Something Rhymes with Purple - Quisquilious

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

The words of the world of work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Lexicographer by profession, is that what you call yourself? Yes, I never know what to call myself. Well, you're a broadcaster, you're a writer, you're... But essentially people think of you as a lexicographer. Wordsmith or word detective. Wordsmith, lexicographer. Yes. What is the origin of the word lexicographer? Nobody's ever asked me that before.

No, no, they have actually. The origin of lexicographer is simply... You've published a book called The Joy of Lex, so you know what Lex is. I did, hoping to get lots of sales, and we did. We called the book The Joy of lexicography is simply, you've published a book called The Joy of Lex, so you know what Lex is. I did, hoping to get lots of sales, and we did. We called the book The Joy of Lex, and it came off, it was first appeared in the 1970s, off the back of the hugely successful Joy of Sex. So we sold an awful lot of copies. But people were confused there because they weren't sure whether Lex meant law as opposed to words and language.

Which does it mean? Oh, well, I would say words and language. Which does it mean? Oh, well, I would say words and language for sure. That's essentially what lexicographer does is compiler of dictionaries. And how come, because we're going to talk about jobs, professions, what things people do on this episode. How come you are a lexicographer? When you were a little girl, when you were the age of your daughters now, in your teens, what did you aspire to be Susie Denton

a hotel manager oh I loved hotels I loved wandering around in them whenever we went on holiday I would stand by the icebox for hours pretending to be a bar person and um that was it that's all I wanted to do is be a hotel manager I've never known that but I'm fascinated because when I was a child I read a novel by thomas mann called the confessions of felix cruel yeah and he was a kind of confidence trickster and he earned his living as a waiter so when i was in my teens i thought i'd like to be a waiter thomas mann one of my favorite authors well there you are so so it turns out that our childhood fantasies were similar but we haven't ended up waiting in a

hotel or managing a hotel No, my journey to where I am today was completely accidental though because I well my very first job, let's talk about our very very first jobs, I was a waitress, I loved it because you never took work home

you met lovely people. You met pretty awful people as well. Did you get tips? But you had a great team. We did get tips. I mean, we earned absolutely nothing. We did get tips. And I worked in a wine bar for a while as well.

And are there tricks to getting a better tip? No, we just used to add 10% and then share it around. I didn't go in for any particular exercise. Flirting with the customers in order to catch a little bit more. No, no, I didn't do any of that. What was your first job? I was a waiter. You flirted.

I am like Billy-o, like Billy-o. I went straight for the much older man. Hello, sir. Hello, how do you... Oh, that's very sweet. A fiver. Is that for me? Oh, that's very kind of you, sir.

Thank you. Pocketed it. In fact, I did my first job really was as a... I wanted to be a child star. And I used to do performing on Broadstairs. My parents took me on holiday to Broadstairs in Kent. Yeah. It's still a lovely seaside resort.

And I would perform there. There were three places to perform. One was on the bandstand, which I performed there. The other was the pavilion. Did you perform to an audience or just your family? I did. There was quite a lot of me performing solo on the bandstand early in the morning just to my darling mother.

You sat on a platform. She sat in a deck chair in front watching me. And you used to, in those days, be able to get tea on a tray. Oh. Yeah, on the top near the ice cream parlor. There was a place that made tea. You'd get a pot of tea with a tea cozy and a cup of tea and my mother would sit

on the deck chair watching me dancing about I used to do acrobatic dancing I was about 6 or 7 years of age anyway as a result of this I was seen by the people who came and did the show on the bandstand and they invited me to be a novelty turn and as a result of that I ended up at Broadstairs on the pavilion on the bandstand and they invited me to be a novelty turn. And as a result of that, I ended up

at Broadstairs on the Pavilion on the Sands. People who know Broadstairs will know there's this wonderful Pavilion on the Sands and it used to have an entertainer called Cecil Barker, who was a wonderful man. He had his own orchestra. He played the violin himself. He was a great entertainer, hugely popular from the end of the Second World War up until I think the beginning of the 1970s. And Cecil Barker saw me and I ended up doing Children's Night, Novelty Night and Carnival Night at the Pavilion on the Sands in Broadstairs. You had a full time job, age eight. Well, it was just for the summer holidays, three nights a week. Did you earn anything?

