Something Rhymes with Purple - Ragman roll

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING PURPLE PEOPLE! Our journey throught the 20th century is not over yet... In fact, we've hit the halfway point! Join Susie and Gyles as we explore the war years and into the baby boom. 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:  Bishy Barnabee: a lady bird. Hod-ma-dod: a garden snail. Autotomy: (self-amputation) the casting off of a limb or other part of the body by an animal under threat, such as a lizard. Gyles' poem this week was 'In My Mind' by Carol Mugano If instead of feeling jolly, You’re full of melancholy, Don’t go wishing such a lot, You were somebody you’re not. Why not thank your lucky star, You are simply, who you are. 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, welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. I think, hopefully by now, if you are a regular listener listening you'll know exactly what this podcast is about if you don't and have stumbled across us welcome we are here and by we i mean i susie dent and jazz branders my pod panion as i like to call him we talk uh lovingly about words and we choose a subject every single week to explore when it comes to their particular lexicon and other types of language used. But it's quite free-flowing and it involves not a fair few, or a fair few, I should

say, of Giles's personal anecdotes, which are always, always entertaining. Hello, Giles. It also involves me interrupting you to ask you questions like, why did you say it is i rather than it's me me and my opinion the vernacular or the more informal sense would have been me it's me rather than it's i you wouldn't say it's i would you because you've got it is you've got sorry it's as a kind of contraction and that's itself informal but it is i the is here is a um auxiliary verb and i think okay it's me you wouldn't say no i'm just asking because it sounded it sounded almost correct it sounded formal um you know and it almost sounded as though you were sort of greek figure coming on it is i

king of the you know yeah it's me well i may be doing what a lot of people do, is hyper-correcting themselves because they feel like me is too slangy. So they put, you know, the king gave it to my husband and I, when actually it should be my husband and me. Or worse, and I think we're all guilty of this, the king gave it to my husband and myself, because that sounds even more formal, which is, again, wrong. So, strictly speaking, I is it. It is I. I think it is I is probably okay, but it's me would definitely be more casual, and we are quite casual on this podcast. Good. Well, it is I. It is I, Giles, who is listening to you, Susie, with awe. Good. Good. So, we talk about words and language, and the other day, we had fun, didn't we, Good. So we talk about words and language. And the other day, we had fun, didn't we, exploring words that had been conjured up for the first time in the 20th century. And I don't know how far we'd got, but I think we got through the first few decades.

Yeah. And I think we've about reached the 1940s. Exactly. Well, that is the decade in which I was born. But I imagine most of the words that are in the dictionary of the 1940s relate in some way to the Second World War, which dominated that decade, began in 1939, and didn't end in some parts of the world until 1946. So is that true of much of the language of the 1940s? Yes, I think so. As you say, pivotal decade. I mean, there were some horrific things that happened in the 40s, not least the two atom bomb explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then, you know, the establishment of, well, not the establishment, but I suppose the birth of an ideological, well, sort of barrier,

really, between East and West. And lots of incredibly important things happened. Yeah. I mean, the origins of what later came to be known as the Cold War, which dominated our childhoods, where the Eastern bloc, Eastern Europe, was quite separate from, and the Soviet Union as it was, quite separate from the Western bloc. Yeah. Yeah. Time. Extraordinary change. from and the soviet union as it was quite separate from the the western bloc yeah yeah time extraordinary change well give us some of those words from the 1940s if you can yes you

know what i was doing if i sounded a little bit distracted i was just checking if i am that sort of person where i just think it is i should have i led everybody astray and i'm supposed to be the expert so it is i i'm to say, is the correct formal expression of that, but not many people use it. And so it's best to stick to it is me in a conversation, but both of them are okay. Anyway, back to the 1940s. And should we talk about some of the, some of the, the terms that emerged in this period? I would love to. Give me some examples. Well, you will know about the origin

of the bikini, for example. I do. The Bikini Atoll. And is this something to do, in fact, with the atom bomb explosions that were so devastating when dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I feel the Bikini Atoll, which is sort of 1947, 1948, the shape of it, the look of the Bikini Atoll was similar to the look of the garment or garments, the top and the bottom, that feature in a bikini. Am I right? Is that why the Bikini Atoll is famous? Yes. Not so much the shape as such in terms of whether it actually reflected the Bikini Atoll, which is in the Marshall Islands. And it's 1946, but more the explosive effect. And it was coined in French a year after.

