beautiful, fine golden threads. And so it's said that Halifax goes back to that Halifax, that holy hair. The holy hair, the Halifax. Yeah.

I love it. Yeah. Now, we're hearing from people, Chris Auden has been in touch, to ask us about places that have really quite unusual names, like Wide Open, No Place, Pity Me, which I think is in County Durham. How do these names come about? Yeah, I generally don't know. I'm guessing that they are nicknames from local inhabitants, Wide Open, you know, Vast Expanse, No Place. I don't know, maybe it began as a joke like so many first names did. I can tell you a bit about Pity Me, because there are two Pity Mes. There is one in Durham, and there is one in Cornwall. And, you know, it may be simply a whimsical name. So that's the first thing to say about this. It may look back to nothing more than people sort of having

a bit of a laugh. But Pity Me in Cornwall, to start with that that has an inn called the pity me in and the name of the village apparently according to local legend has its origins in a tragic tale of loss at sea and it said that the captain of a boat a fishing vessel set to sea despite the weather despite i think entreaties of his crewmates and his crew not to go ahead but he did and all hands were lost and it said that the women of the village as a group went to the widow of the captain the skipper to berate her for her husband's guilt in sending them all off to sea and she apparently explained i've lost my husband too so you should also pity me in. So, another one, which is also linked to pity me in County Durham, is that it comes from the French expression petit mer, petit mer, the little sea.

So, who knows? I think what is so lovely about this is just the number of local stories that kind of arise to explain the local place name and how linked they are to local legend. I love visiting the Isle of Wight and I love the wonders of the Isle of Wight. You know, cows you cannot milk, the lake that you can walk through, fresh water that you cannot drink, needles you cannot thread, Newport you cannot bottle. I love all of that. But is the cows on the Isle of Wight anything to do with cows, the animal?

Is the cows on the Art of White anything to do with cows, the animal? Possibly, possibly. Although people think that actually it was to do with fortifications built during the reign of Henry VIII that were known as cow forts and that they actually then gave their name. I don't think they had anything to do with the animals. I think it was to do with the sandbanks that you will find that apparently looked a little bit like cows in their appearance. I think they're great fun, these unusual names. In Yorkshire, our old friend, no longer with us, Richard Whiteley, the original host of the programme Countdown, he liked to call himself the Mayor of Wetwang because it's a part of Yorkshire.

It's just a lovely word, Wetwang, isn't it? It is. Yorkshire just it's just a lovely word wet wang isn't it it is and um it probably goes back to obviously this is the place one of the places of the Dane law uh where the Vikings held sway and we think it goes back to the old north which was a field for a trial so a legal trial which is quite solemn isn't it really um but there is another theory that it simply means wet field which I think Richard would have preferred and what what about crackpot? There's someone in Yorkshire called crackpot. Probably that's just broken crockery. I suspect so. I mean, it's quite interesting in the Middle Ages, crackpot, sweat in bed, gilded bollocks. These were all surnames for particular people. I don't know whether Mr. Crackpot actually was mad in the way that we would talk about

Crackpot now, or whether he could have been a builder. Who knows? What a great name to have. Yeah. Charlie Crackpot. Good evening. What's your name? Crackpot. I love it. I have been in the Lake District to somewhere called Great Cockup. Oh, have you? Oh, that's excellent. Yeah, it shows you how juvenile I was. I stopped and took a photograph of the road sign. Oh, that um I'm looking up crackport in North Yorkshire now and I've never been there but it's in Swaledale apparently in North Yorkshire and apparently it goes back to the old English clacker which was a crow and pot which was a cavity or deep hole obviously but often in the bed of a river um why a crow and a pot would be together, I don't know. But I prefer the fact that it refers to a kind of rift or a crack in the ground. I'm not sure I like the crow analogy.

We shall see. It was in Great Cockup, or rather on the same holiday, that I passed a roadside chalkboard on the roadside saying potatoes, you know, as in potatoes for sale. Big sign saying potatoes. And underneath, somebody had written in chalk potatoes for sale. Big sign saying potatoes. And underneath, somebody had written in chalk, twinned with pommes de terre. It's quite amusing. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll see what people have been writing to us about.

