Something Rhymes with Purple - Raspis

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Join Susie and Gyles this week as they unravel the delightful chaos of misnomers, where words dance to their own tunes! Discover the quirky origins behind some linguistic rebels and the stories they've mistaken for truth. 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: Betise: An action of foolishness or stupidity  Catillate: To lock dishes  Sarcast: A sarcastic person Gyles' poem this week was 'From a Railway Carriage' by Robert Louis Stevenson   Faster than fairies, faster than witches,  Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;  And charging along like troops in a battle,  All through the meadows the horses and cattle:  All of the sights of the hill and the plain  Fly as thick as driving rain;  And ever again, in the wink of an eye,  Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,  All by himself and gathering brambles;  Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;  And there is the green for stringing the daisies!  Here is a cart run away in the road  Lumping along with man and load;  And here is a mill and there is a river:  Each a glimpse and gone for ever! 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

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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Well, I'm just calling him my podpanion for now. Giles Branders, who is sitting opposite me, but on Zoom, on my screen, live from Edinburgh. Well, I hope you're live. How are you doing, Giles? I'm doing well. I've had a fabulous month in Edinburgh. I'm coming back to London. And then I'm going to have an exciting autumn. I'm doing lots of new and amusing things. And I'm going to Venice, which is lovely, one of my favourite cities in the world. So we might talk about Italian English. We often talk about influences from France and from Germany, even from India. But have we ever talked about the

influence of the Italian language on English? I suppose we must have done an episode on pastas. I'm sure we did, on the different types of pasta and why they're so called. We did do one on pasta, but there's a lot more to Italy than pasta. Good. called? We did do one on pasta, but there's a lot more to Italy than pasta. I actually very recently did a, there's a lovely program on Radio 4 called Great Lives, where the guest chooses someone who's had a big influence on their life. And I chose the author Thomas Mann, whose works featured large in my studies of German. And he, of course, wrote Death in Venice. So Venice has been on my mind as well. I must talk to you sometime then, Susie Dent,

about The Confessions of Felix Kroll, which is a novel by Thomas Mann. Oh, yes. That influenced me hugely when I was a teenager. When I got to the end, though, I was gripped by it. I discovered it was only volume one. And then I learned he never got around to writing volume two. So you can explain all that to me. No. Yeah, we must talk. Thomas Munn, have a hefty discussion. I'd enjoy that. But you know what? Today's subject is very different. And you know how I love the way that English evolves through mistakes. And I talk about this a lot because people tend to worry about the health of English and they think that it's in decline because people

are getting things wrong, whether it's grammar, whether it's spelling, the hate, the way people are saying on tender hooks rather than on tenterhooks or pacifically, et cetera, et cetera. And I always try to reassure by saying, look, we have actually been getting things wrong for a very long time. Well, our subject today sort of fits into that category because we're going to talk about misnomers. So things that have been slightly wrongly named. Now, this may have been accidental because, as I say, this happens a lot. We're still doing it, but we've been doing it for centuries. But sometimes it may just have been because people didn't have sufficient knowledge in the past. And I'm going to kick off with one of my favorite examples, which is the word for an ostrich in olden days, which was astrucio camelos.

And that for the Greeks meant, it had a camel in it essentially. So it meant sparrow camel, because they were trying to think, okay, it looks a bit like this. Its neck is quite long. It looks like a camel. It kind of looks a little bit like a sparrow. I'm not quite sure where the idea came from. And so they put it together. Likewise, a giraffe was called a camel leopard, so a cross between a camel and a leopard. And that's simply because these exotic animals were not witnessed by English speakers in those days. They had no clue. There were bestiaries around which did their best with illustrations of these animals, but they really were just licking their fingers and waving them in the air because they just didn't really know. And I love this. So sometimes it actually sheds a real light on

the knowledge and also the preoccupations of the day. So I thought that might be a nice subject for today. It's a brilliant subject. Do you know who it was who first said that a horse designed by a committee is a camel? A camel is a horse designed by a committee. It's somebody like Mark Twain, where things go wrong. That's it. So a misnomer, the mis is as in mistake.