And yes, it was really like the explosion itself to the sort of almost scandalous discarding of modesty with the bikini. So it was pretty huge in its time. But as you say, I suppose that's a slightly more lighthearted product of those two horrible, horrible bombs. But yeah, often surprising. Are you a bikini girl? I was a bikini girl. I don't really get to go and lay out in the sunshine these days. How about you? Are you a bikini man? No, I'm not. I'm a cover-up everything. You're a budgie smuggler man. I am. No, I'm back to the kind of swimming costumes that men wore up until the 1930s,

I think, which were sort of one-piece costumes, rather like ladies. Mayo. The mayo, as they say in French. Covered up absolute maximum. Sadly, my body is not a thing of great beauty. No, I don't believe that. There we are. So we've got the bikini. Give me some more. Well, shall I lighten the mood somewhat

and give you from 1949, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I don't believe it. You've got it wrong. That's a word I'm sure that was invented for Mary Poppins. No. Was it really earlier than that? Was that was invented for Mary Poppins. No. Was it really earlier than that? Was it not invented for Mary Poppins, the film, in the 1960s? It was popularised by Mary Poppins in 1964.

Wow. It first appeared, in slightly different guise, as the title of a song by Parker and Young in the 1940s. And in fact, the two songwriters bought a copyright infringement suit in 1965 against the makers of Mary Poppins. And because there were earlier uses of the word that were sworn to in affidavits, the judge actually ruled against them because they said, this was pretty much in common currency, so they did not steal it from you. And it's really interesting that because people often wonder, can you copyright language? Can you actually protect a word that has been created? Is it subject to the same kind

of trademarks? It's an interesting discussion. But anyway, yes, it's been punned on endlessly in newspaper headlines, hasn't it? But certainly popularized by Mary Poppins. Brilliant. Well, I didn't realize it was that old. 1949, you tell me. Yeah. Give me some more. I'm loving all this.

Okay. What about a whistle-stop tour, which is really one, a journey with lots of brief stops, isn't it, where you just give a very brief look around and it's used metaphorically to say, well, today in our podcast, we're going to do a whistle stop tour of the 1940s and 50s. But originally, it comes from a US sense of the word, which was a small station or town where trains don't stop unless they're requested to do so by a signal given on a whistle. And it was then applied to political campaigning during the run-up to the 1948 presidential election. President Truman told a crowd at a railroad station that

before this campaign is over, I expect to visit every whistle stop in the United States. Great. I didn't know that. Harry S. Truman, of course, know what the S stands for, don't you? I don't. Well, if I did, I'd forgotten. No, well, I'm sure you have forgotten this because I'm sure you would have known it in your time. It doesn't stand for anything. It was just put in because people are supposed to have a middle initial, you know? You think American presidents have a middle initial.

But Harry S. Truman, well, his name was Harry Truman. Oh, how interesting. And the S was put in just to make it sound good. Did you ever think of doing the same? Well, unfortunately, I do have a middle name, and it's Daubeney. Oh, that's lovely. And so I keep quite quiet about that. Do you think it's quite lovely? I think it sounds a bit fae. It's very noble.

It is rather, isn't it? Giles Daubeney Brand. That's true. What is your middle name? You have told me before. Francesca. Oh, I love that. Yes. I love Francesca. Oh, I may call you Fran from now on in. I'm not sure I like Fran. Frankie, maybe?

Not sure I'm a Frankie. Chesca? Oh, no, I'm not sure I'm a Frankie. Well, Francesca. Yes. Oh, Chesca's good. Chesca. It's very exotic.

Very good. I'll give you one more from the 1940s, and that is red brick used to denote a university that was founded in a large industrial city in the late 19th or early 20th century. And it's used often condescendingly, isn't it? I think it used to be. You're absolutely right that there were the old universities, the traditional universities, the Oxford and Cambridges, the places like Durham, and these red brick universities, because I suppose they were built of red brick. They looked modern and shiny, and they were the new universities.