On the spare nights, I used to go to the Bohemia Theatre in Broadstairs and do a little song and dance routine there. Good grief. And we stayed, we lived in the same guest house when we were there as this man, Cecil Barker, who sat at a different table. And my reward was, he always wore a fresh carnation because he played the violin. It was on the wrong side of his shoulder that he wore it. And he wore a fresh carnation because he played the violin it was on the wrong side of his shoulder that he wore it and he wore a fresh carnation every day and I got the carnation on the next day that was my reward how lovely and at this guest house it's money would have been nice Siddle and Charles who ran the guest house they said to me clearly you'd like to be

a waiter would I said I'd love to be a waiter I'd love to be a waiter. I said, I'd love to be a waiter. I'd love to be a waiter. But of course, I got to the shows. And they said, we'll give you time to do the shows. So aged 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, the years that we went there, I was a waiter for Siddle and Charles at their guest house in Broadstairs. And if you're listening and you gave me a tip at the time, thank you very much. But tell me, what is the origin of the word waiter i suppose it is waiting at table that's it is somebody who waits at tables it's funny it

reminded me of um nick hewer who told me with disgust that he had been to a restaurant and had been attended upon by a waitron which is the neutral the gender neutral term for a waiter and they came up and said have you been menued yet, sir? Oh, please. He was not happy. He was not happy. Let's move on to the chef. Yes, okay. Because we have male chefs and female chefs and it's the same word. Yes.

What is the origin of the word chef? Chef simply goes back to the idea of a head, so chief. Oh, chef de cuisine. The chef would be the head cook. The head cook, essentially. And then essentially the chief of the kitchen and everything else. While we're on professions names, butcher? Butcher's strange.

Butcher, we think, goes back to a word meaning he-goat, bock. So presumably the meat was originally goat, mostly. So that's where we think it comes from, a bock. A bock? So the butcher originally cut up i haven't told you about butcher's back slang no oh it's so wonderful it's this wonderful tribal language that i discovered when i was um researching tribal language when i say tribal language i mean the language used by particular professions and groups and it turns out that

butchers in some corners of britain's you't find it everywhere now sadly, but they have this pig Latin essentially and appropriately. So they have this shorthand that they will use and nobody else can understand. And sometimes they will practice it for hours the night before in order to entertain their colleagues the next day. So cool the dello namo in butchers backslang means look at the old woman. And that in turn is code for she's a tough source. She's a tough customer. And it's the words reversed, is it? It's slightly reversed, but with consonants added on sometimes. So tish means shit, so they can swear.

So you go to the butcher and you suddenly hear them saying, tish, tish, tish. They haven't got a terrible cold. They're saying, we don't like the look of you. Shit, shit, shit. He's back. Exactly. And it's absolutely wonderful.

But sadly, probably dying out. But in some cases, it's been passed on. Butcher's hook means look, but that's a copy of the writing. That's right, I think it's fine. Which is a different kind of author thing. What about cop as a shorthand for policeman? Oh, yeah, that goes back to Latin. Essentially, we've got the Romans to thank for so many of our words.

That goes back to the Latin capere, meaning to seize, which gave us capture and captive and all that kind of thing. So cops essentially would cop people. That's an old dialect word for nabbing them, in other words. But it goes all the way back to classical language. Curiously, the other day we were talking about robber, you know, as in cops and robbers. Robber coming from clothing, the robe.

Cops comes from catching somebody. Yes. what about the other slang for police officers what are they called bobby's bobby's robert peel who yes basically pioneered the metropolitan police exactly exactly right and coppers peelers as well we have coppers is like they're called in liverpool busies yes because they essentially actually no one knows but i think it is because they're just... Busy, or maybe busybodying. Busybodying, exactly. And copper comes from cop.

Yeah. We played an amusing game a few weeks ago. We did. And it seems to have provoked a lot of interest. The game we played was one that I mentioned because I play it at night to get myself to sleep. And the idea is when you become redundant from a certain profession, how do you describe it? And I gave some examples about accountants being disfigured,

admirals are abridged, bankers are disinterested, botanists are deflowered, songwriters are decomposed, witch doctors are dispelled. Decomposed, I love that one. You like that one? What about this? Violinists are unstrung. Train drivers are derailed. Very good. What about this? Tennis players, unloved and defaulted.

Oh, excellent. Tailors, unsuited. Are these all from our viewers? No, they aren't. Listeners, even. Do you know, they communicate so well with us, we think they're viewing us. Thank goodness they're not.