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We're back. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. And I have to begin with an apology to my friend Susie Dent, because last week, when we mentioned, talked about Wimpy, we found ourselves talking about Popeye, spinach, olive oil. Essentially, what we were hearing from Susie was that spinach, actually, it's mythical that it makes you strong. Is that right? Yes. Well, I think, no, I think any green vegetable has iron in it and it's incredibly good for you. But I don't think spinach is any better for you than maybe a cup of broccoli and I think that was all down to a misplaced decimal point. So we got round we're talking about spinach that made me immediately think of Popeye and my childhood those cartoons

and Popeye the sailor man and we got into a little riff about Popeye and olive oil and you mentioned the character Wimpy. Yes. Who came around and you didn't much like him. He just sat there and did nothing. And he was forever eating burgers. And you thought that possibly the Wimpy bars, the old hamburger bars, and there are still a few of them around, was related to Wimpy. And I poured scorn on that. I said, how ridiculous can it be? Well, I then last week did some research. And I have to tell you that you are completely right.

research. And I have to tell you that you are completely right. Jay Wellington Wimpy was indeed a character created in 1931, along with Popeye and Olive Oil, those wonderful cartoons. And in 1934, when the hamburger bars came along, they thought, why don't we name our burger bars after Jay Wellington Wimpy? Thank you. Yeah, because he always had this massive part, you know, much like Obelix in the Asterix cartoons, who always had just huge amounts of food in front of him. But Wimpy always had at least, you know, 25 burgers in front of him. Good.

Well, now, have we had some correspondence this week? Oh, wild boar. That's what Obelix was always eating. We have had some correspondence. We always have amazing correspondence. We have something from Edward Woodward. Oh dear. Because we talked recently. Oh no, sorry. It's from Dan Price, who's picking up on our discussion about Edward Woodward, because I mentioned it as a name that always makes my daughter laugh. And Dan Price says, hello, your recent mention of Edward Woodward reminded me of a joke. What do you call

a man with a block of wood on his head? Edward. What do you call a man with a block of wood on his head? Edward. What do you call a man with two blocks of wood on his head? Edward Wood. What do you call a man with three blocks of wood on his head? Edward Woodward. And what do you call a man with four blocks of wood on his head? I don't know, but Edward Woodward would know.

What do you call a man with a paper bag on his head? I don't know. Russell. What do you call a man with a black bag on his head? I don't know. Russell. What do you call a man with a black smudge on his head? Don't know. Mark. What do you call a woman with a Christmas tree on her head?

Carol. What do you call a woman with a cat on her head? Kitty. What do you call a woman with two toilets on her head? Don't know. Lulu. Oh, do you know, I'm sorry. I prefer't know. Lulu! Oh, do you know,

I'm sorry, I prefer Dan Price's one there. You're quite right to. Any more letters because I haven't got them in front of me so you're going to have to take us through the letters. Pamela Taylor says,

Dear Giles and Susie, my daughter introduced me to your podcast and I really look forward to listening to the latest episode. During Testiculus Habit and Bene Pendentes, Giles reminisced,

that was one of our episodes by the way, Giles reminisced, that was one of our episodes, by the way, Giles reminisced about Watch With Mother and said Andy Pandy was on Monday. I hate to correct you, but Andy Pandy was on Tuesdays. He said Monday was Picture Book, Tuesday was Andy Pandy, Wednesday was Bill and Ben, Thursday Ragtag and Bobtail, and Friday the Wooden Tops. Yes. She says never before, nor probably ever again, will the phrase testiculus habit et bene

pendentes and watch with mother appear in the same sentence. Thank you, Pamela. And you know, the one on Monday, picture book, I never really got into it. It never really worked for me. Andy Pandy worked, Bill and Ben and Little Weed worked. Indeed, Little Weed's been one of my sort of fantasy characters throughout my life. As you know, the Wooden Tops had grave reservations about them. Daddy Wooden Top. Okay, I didn't ever watch those. No, it's before your time. We're talking about the 1950s. I also, we have a lovely letter from Geoff Holt. I'm sure Geoff's written before, actually. He says, in the playgrounds of Liverpool in the 1950s, to clat on your friend was to snitch or to tell tales on them if you did you were a clapped tail or a