Red brick. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a word that's much used now, is it? No, I don't think it is really. No, I don't think it is really. But I think originally it was to distinguish them from the older, more noble, as was thought, universities that are built predominantly in stone, like Oxford and Cambridge and Edinburgh,

et cetera. But anyway, that first appeared then. That gives you quite a good, well, a little bit of an overview as to just how varied the vocabulary of this time was. As you say, you've got all sorts of things happening. I mean, lots of words related to nuclear power and to computers and to space as well. Should we leap ahead on our whistle-stop tour to the 1950s? Yes, because I love this. Because just as I thought supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a word from the 1940s, I'd always assumed, until you put me

right, that hippie, the idea of a hippie was very much a 1960s word. But I'm wrong, aren't I? It's much earlier than that. Yeah, I mean, not too much earlier. But yes, 1953. But hipster, of which it is a riff, was even earlier, 1941. And I associate hipsters with the kind of cool jazz eras of Charlie Parker, et cetera, which is actually where the word cool itself, the adjective, was popularized. So hippie really, of course, made it into the big time in the mid-1960s, but it was around before then, for sure. And I can't wait until we have an episode where we talk about the 1960s, because you can tell me all about them. But yeah, that was 1950s.

I was there. You were there. Well, so was I, but not really aware. I was there. Well, I was there and I was a teenager and I should really, well, I do, unfortunately, I remember it all. You're supposed to not remember it. I went, I was in California in the hippie days. I went to the Haight-Ashbury where everybody was smoking the dope.

And much more recently, I went to the birthplace of Bob Marley. And I remember going, and also to where he is buried. And I remember sitting by his coffin and two elderly hippies turned up. And this was, you know, only a few years ago. So these were two elderly hippies who'd been hippies in the 1960s. And they came looking like proper hippies with dreadlocks and amusing clothes. And though smoking a joint is not allowed in a public place in Jamaica, the guards turned the other way. As for old time's sake, these two hippies were allowed to sit at the edge of the grave of Bob Marley and smoke their joints. Amazing. I love that. That's fantastic. Well, save the 60s for our episode on that, because I'm sure you've got lots of personal tales to tell. This was a real period of scientific innovation, but it wasn't all about progress because it had also produced, of course,

a nuclear bomb and over the 50s hung the cloud of almost the bomb itself. And of course, W.H. Auden wrote The Age of Anxiety, which sort of pretty much pre-warned us, I suppose, about the coming decade. On a happier note, you have charisma known amongst teens today as RIS. This is your personal charm or magnetism. Ultimate Source, actually, is rather lovely. It's Ultimate Source is the Greek charisma, meaning a divine gift, which is lovely, I think. Indeed. I think in sort of Christian world, one talks about chrism, which may be a version of the same thing. I can't believe that charisma is a word from the 1950s. It must have been used before then. Are you telling me it's used in this sense from the 1950s onwards?

I mean, does charisma not appear in the dictionary before 1959? Let us have a look. Yes. So in theology, a gift, as we say, bestowed by God, and that is first recorded in the 17th century. But when it was applied in a secular way to a personal gift, if you like, that was indeed from the 1950s. How intriguing. I'm interested it's that late. Well, Ms. Dent, I say Ms. Dent, we ought to take a break. But Ms., apparently that comes from the 1950s as well. I thought that was a much later thing, 70s or 80s even, MS as an appellation for a female. Really? 1952? Can this be true? Halfway between Miss and Mrs, obviously. Didn't make real headway until the 1970s when it was vigorously championed. Can I just say, before we go to the break, that if there

are any purple people out there who are in charge of websites that ask for, when you're giving personal details, they ask you if you're a Ms or a Mrs or a Ms, why? Why do you need to know? Why do we need that appellation? I get that some people who are judges or doctors want to be recognised by that, but why do the rest of us have to go and specify? I just don't understand. It seems remarkably archaic to me. I agree with you there. I think we just have our first name and our surname.

I think it's all irrelevant. But maybe there are some people who like to be called, you know, Lady This, or as you say, Judge That, or Sir Hedward Pisspot, whatever they are. They want the handle. They want the title. I agree. Because I don't like being called Mr. It feels a bit odd, actually. No, I mean, I get, okay, so I get that if some people do want that, but then make it optional, because there are many fields that you enter online where it just, you cannot continue unless

you say whether you're a Mr. or Mux is the new gender neutral one. It's very, very odd. Anyway, you're right. It's time for a break where I will firmly get off my high horse and reach solid ground. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away?