But we have had some. Kerim Salih has sent in some lovely examples here. Thank you very much for doing so. If you want to get in touch, it's purple at somethingelse.com, by the way. Something without a G. Anyway, she has sent in, firemen are extinguished. Jigsaw designers get disassembled. The jockey loses his job,

gets unseated. The kiln operator is fired. Yeah. But this is the one I love most. The porn star deflated. That's very good.

That could be either the customer or the star, couldn't it? I don't know. But there are some gems there. And I got some here from Kane Green. Call centre workers either the customer or the star couldn't it i don't know but there's some gems there and i got some here from kane green um call center workers might be excommunicated cake makers could be expunged oh that's a great one that's a great one female teacher what did you call your teachers at school miss or mrs or mr yeah i did you said miss please miss a female teacher maybe dismissed

neat expunge has got to be my favorite a model maybe disposed of so they were modeling they were posing disposed of not sure what do you reckon i think i reckon it's time for a break We'll be right back. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, I didn't want to be comfortable. Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts.

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That's something without a G. Because I think we could go on forever with tree surgeons being uprooted, surveyors being dislocated. We need one for lexicographers. There must be an obvious one out there. But if you do have it, please let us know. I'd love to hear it. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Okay. Tell me about some of the terms that people use at work. Okay, well, we've talked about some job titles before, haven't we? So I've talked about the fact that secretaries used to keep secrets, so they were secretaries. Freelancers, again, another word that wears its heart on its sleeve

because they were originally knights who weren't attached to any particular nobleman or lord and so would be free to use their lance. Butlers, that goes, they were butlers uh originally well that actually goes back to the latin meaning a um a cask and of course we get a butt from that as well because curiously the duke of norfolk is sometimes described as the chief butler of england is he okay he is the person who runs the coronation when it comes along and this goes back to medieval times yeah being the the butler But the person was a bottler. A bottler originally.

So that's the person who brings up the wine. Exactly. So they were in charge of the wine cellar. Yeah. Essentially, they were the sommelier. Bussman's holiday. That was one of the queries that came up. It goes back to 1893, when being a bus driver was a regular, everyday job.

And it still is. But I think it was much more in the sort of public imagination than it probably is today. So bus and holiday. Can I just stop you there? Much more in the public... No, what I mean is... I must explain, Susie Dent hasn't been on public transport in some years.

I go on public transport all the time. But fortunately, we have a man of the people. I, Charles Brandreth, travel entirely on public transport. I do too. Partly because of myth, travel entirely on public transport, partly because of my age, and I therefore get a, what is called, old bugger's pass, and that enables me, and I think it's a wonderful thing, it must be said, because it does enable people who are much older than me, who mightn't get out, gives them the incentive to get out, but I am on a bus. You're a twirly. You can actually, in Liverpool, a twirly is someone who arrives too early,

because they're very keen, a pensioner that arrives too early to get the pensioner's discount. I think the busman's holiday is this. People like my great aunt Edith love to go on a holiday by bus. Yes. would get together, she was a maiden lady, and she would go with a girlfriend or two, and they would buy, she lived in Accrington, Lancashire, and they'd go to Lytham St Anne's, or if they were going to be extravagant, they'd go up to Blackpool. And they went by bus. And that was a treat. Now for the bus driver to go to Blackpool isn't a treat, because he's driving to Blackpool, or she is driving to Blackpool anyway yeah I think that is the origin and that has it isn't quite as popular now you're correct because the first record here in the in the OED is from the English Illustrated magazine 1893 quote I shall indeed take a holiday soon but it

will be a bus month holiday there you go right um up titling can I talk about that quickly so when you were a waiter waiter on whatever you were did you you were quite happy to call yourself that? I imagine I was proud to be a waiter. Yeah. Likewise, I was I was proud to do what I thought it was exciting. I thought it was slightly sexy. Yeah. But uptitling is when you try and big yourself up and you try and inflate your. Well, at least I'm not sure that we do it ourselves. I think maybe our employers do it for us. We don't have window cleaners. We have scandiscopists. Do we have scandiscopists?