It's brilliant. And nomer as is in word. Is that how the misnomer means? Name. So it's a mis, the name that is wrong. Okay, good. Well, take us through some of your favourite misnomers. I definitely want to include koala bears because I know that a koala is not a bear, but why is it called a koala bear? Just because it looks like a cuddly bear, don't you think? But they're not so cuddly, I think, as far as I know. I've never seen one in the wild, but they're not, as you say, closely related to the bear family. And I think in Australia now, the bear has been dropped, if it ever existed there. So they just talk about them

as koalas. And I'll tell you one that actually I only discovered very recently, and that was a lap wing. And I was suddenly thinking, why is a lap wing called a lap wing? And actually, it wasn't. It was called a leap wink, if you go back to old English, a leap wink. And the leaping, you can understand if you look at their sort of wheeling, beautiful motions in the air. But to wink was also to move from side to side. And so it was all about the movement of these birds in the air. But as so often in English, the leap thing makes sense because you could see these birds, as I say, flying around. But then we thought maybe we misheard it as lap. I'm not quite sure why we made that sort of change.

But the wing bit, more understandable. From wink, moving to side to side, we think about these birds on the wing, obviously. So that changed too. But that was quite, I had absolutely no idea about that one. So that has become one of my favourites. Seagull, famously, no such thing as a seagull. Oh, what do you mean no such thing as a seagull? Edinburgh is full of seagulls. They're the size of dogs and they fly down and take your chips. I mean, of course there's a seagull. They do. Well, actually the correct term is simply a gull because gulls don't live exclusively near the sea. But interestingly, if you look at many a website, they will say that this is a hill that many birders have chosen to die on because it's really important to anyone who really knows their birds and their bird terminology

that there is no such thing as a seagull. But popularly, we will always talk about them. Jellyfish and starfish, not even distantly related to fish. Jellyfish, I suppose the jelly bit you can understand because they're quite gelatinous. But yeah, neither of them related to fish, but they live in the sea. And so we decided to call them that. How about you? Do you have any favourites? Well, I want you to tell me because I think I know this is true, but I may have got it

wrong. I think guinea pigs don't come from Guinea, either New Guinea or Old Guinea. I'm not sure the French horn is French. And I've heard of people having Spanish flu, but I don't think it came from Spain. So what about that? The French horn, the Spanish flu, the guinea pig. Very true. The guinea pig. Okay, so the guinea pig comes from South America. You're absolutely right. Not Guinea in Africa or New Guinea in the South Pacific. So that bit, Guinea was probably simply chosen as a name for an unknown distant country. So somewhere over there, that's where they come from. Nor do they look like pigs or are they pigs? They're chubby and they can squeal like pigs, but who knows?

I mean, there is a possibility that Guinea was confused with Guyana, which is in South America, but I think it was probably used as an example of a far off exotic country. So that's that one. You are absolutely right about the Spanish flu. This is sort of quite unfortunate, really. It was identified, I think, in Spain, this particular strain, and that is why it was called the Spanish flu, but actually didn't begin there at all, and likely had multiple places of origin. So I've always thought that one is a little bit unfair. German measles is also an interesting one. I think the German here was used possibly as a bit of an insult, much as we have got the Dutch down as targets for insult in so many of our expressions as we've

talked about. I think it was used, German measles was sort of milder sense of measles. So I think German was like a sort of bit of a synonym for something weak. Although as we know, it can actually be quite serious, especially if you're pregnant. And it's called rubella these days. We've taken that epithet out. Now, I don't know about the French horn. You've educated me on that one. So I'm going to look this one up. But it may well be French in origin, but I just felt somehow I'd learned it wasn't. No. Well, a lot of instruments originated elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Germany, associated with music. So I'm not quite sure. Maybe it was particularly dainty, or we tend to associate the French, as we know, with things that are naughty.