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And this, again, surprises me how early it is. The word transplant, meaning, I think, a medical transplant, because transplant as an idea must have existed before. Transplanting somebody from A to B did exist, I imagine, previously in the 1950s. But I think the idea of a transplant as in the transplanting of a body part from one human to another dates from 1951, apparently. Is that right? Well, yes. I mean, there was a transplant recorded in the late 18th century when it was all about a tooth, transplanting a tooth. And then internal organs came later. I think it really came into its own after Christian Barnard performed the first really successful heart transplant operation, and that was in 1967, wasn't it?

But yes, widely used here. I think we're talking about, you have to remember that in the Oxford English Dictionary, you can see a word's journey with each of its different meanings. And as you said, with charisma, you know, goes back to very, very ancient roots, but its first sense in the sort of RIS sense that we know as today, as I say, that's the modern slang equivalent, that was from the 1950s. So in terms of the sense that we would know it as today, transplant, indeed, 1950s as well. And speaking of transplanting teeth and roots, since you mentioned those, during the Second World War, my father had an experience that meant when he went to the dentist afterwards, and when he took me to the dentist, he was fearless. When he was stationed in North Africa during the Second World War, he had a, well, a tooth that had gone bad. He had to go to a dentist. The only dentist he

could find in somewhere like Cairo was this really, well, let me say the dentistry was quite primitive because the dentist put a string around my father's rotten tooth and the other end of the string around his doorknob and then positioned my father halfway across the room and then slammed the door. And as the door was slammed, my father's tooth was pulled out of his mouth. And my father said it was excruciatingly painful, but it reconciled him to going to the dentist for the rest of his life because he knew it would be less uncomfortable wherever he went.

Oh, that sounds dreadful. What an experience. Good story though. A very good story. Well, look, we need to get to our correspondent. Who have we heard from? Well, our first email comes in from John in Texas. Do you have it there, Giles?

Hi there, Susan Giles. Words like smells can evoke memories. My father used the word palaver in regular vocabulary when I was growing up in Walsall in the 1950s and 60s. It still evokes memories of him. What is its origin?

If you will allow me a bonus question, what is the origin of rigmarole, which he could have used, but didn't? John in Texas. Doesn't tell us where in Texas. Have you been to Texas? I haven't been to Texas, no. Oh, you must go. I know. I need to explore further in the States. You do. Dallas is marvellous. Houston is marvellous. Okay, tell us about Palawa. So, it's first recorded in around the 1730ss when it was a long talk or a tedious discussion.

And it was nautical slang, really, slang amongst sailors. And it comes from a Portuguese word, palavra, meaning a word or a speech or a talk. And because it was often, as I say, tedious, it was long, it was rambling, it was often a bit incoherent, it came to mean a palaver, a sort of fuss and a bother and an overcomplicated process. So yeah, it first appeared in the sense of a sort of incoherent, sometimes harangue by someone. Rigmarole is a lovely one. Now we think this is a version of a Kentish dialect phrase, a ragman roll, which was around in the Middle Ages. And a ragman roll was a long list or roster. And quite often, it was a document recording accusations or offenses. And it may actually go back to a Viking word meaning a slanderer. And it was changed to ragman and roll just because they were more familiar to people than the original Old Norse. But then if it was a long list or a roster, again, similar idea to the palaver, it came to mean something that was heavily involved and heavily complicated, which is why something's called a rigmarole today.

Very good. You know a lot. You know so much that I'd like you to actually share with us. Oh, should we do one more letter? Forgive me. Let's do one more. Let's do one more. Hello, Susie and Giles. I recently adopted a rescue cat called Thistle, T-H-I-S-T-L-E, and we love listening to your podcast together. We particularly enjoyed learning the origins of the word Thistle and how it came to be the national flower of Scotland. It suits thistle very well because he's small and unassuming, but a wee bit spiky, and he wears a tartan collar. Thistle would like to know why non-pedigree cats are called moggies,

or should that be domestic shorthairs? He also wonders why we sometimes call him Puss, Pussycat, or Kitty. Isn't Kitty a girl's name? He's a Tom, come to think of it. Why are the males called Tomcats? All the best from Bethan. So what's the answer to all that? Well, first of all, this is a Germanic word. It's a distal in German. So we borrowed that from our Germanic ancestors. And yes, cats. Well, we have spoken many a time on Maggie for a magpie, which was originally a maggoty pie, actually, but nothing to do with maggots. And very much the same thing is going on here. So, moggy is a version of Maggie or Margaret, first appeared in 1648. And actually,

a moggy was, first of all, a young woman, and later, an untidily dressed woman, which tends to be the way that most nouns involving women goes. It starts off as something neutral, and then it descends into a sort of either a promiscuous woman or one who is rather frowsy, always the same. Anyway, it then evolved to mean a scarecrow, a stuffed figure. Then it was a calf or a cow. And then much later in 1911, a cat. So it is simply a version of Margaret. And similarly, you will know Giles, a Grimalkin, famously used by T.S. Eliot, a cat in which Malkin, there, M-A-L-K-I-N, is simply a pet form of Maud. So we have that.