clapped tail tit a friend of my wife remembered this playground chant clapped tail tit your tongue shall be slit and all the dogs in the town shall have a little bit oh won't be charming little children in those days he says he says I can't find clat in the dictionary. Can Susie shed any light on this word? And I can, in that it's short for clatter and the noise of kind of a rattling tongue or chattering and telling tales. So it's the idea simply of making noise by talking. And that then was extended to the idea of being a snitch or a telltale. Being a snitch, a telltale, being being juvenile i remember as a child using the word or hearing the word i hated it bogey yeah yes because there were children at school who used to take the bogeys out of their

noses and then eat them oh i'm rich now yeah anyway um a non this no wonder this is an anonymous inquiry somebody um maybe it's Gully getting in touch. Anyway, interested to know the origin of the word bogey. I knew of its connection with golf and noses, but recently learned it's also the metal frame under a train carriage. Oh, yes, I think I've heard that. Would love to know more. All the bogeys. Bring us all the bogeys, including Humphrey Bogart.

What are all the bogeys? OK, well, maybe Humphrey would have liked this because it all began with the devil. So the bogey was the bogeyman. It was the evil one, if you like. So it was a goblin. It was an object of terror or dread, which was the first meaning of a bugbear or a bogeybear. It could be a detective or a policeman, also someone who was dreaded, I guess. It could be an enemy aeroplane, particularly an unidentified one.

If you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, under all of these beginnings is listed the bogey that comes out of your nose. So maybe they were thought so disgusting and revolting that they were listed under the bogeyman. The bogey, that's the undercarriage of a train, is spelt generally I-E, and we don't know where that one comes from, but it's not linked to the devil. But it's extraordinary that there are words that we don't know the origin of. We don't know how the word bogey for the undercarriage of a train started. I mean, I find that impossible to believe because trains have only been around for a couple of hundred years. So we could do research into early books, manuals of how to construct a train. Trust me, the OED would have done exactly that.

Sometimes the trail just goes cold. And if you think about, you know, how it is these days when one person might invent a word. So say someone invented doom scrolling, which they did. We don't know who it was. It would be almost impossible to find the very first record of it that is a fairly transparent one in that you know where it comes from but you know it's really really hard to pinpoint um things so it says it's a northern dialect word it is of unknown etymology um even though there are absurd stories in the newspapers said it says

the oed and it has nothing to do with the bogey that is the evil one or the devil. So that's as much as we know, but we do not know where it comes from. It's first mentioned in 1835. Well, if you are out there, a purple person who comes from a heritage and your forebears were involved

in the manufacture of railroads and railway trains, and you do know where the original bogey comes from, please let us know. Amy Whitehead has written to us about frogs. Hi, Susie and Giles. During the Great Pottery Throwdown, this must be a television program, another one that's passed me by. Anyway, the contestants were challenged to make bricks, and it was mentioned that the dip indentation in a brick is called a frog. Oh, how intriguing. It occurred to me that I can think of various other things also known as frogs.

Unraveling knitting is called frogging. Part of the bow of a violin is called a frog. I didn't know that. And there's a fastening called a frog. Oh, yes, the front of your coat. So my question is is why so many frogs and is there a connection thanks oh great question amy well first of all the frog that is the um amphibious um animal that goes back to an old english word frosh f-r-o-s-c and it came into

english as frosh with the h at the end rather than the C. So that's the amphibian. It was probably changed, the spelling of it was probably changed to frog by association with dog. So that one is fairly simple that you can see it had a kind of Germanic origin, if you like. And its story is, you know, quite well known. It became a general term of abuse. It was actually used primarily for Dutch people before the French. And the French, of course, it was partly down to the reputation of eating frog's legs. Frog in the throat, that also, you know, it's a kind of reference to something that makes you croak. But frog also had an earlier meaning of a soreness or swelling in the mouth. The frog that's the decorative fastening isn't the same word, and you won't like this, Giles, but its origin is unknown.

Perhaps it comes from a Portuguese floco, which comes from the Latin flocus, meaning a tuft of wool. So that is a possibility, but beyond that, we don't know. Well, I can just quickly tell you about Colonel Bogey, because I've done some homework of my own instantly here because people of my generation are very familiar with the Colonel Bogey March. And my father used to hum it. And that's not surprising because my father was alive during the First World War. And the Colonel Bogey March was invented, created by a British Army bandmaster, F.J. Ricketts. And he published Colonel Bogey as a march. He did it under a pseudonym because in those days, military personnel were not supposed to have lives outside

of the military. So it became popular during the First World War. And he used the word bogey, as in the Colonel Bogey march, because he was a golf enthusiast. And so it was the golf bogey that gave you Colonel Bogey. And remind me what a golf bogey is? Yes, it's one over par. Can I just say something on that? Because obviously this is what you were talking about. In the OED, it does credit the song with the origin of bogey and apparently it originally meant the ground score.