Pardon my French. So it would be lovely to know about the kind of true inspiration for that one. Well, this is one people can write to us. If you know about the French horn, purple people at somethingrhymes.com. You may know more than Susie Dent. That would be pretty remarkable. What about, there's lots of fruit. I mean, I think a grapefruit has got nothing to do with grapes. And is a pineapple anything to do with apples or pines? No, no, very good point. So again, this is all about sort of early naming and the sort of knowledge that people had at the time. So grapefruit, they grow in clusters, which might explain the name, but they're definitely not a cross between grapes and oranges. And a pineapple, no pine related element. The Latin pinus, P-I-N-U-S,

pine tree, had given us the word for a pine tree and the pine cones, that's the word I'm looking for, were originally the pine apples. So these were the apples or the fruit that fell from the pine tree. So a pine apple originally meant a pine cone. But when the pineapple fruit was introduced in the early 17th century, the shape of it, if you imagine putting a fir cone or a pine cone next to a pineapple, you can see it's got that same shape. It's got the segmented skin. And so it was thought to resemble the pine apple, the fruit of the pine tree. And so the name was transferred to it. So no botanical connection whatsoever,

but it was all about the shape and the look of the thing. What about a peanut? Is it anything to do with peas? It's a nut, certainly. Why is it called a peanut? Yes, not a nut in the botanical sense. A nut is actually a legume, but we eat and treat them very much like nuts, don't we? Likewise, a coconut is not a botanical nut. And I think the technical term for a coconut is actually a droop. And a droop is a fleshy fruit, which quite often has a seed inside it. But the coconut, I absolutely love the origin of, if I have told you already, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but it is a great one. So the cocoa here actually sort of meant bogeyman in Spanish and Portuguese, or a grinning scary face. Because if

you look at the base of a coconut, you will see three holes, and those holes are the inspiration for the name, because they do look quite ghoulish. I know, Susie, that you suffer from that fear of clowns, which is called... Coulerophobia. And this links me to mention, and I'm giving you a trigger warning here, Coco the Clown, who was a famous British clown when I was a boy and I once met him. And your description there of the coconut, the look of it, reminded me immediately of Coco's face. So maybe that's why he was called Coco the Clown. Yes, quite possibly actually, but definitely worth looking. Next time you have a coconut in the house, I know not many of us have coconuts in the house, but do turn it upside down and have a look

at it and you will absolutely see why it represented the bogeyman because it does have that slightly scary face to it. But not a nut is the relevant point here. Did you complete the answer on strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries? Strawberries grown in straw? Do raspberries make a funny noise? Are blackberries always black? Well, the one thing they have in common is they are not berries, really, which is quite a surprising thing, isn't it? But they are shrouded in mystery.

Nobody quite knows why they are called that. So the original word for raspberry was raspis, R-A-S-P-I-S, but we just don't know where that comes from. And the berry bit was added a little bit later. And interestingly, in botany, I think a berry would also be applied to a banana or a tomato because it's any fruit that has its seeds enclosed in some kind of fleshy pulp, which is really, really fascinating. I think we need some purple botanists to explain all of this to us. The strawberry bit, again, we don't quite know where the strawberry bit comes from. As you say, maybe it was grown in straw, but we genuinely don't know about that.

Blackberry is a bit more self-explanatory. But yeah, so I absolutely adore those. And it's extraordinary that a bit like your favourite dog, and we don't know where that comes from. We don't know where the strawberry got its name. Do you know where sweetbreads got their name from? When I was a meat eater, I used to enjoy sweetbreads. Now, the idea is appalling to me, but what are sweetbreads and why are they so called?