I love that. Apparently, Shelfstackers are stock replenishment executives. Stock replenishment executives. Yes. But I did a bit of research into this. And it turns out we have been doing it for quite a long time. In the 1940s, if you were a rat catcher, you were a rodent operative. Isn't that wonderful? So we have been doing that for a long time. In the 1940s, if you were a rat catcher, you were a rodent operative. Isn't that wonderful? So we have been doing that for a long time. And firing someone, being fired,

of course, that's got a whole lexicon as well. You're fired. You're fired. Treadmill. We think it's simply from the idea of the speed with which a bullet is discharged from a gun, really, and somebody is, you know, literally discharged in the same way, rather unceremoniously. The sack, of course, people are given a sack. I think that goes back to people being given their tools because they were manual workers very often in a sack and told to get out.

Yeah, so quite a literal one, that one. Have you ever been to, after someone's died, to collect their possessions from it's happened to me now several times there are lots of things that i can introduce you to from an older person's perspective okay and one of them must be a verb for that then going and collecting it's it's bleak but what's interesting it's you talking about the sack is that every time that's happened the possessions have been handed to me in one of those black plastic sacks. Oh.

So you go in to collect the bits and pieces in a bin bag. Oh, that's not nice. And they put, you know, the cardigan and the clothes and the person's, the late person's spectacles and whatever it is, portable radio, in the bin bag. Listen, this is a new business for us, is that we can design some beautiful Hessian bags with a logo, gone but not forgotten, or something nice and sentimental on it, and they can replace black plastic tent bags. I think I've got a good idea. What should we call them? We can call them your dent bag.

I'd like a nice dent bag, please. Though I might find it a bit bleak to go and collect my nan's possessions and be handed a bag that already has embroidered on it gone but not forgotten enjoy with that exclamation mark something that's terrible oh have we had any listeners questions yet have you got any interesting letters we've had this week well we've had quite a few letters speaking of jobs with some nominative determinism in them so remind me what that is acronyms i like to call them, both mean the same thing. So they are people whose surnames accurately reflect what they do.

Lord Judge who turns out to be a judge. Or who they are. So we have some examples here. So Dan Connolly wrote in, thank you, Dan, to say he's met the warwickshire fire safety officer or one of them blaze marshall um and he said and when i read about the first blaze marshall yes and it's he's from warwickshire it sounds like as though you should be from texas blaze marshall fire officer and this one i have also heard of it's a gynecologist called dr bonnie beaver dr bonnie beaver why do these things make us laugh aren't we silly there's inside all of us a little school child isn't there still

trying to bonnie beaver that is amusing there are um and this usain bolt of course famously yes do you know i once met usain bolt's auntie in um place called Sherwood Content in Jamaica. Okay. And I stopped off looking for somewhere to go to the loo. And then I came out and I saw these pictures of Usain Bolt. And I said, Oh, you seem to be a Usain Bolt fan. She said, I'm Usain Bolt's auntie. And she said, I can still run faster than Usain. Isn't that wonderful? And she turned out to have been the woman's athletic running champion of Jamaica for many years. Oh, fantastic. So it was all in the genes. Well, I also, just

to stay with acronyms, there are some fantastic ones. I have to give a shout out to BuzzFeed for this, but they made me laugh when I was looking at these yesterday. There was an athlete who came last in a race who was called Vanya Stambalova. Vanya Stambalova. Vanya Stambalova, I love it. Which is amazing.

There was an Admiral Sir Manly Power. Sir Manly Power. Which is great. And I'm really sorry about this, but, you know, we had a message in saying that we giggle a lot on the show, which I protested loudly against, but now I realise I do. This was a man in ottawa he was arrested for indecent exposure called you have to read this out i should read it out

this is suzy really is having a collapse here uh okay this is this is a man arrested in uh for indecent exposure in Ottawa. He was 62 years of age. He appeared in court, and his name was Donald Popadick. You see, I can say it without bursting into giggles. When I was at school years ago, and we may have touched on this before, it's such a famous story. When I was at school in the 1950s,

the big blonde bombshell in Britain was Diana Dawes and everybody knew that her real name was Diana Fluck and you know the famous story of the vicar when she came back to open the church fate, don't you? He was so determined to get it right and use her by her real name

and introduced her as Diana Clunt This is from Gareth Morrell. It's almost 50 years since I saw it. I was once shown a prospectus from my local authority's evening classes in which the needlework class was announced as being taught by Vera Pinn. That's quite sweet. But there has been research

done on this that actually shows that people are drawn to certain professions if they have certain names. Absolutely. I know, I agree. Anyway, I could go on and on about acronyms because there are some very funny ones here. But I often say, and I'm sure it's true, that if Oscar Wilde had been called John Brown,

his life would have been totally different. Yeah. The name does make a difference. Yeah. Are you happy being called Dent? I don't mind it. I don't think it's influenced my job choice at all. What about Brandreth?