The same thing is going on with the tomcat, exactly the same, and the same with Kitty, I'm afraid, where it is just you. Not I'm afraid, actually. It's just the way that English has evolved. But it's all to do with our taking first names and then using them affectionately, really, for other things. Is Kitty an abbreviation of Catherine or Christine or what is it? Catherine. Yeah, I think it's Catherine mostly. But it's a name in itself now, isn't it?

It's lovely. I love it. And would you say Grimalkin or Grimalkin? I say Grimalkin or Grimalkin, I think. I don't know what I said before. But we don't really use it these days, do we? No, we certainly don't. Well, if you've got an amusing name for your cat that you want to share with us or questions of any kind, do get in touch. We're devoting our 250th episode, which is coming up very soon, to your letters, your inquiries, because

the podcast has been the success. It's been entirely because of you, the Purple People. So feel free to contact us. We're Purple People at somethingrhymes.com. Now, Susie, every week you come up with three unusual, interesting words. What is in your trio this week? Okay, so I'm going to start off with two words that were mentioned actually by the lovely Stephen Fry, who is more than a national treasure in Britain, but I'm sure he's known across the world. And it was at the lovely hay festival the festival at hay on y which i know you know giles and it was a lovely discussion with steven

and we were talking about english dialect and he mentioned two of his favorites and one is bishy barney bee in fact we should do a whole episode on the slang for insects local dialect for insects because they're fascinating but But a bishy barnaby is a ladybird in some parts of Britain, which is gorgeous. And he also mentioned a hodmadod, and a hodmadod is a garden snail, which I love. So to add to Stephen's word, I'm going to give you something which is very specific, but it just amused me. It's very important to those who do it. but it just amused me. It's very important to those who do it. Autotomy, not autonomy, but autotomy. And that is the casting off of a limb or other part of the body by an animal under threat, such as a lizard. So they simply discard part of their body so they can make an escape.

Wouldn't that be useful to have as a human attribute? Very good. Is the word for discarding your skin, if you're a snake, to slough it? Oh, yes, you can slough it. Slough your skin. Yes, yes. And how do you spell slough in that context? That's a very good point. I would have said... Is it S-L-O-U-G-H? Yeah, like slough. While you're giving me your poem, I will look that up and I'll tell you at the end. You'll have to be quite quick because I've chosen a very short poem this week i thought oh i go banging on some weeks with very long poems let me come up with something short and sweet and i flicked open carol mogano's charming the

patter of poetry her little anthology and came across this poem which is simply called In My Mind. If instead of feeling jolly, you are full of melancholy, don't go wishing such a lot. You are somebody you're not. Why not thank your lucky star? You are simply who you are. Oh, isn't that, I don't know, that sounds like a song lyric. Well, it could be. Maybe it is. Set it to music. Make a fortune. Why not? lyric well it could be maybe it is set it to music make a fortune why not yeah and i think yeah why not anyway look out for carol magano if you want to turn that into a song expect on the on our book you can get get hold of her perfect um just to say slough is either s-l-o-u-g-h which

is the standard form or the dialect form is slough with a double f so we were both right thank you so much for listening to the show today please keep on listening to us and keeping us company we absolutely love to have you with us and there is also the purple plus club for some ad-free listening and some extra episodes should you be interested on words and language it's where we let our hair down a little bit those of us that have hair and i'm about to mention somebody who definitely does because i'm going going to tell you that Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Deo, with additional production from Naomi Oiku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Poppy Thompson, and... But also Harriet. Harriet Wells is with us today.

Oh, Harriet Wells. These are people from yesterday. They've come back. People can't stay away from Something Rhymes with Purple. You can actually hear her in the background. And she's wearing what looked like dungarees. But that's not the end. Oh, we love dungarees. Who else have we got? I think you've mentioned everybody but one person who presumably is the suit individual to whom you were referring.

Because he is back. And we don't know how long for. But we would very much like him to stay. It is, of course gully