Yes, appalling to us because we are strict, well, mostly vegetarians. You do eat a bit of fish sometimes, don't you? But not the thymus gland of an animal. Now, the thymus gland is a lymphoid organ that you'll find in the neck of animals. And it's all about controlling the immune system, I think. But strictly speaking, sweet breads were those or less often the pancreas of an animal that was used for food. And we tend to think of sweet, meaning that they are sweet to taste, but I think it was the idea of something delicious and sweet in that sense. Similarly, today, we associate puddings

very much with sweet things. What are we having for pudding? It will always be sweet. Whereas, of course, just as we have black pudding, the original puddings were very much savoury and also included the intestines and entrails of animals. And pudding is linked to the French boudin, which means black pudding, but ultimately the Latin botellus, which meant sausage, which means weirdly that pudding and botulism are siblings from the same family. Which takes me to haggis, which I've been offered many times up here in Edinburgh, because haggis is a kind of sausage, isn't it? What is the origin of the word haggis? I mean, I know it's not a misnomer, but if you know it, just share it. I think, and you might guess this

just from the sound of it and the sound of hag as well, that it's a Viking word, very sort of earthy and from a word that they had in Old Norse, meaning to hack or to chop into pieces. A bit grisly, that. Have you ever tried haggis? I've never tried it. I have. In younger and happier days, I've tried it. And I've spoken at Burns Night dinners, where they give you haggis, and they also give you some whiskey, some good Scotch whiskey to drink with it. So, you know, tatties, neeps, haggis, I've tried them all in my time, but now I'm a bit of a veggie with just a little bit of fish now and again. But talking of cutting things into bits, let's cut our podcast into two.

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See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. This is Something Rhymes with Purple with Giles Brandreth and Susie Dent. And we've been talking about misnomers. Rhymes with Purple with Giles Brandreth and Susie Dent. And we've been talking about misnomers. Give us some more misnomer information before we move on to this week's correspondence, because you've had some rather intriguing letters. Yes. So I'm going to talk about a category of language, which I wouldn't say is necessarily a misnomer. It's just a way in which we take a part of something and apply it to a whole. So you will probably have heard of the words metonymy. Have you heard of a metonym and metonymy?

Yes, I have. Now, what does it mean, metonym? So that's the substitution of the name of some kind of feature of a particular thing for the thing itself. So you might call a business executive a suit, for example. You might talk about horse racing. You might talk about the turf. Yeah. Fleet Street was what people called, where all the journalism in Britain was done, was done in Fleet Street. He's a Fleet Street hack, meaning he worked in Fleet Street, but it's no longer where the newspapers are made. But you might call Wall Street the place in New York where it's the finance district. So it's one word standing in for another. Is that right? Yes, it's exactly. And it's very close to

synecdoche is how Oxford would tell you to pronounce it. So this is S-Y-N-E-C-D-O-C-H-E, pronounce it. So this is S-Y-N-E-C-D-O-C-H-E, synecdoche. And this is similarly a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa. So the example given in the dictionary is England lost by six wickets. And actually what England means here is the English cricket team. So it's a similar sort of thing. We have, for example, Big Ben, which is used, and maybe that is actually a bit of a misnomer because people tend to think of Big Ben being the tower rather than the bell, don't they? For example, we have the Ivory Coast. So the country's official name is Cote d'Ivoire, but actually it emphasizes the country's historical connection to the horrible ivory trade. But that's not its defining aspect.

So you might say, I mean, it'd be interesting to see whether eventually that name changes as cultural opinions kind of shift. So those are two categories of language. And then you also have older names that we still use, even though technology has changed, life has changed. And these are called, wait for it, so much terminology with this. These are called either skeuomorphs, so they're kind of linguistic artifacts, really, or anacronyms, which is slightly easier, an anacronym. So we've touched on these before, but we dial a number on our phone, even though there is no dial. We don't put our fingers in the sort of hole on a telephone dial and let it go around, nor do we hang up at the end of a conversation, but we still talk about it as though we are literally physically putting the telephone back on its hook.

So we talk about tin foil, where actually it's nothing to do with tin, it's aluminium foil now. So that kind of thing that we sort of hold onto, bed linen, I'm going to change the bed linen. When are they ever made of linen these days? Not often. So that's another sort of almost a misnomer, but it's lack of inventiveness, interestingly, or the way that we stick to those older words, even though things have changed quite substantially since. This is all fascinating stuff. I want to return to this, but immediately, actually, we've had a couple of really good letters, and I want to share those with you.