Oh, I hate Brandreth. No one likes the name really that much. I'm used to it. It's just complicated. Try phoning up and booking a table at a restaurant on the name Brandreth. I never do. I say Brown. Well, actually, mine is quite useful because everyone thinks I'm saying Judi Dench.

So that's quite useful. Oh, so you get the best table in the restaurant. I do. One more here of an acronym. Tim Barlow. And this is quite a common thing, isn't it? When somebody has a name that when read out in one way doesn't sound particularly attractive. So they put an apostrophe in or they change the pronunciation. And one of those famously is Dayath instead of death. And Tim Barlow says he came across a Mr. Dayath whose job was a probate solicitor perfect that's no wonder the apostrophe crept in suzy dent do you have your trio of my trio i have my trio your trio my trio i do these are words that we may not have come across before

that can increase our word power yes exactly okay um have you ever really regretted getting to the end of a box set or a book yes and yeah so what you were feeling then is finny fugal finny finny fugal f-i-n-i f-u-g-a-l and it's a really rare historical adjective meaning shunning the end of something it's happened to me many times when i got to the end of a wonderful novel called the old wife's tale by arnold bennett i thought this is i want to begin this all over again yeah but of course things are never quite as good second time around i say that i've just finished the box set of rumple of the bailey oh yeah These were television dramas made in the 19... John Mortimer. Written by John Mortimer, 1980s, 90s, finished in 1992. Just wonderful.

And I have seen that before, but I couldn't remember any of it. Okay. So what's the word for feeling sad about it? Phinnyfugle. Phinnyfugle. Yes. Oh, meaning sad at the end of things. Yes.

Okay. It means shunning the end or fleeing the end of something. Fleeing the end. Now, the next one is a really fancy way of saying that something is rubbish and it might give you a means of getting away with it because it doesn't sound particularly insulting. So use it to your biggest enemy and tell them that what they've just done is totally quisquilius and it means utter trash. So Q-U-I-S, Q-U-I-L-I-O l i o u s so the quiz part is again latin nothing to do with quizzing it's quiz quiz quillius quiz quillius it sounds beautiful doesn't it it sounds really really nice

and what does it mean it means of the nature of refuse of the refuse as garbage you are you are garbage you are shit you are quiz quisquilius of the nature of garbage. Yes, you can also say quisquilian if you like. Oh, I love it. But yes, it goes back to the Latin quisquiliae, waste, matter, refuse, rubbish. So that's a good one. And finally, if you want a fancy way of talking about your to-do list, you say, I have so many facienda or facienda, if you like, F-A-C-I-E-N-D-A. Facienda, facienda.

So a facienda is something that needs to be done. As in fakiri, doing things. Exactly. Funnily enough, whenever I'm unhappy, what I do is make a list. I feel constantly overwhelmed. I've got too many things to do, too many emails to answer. You know, I've got to get on Instagram, Twitter. It's all so much.

Got to get round to Susie's having done my own work. I make a list. So I cope with being overwhelmed by my fascienda. Yes, by writing a list. By making a to-do list. Are you somebody who has negative feelings? I don't think you are. Because I'm thinking, I love the word.

I'm a worrier, for sure. I'm a worrier, too. Ask Rachel Wadish. She'll say that I worry about things that could possibly happen, but I do. I think I'm a slight, not a catastrophist, but I do get into worry-hood sometimes. But you're not negative.

I mean, I'm wondering where we're going to use the word quisquilius, you and I. Oh, in terms of insulting other people. Oh no, I can do that. Can you? Yeah. But the great thing is to use, you know, to use vocabulary that... They won't understand.

Yeah, which is a bit silly, really. But you have to exploit my job sometimes. It's not a very transferable skill. Knowing the dictionary has its uses on occasion. So you occasionally send an email to the boss saying, you quisquilius bastard. I haven't done that yet. You ingordigious windsucker.

Well, on that wholesome note, I think we ought to conclude. Do give us a review or rate us. Help spread the word if you enjoyed it. And don't forget, if you've got a question, you can get in touch. You can email us at purple at somethingelse.com. And Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production produced by Paul Smith with additional production from Lawrence Bassett, Steve Ackerman and someone called Glly gully chris quillius