So it wasn't one over par, it was the ground score. So the kind of scratch value, I suppose, of each hole. And the system we're playing against the ground score was new to a major wellman. And he exclaimed, thinking of the song, that his mysterious and apparently invincible opponent was a regular bogeyman. So there you are. You see, we get these words in the most extraordinary roundabout ways. We do. That's why this is such a fascinating world to be in. Every week, Susie Dent gives us three unusual words, ancient or modern, that she feels deserve greater currency. What have you got for us this week? Thank you for reminding me. I have, I'm not sure if I've mentioned these before,

but I just love them. And it's such a kind of homely, kind of local word, I suppose. And it's quig nogs. And I can imagine my grandmother saying to me, enough of your quig nog suppose. And it's quig nogs. And I can imagine my grandmother saying to me, enough of your quig nogs. And it's like ridiculous ideas or conceits. So it's just having a silly idea about something is to have a quig nog, which I like. This one I like as well. It's finnying. And to be finnying is to be timid or fearful. And I like it because of the story that I discovered in a lovely book written by David Crystal, where he's looking at lost vocabulary. Because Finning apparently has a possible connection with supernatural beings known as the Finns. And in the Shetland Isles,

there was a long tradition coming from Norway that the Finns had magical powers. The Finns is in the nation. And these magical powers were said to be able to make people take the form of creatures of the sea so you didn't mess with the fins and if you were finnying you were timid or fearful of the fins these superstitious beings i just like that and also i think finnying sounds a little bit timid um and my final one very quickly if you've ever owned a pair of shoes that creak as i I frequently do, particularly new shoes that make a creaking noise, those are known as knickers. Not knickers, but knickers. Knickers? Yes.

If you can hear a rumbling sound in the background, I think my wife has ordered some new shoes. We can't go out to the shops now. So she ordered some new shoes online. They arrived and I think she's trying them out upstairs. And so what is this noise called? Quickering? What's that again? The shoes themselves are called knickers. Knickers. These are shoes that creak.

Yes. Knickers. Knickers. I've got to go in a moment upstairs to tell my wife to stop marching about in these shoes. Because can you hear the sound? I can hear, yes. I can hear. It sounds like you've got an army above you.

Yeah, well, she's quite fierce, can I tell you? I would have stopped her, but you've met my wife and you know that she'll be saying no, no. Anyway, that's what the noise was. It was my wife marching up and down in these new shoes. Have you bought any? My wife has bought nothing virtually for a whole year. I've certainly bought, I don't like buying things anyway. Have you bought anything in the past year? Yes, I actually have bought a pair of new boots because I have been trudging out in the mud. It was very exciting because I feel like I haven't had anything

come through my door that's remotely exciting. I only discovered they were too small, so I'm afraid they're on their way back. That's the excitement of my life. Oh, they're on the way back. Yes. Well, my wife's maybe on the way back because they certainly make enough clattering sound upstairs.

I shall ask her if they squeaked as well, in which if they squeaked, they were knickers. Is that it? They are knickers, yes. Do you have a poem for us this week? I've got a lovely poem for you this week. And because we've been travelling around the country, visiting different places with different interesting origins to their names, I've turned to one of my favourite Scottish poets, Charles Mackay. And this is a, well, it's a reflection on life. It's called

A Summing Up. And it's bittersweet, really, but I love it. I have lived and I have loved. I have waked and I have slept. I have sung and I have danced. I have smiled and I have wept. I have won and wasted treasure. I've had my fill of pleasure. And all these things were weariness, and some of them were dreariness. And all these things, but two things, were emptiness and pain. And love, it was the best of them.

And sleep, worth all the rest of them. Oh, wow. A summing up by Charles McKay. And that's us summed up for this week. It is, thank you. Do please spread the word. If you've enjoyed the podcast, do spread the word. Please do.

And you can get in touch via purple at somethingelse.com. Something Right with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Harriet Wells, Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale and the bogeyman himself. Yes. Old Uncle Quignog, it's gully.