The first one, this is a global podcast, and Dane has got in touch with us, I think, from Canberra in Australia. Hi, Giles and Susie. I have two questions about the word sod, S-O-D. I am not sure about the uses in other English-speaking countries, but in Australia, at least for people of my generation, it has a broad range of uses. You can call someone a silly sod, tell them to sod off, explain that you or they have sod all to contribute. Most of these, it seems to me, with the exception of sod off, are related to earth or dirt. I can see how the meaning of earth might come to be used to describe someone as useless or worthless, hence you stupid sod or he's a right sod. It's also sometimes used as a replacement

for the F word, as in this sodding computer won't work. But my questions are, this is Dane speaking, one, is the word sodden related to sod? And if so, how and when did the word sod get associated with water? In Australia, we might describe someone who has had far too much to drink as being sodden. And we described soaked earth as sodden is the clue in the relationship to the earth. Two, what is the root verb for sodden? That is, if something that I'm taking becomes taken and something that I am stealing becomes stolen, does that mean that I have been sodding before I can become sodden? Thanks, Dane. Well, thanks, Dane. I mean,

that's amazing, Dane. A load of questions there. Okay. Before we sod off, will you give us the sodding answers, Susie Dent? I can. And it's interesting, just to start with that usage, that we do not consider sod off. Well, sod off isn't never something you really want to hear, but oil such as sod can actually be used in a fairly playfully, if slightly upper class English way, British way these days. But actually, its origins are really quite nasty and quite homophobic because sod here in all these rude senses is vulgar slang for sodomite. So that's how it began. So, you know, and it's similar with, you know, bugger off, if you like. It's the same idea, same homophobic idea. So that is the origin of those sort of root senses. And they are entirely unrelated to the other ones to do with

soaking and to do with the earth. And actually, believe it or not, there is no link between those two either. Now, Dane also asks for the root verb of sodden. And I'm going to kick off with that when it comes to these senses, because sodden is a really old and now obsolete past participle of seethe, believe it or not. So to seethe, you can seet seize with anger, but actually in its physical state, it's to boil or to be turbulent. When water seethes, it is boiling. And of course, if it is turbulent, then it might soak through the earth. So if something is seethed or sodden, it is entirely soaked through with this effervescent, overflowing, boiling water. with this effervescent overflowing boiling water. So that's sod as in the soaking sense.

And even though the sod as in the soil might be sodden, they are unrelated because the surface of the ground with the grass growing on it, the turf, that goes back to a different word of unknown ultimate origin. You find relatives in Dutch and in German, but very unlikely to be related to the sodden that comes from the seethe. Very good. You know an awful lot. There's a charming story, using the sodomite reference that you made, there's a charming story told by the great actor Sir John Gielgud, who was invited to open the new theatre that was created,

the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park in London. And he was delighted to hear that the sods of earth had been brought from Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was born. And he began his speech by saying, I'm so delighted to discover that all the sods here come from Stratford. That's lovely. He was using the pun in an affectionate way. Yeah. Good. We have another letter. Dear Susan Giles, in Spanish, sin means without. Can one link this to the English sin? Could the origin of the English sin mean without innocence? Thanks so much for your podcast.

It brings a degree of sanity to the end of the day from your listener hector do you know what this is one of my absolute favorite questions just because for a linguist it's fascinating and it has asked me a question which i have never pondered before giles never occurred to me so i'm going to take the sin meaning without which will usually come from the latin, S-I-N-E. And that we think either began with Latin and we're not quite sure where that began, or it goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root, meaning if. So it would be kind of if or then without, because there is a sense of absence. We're not completely sure. Something is not confirmed. So it could also mean by itself, if you like. And you will find that repeated in lots and lots of different languages, that

sine or the sin meaning without, which is fascinating. But the sin, which we would define as being an immoral act or a transgression of some kind, that is a different Latin root for sure, actually written as sons, S-O-N-S, which meant guilty. So it's very unlikely that that idea of being by itself without that sense of uncertainty is linked to the idea of sin as in guilt. But it's absolutely fascinating because it had never occurred to me before. And I was really hoping that I would have found a lovely link there for Hector because, yeah, it's just, linguists will appreciate that when you chase threads like this, you want to find the gold at the end of them. But sadly, I didn't this time, but thank you for asking me, Hector.

Good, Hector. You've clearly given Susie a good time. So Susie, can you give us all a good time by sharing your three words of the week? I can. I'm just, thanks to that comment there, I'm going to call you a sarcast, Giles. Although I think you were teasing, but sarcast, simply a sarcastic person, not a word that we would use very often, but oh, you're such a sarcast. sarcastic person not a word that we would use very often but oh you're such a sarcast sarcasm just a reminder from the greek for flesh eating linked to sarcophagus because the idea is that a sarcastic comment can eat away at you in a caustic way just like a sarcophagus or a limestone coffin might decompose its corpse all a bit grim uh so that's sarcast. Then we have, now quite interesting if you have a cat or a dog, you'd recognize this one, catelate. Catelate is to lick your dish. Who knew that there was

actually a word for that? To catelate. Yeah, it's to really enjoy something so much that you have to lick the dish, not something to be done in polite company unless you're an animal. And finally, betties. I think anyone who knows French will recognise bet or betties. It's simply an act of stupidity. Quite useful for daily life, I would say. Not something, a word that we might turn to, though naturally, but betties, quite pithy, for an act of foolishness or stupidity. When Hector's name came up just then, did the nursery rhyme Hector Protector come into your head, Susie? No, what came into my head was something I watched when I was a toddler called Hector's name came up just then. Did the nursery rhyme Hector Protector come into your head, Susie? No, what came into my head was something I watched when I was a toddler called Hector's House,

which I adored, which was, yeah, I absolutely loved that program. But I do remember looking it up on Google and seeing an extract from it and thinking, oh my God, it's so old. It reminded me of how old I was. But yeah, I didn't think of that. No. What was it? Hector the Protector. Do you know the nursery rhyme? Hector Protector was all dressed in green.

Hector Protector was sent to the queen. The queen did not like him. No more did the king. So Hector Protector was sent back again. It's a little nursery rhyme. Excellent. And I love it. The poem, my poem this week is really like little nursery rhyme. Excellent. And I love it. My poem this week is really like a nursery rhyme.

It's from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. And what is so clever about it? I mean, Robert Louis Stevenson, I've been thinking about him a lot because he was an Edinburgh author, and I've been in Edinburgh, and I love his novels. But I also like the innocence of his poetry, the charm of it. And this is a very clever poem because it mimics the steady movement of a train through rhythm and rhyme and is brilliant as a consequence. It's called From a Railway Carriage. Faster than ferries, faster than witches,

bridges and houses, hedges and ditches, and charging along like troops in a battle, all through the meadows, the horses and cattle. All of the sights of the hill and the plain fly as thick as driving rain, and ever again in the wink of an eye, painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles all by himself, and gathering brambles. Here is a tramp who stands and gazes, and here is the green for stringing the daisies. Here is a cart run away in the road,

lumping along with a man and load, and here is a mill, and there is a river, each a glimpse and gone forever. Don't you feel that you're there in the railway carriage, looking out of the window, seeing these things according to the rhythm? I mean, aren't they clever, these poets? Brilliant people. That's why I love verse. And I love Robert Louis Stevenson. And I love you because you introduced me to the world of words and language in the most amazing way.

You are extraordinary, Susie Dent. And I love our times together. I love our times together too. That's it really, isn't it, for this week? Yes, and I hope everybody else has enjoyed their time with us and will continue to follow us and consider the Purple Plus Club where you can get some bonus

episodes on words and language. Do also please keep getting in touch with us because we love hearing from you. Something Guys with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Dio with additional production from Naomi Oyeku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner,

Jen Mystery, and you know what, Giles? I don't think he would be a catalator, not with that beard. No, certainly it's a very, very bushy beard. Oh my, it's Rishi. Oh, Susie, sub that for a brilliant podcast.