Something Rhymes with Purple - Sabana

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

This week, Susie and Gyles embark on an exciting journey into the wild as we delve into the history and evolution of all things 'safari'. Discover how this term, rooted in Swahili and Arabic, has traveled through time and across continents to become synonymous with adventure and exploration.   We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our 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:    Catillate: To lick the dish.  Phubbing: Using your phone in social situations.  Blandish: To cajole or to gently flatter.   Gyles' poem this week was 'The Tyger' by William Blake   Tyger Tyger, burning bright,   In the forests of the night;   What immortal hand or eye,   Could frame thy fearful symmetry?   In what distant deeps or skies.   Burnt the fire of thine eyes?  On what wings dare he aspire?  What the hand, dare seize the fire?   And what shoulder, & what art,  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?  And when thy heart began to beat.  What dread hand? & what dread feet?   What the hammer? what the chain,  In what furnace was thy brain?  What the anvil? what dread grasp.  Dare its deadly terrors clasp?   When the stars threw down their spears   And water'd heaven with their tears:  Did he smile his work to see?  Did he who made the Lamb make thee?   Tyger Tyger burning bright,  In the forests of the night:  What immortal hand or eye,  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?   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, welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple, where Giles Brandreth and I, and I'm looking at Giles across my computer screen because we are in separate parts of the world, but very much united together. Can you be united together? That's a bit of a tautology. As you may have guessed, this is a podcast all about language and words. And should we get stuck in, Giles, because I love the theme for today. And it's something that I have actually been dreaming of. And you tell me you have been on one. We're going to talk about safaris. S-A-F-A-R-I. Before we get to safari, do you have on the top of your head the origin of the word tautology for those who don't know what that means? Ah, yes. So, tautology is from Greek, and I am double-checking that I'm right on this. So, obviously, tautology is unnecessary repetition, and it comes from the Greek. The first one was

tautologis. Oh, my goodness, it's taking me back to torto. Yes, having or related to the same is the torto bit. So you can have tautophonic involving repetition of the same sound, torto-hedral, which is about zones that have a face, crystal face in common. We have tautomorphous, et cetera, et cetera. Very good. So tautology, as in we are united together, if we're united, we are already together, so we don't need them together. We're either together or we are united. We don't need to be both.

I was watching something on social media the other day, actually, when a woman was complaining about us talking about, not us, you and I, but people in general, talking about chai tea. And she said, chai is tea. You don't need tea tea. So I thought that was quite a good example. Very good.

And is that why people say I'll have a cup of cha because it's the same as chai? No. Oh, yes. Sorry. Yes. So that cha does go back to C-H-A in Chinese for tea. But the cha that is, we had this quite recently, do you remember, the char that is char lady and is related to chore, in fact, and indeed ajar, believe it or not,

if a door is ajar, is all about turning. So you do a turn of work if you're a char lady or char man, I think it's a pretty dated term. if you're doing a chore you're doing a turn of work and when a door is ajar it is on the turn so the old-fashioned char would stop work for a cup of char yeah but the two words though they sound the same are different in origin and spelled differently too because i think a char who does the work is C-H-A-R, whereas the cha, the cup of tea, is C-H-A. Exactly. And that's straight from the Chinese. You know, I'm now having chia seeds with my yogurt every morning.

Oh, they're so good for you. They are so good. You're still doing that. Oh, I'm going to do that forever. I lay them up overnight. It's quite my end of day ritual has changed. I'm opening up the yogurt. I'm putting in the chai seeds first.

And then it's rather beautiful. And I'm turning the yogurt over the greek yogurt over and the seeds gradually sort of form a kind of mosaic within the um the yogurt i'm loving the look of it and in the morning i have it with my my green kiwi um and occasionally if i can see them a few raspberries now chia is an interesting word in that is one of the few borrowings from the aztecs what is part of it is from the aztecs so their language is no atl if you remember gave us avocado in which it meant testicle of course and um a few other, but not that many. Well, I now realise a woman called Elaine Dundee wrote a novel called The Dud Avocado. Maybe there was a doublantandre in the title.

Maybe. Was it Barry Crowe? Was it Kenneth Williams who famously said, a doublantandre can only mean one thing it's rather good isn't it very good i like that very good now we've been on a bit of a safari uh into the world of charlem chai and before we've got to actually safari what is the origin of safari well yes let's start with safari but i do have to come back to asking you if you have oh yes you did because i did i have been on a safari well let me tell you where it comes from first um it's from swahili um where it means a journey or an expedition but ultimately if you want its very ultimate roots you have to go back to um the

arabic for a journey safar uh and uh you will find that arabic actually percolating through the well quite a few of the words in the safari lexicon. But yeah, tell us about yours. I have been on a safari more than once, and both of them were in South Africa. I had family who lived in South Africa. My sister's daughter married somebody who had been Zimbabwean, but who moved to South Africa to teach at Peter Maddoxburg University. And they had their children there and they lived there for a while. They now live in Australia. And we used to visit them. And one year, our children said, we must go on safari. We've got to collect the famous five. And until that date, I thought the famous five

were a series of children's books written by Enid Blyton. They said, oh, it's bad, The Famous Five were a series of children's books written by Enid Blyton. They said, oh, it's bad. You know nothing. The Famous Five, the Big Five, these are wild animals that you can spot in the wild. You can take photographs at a safe distance without disturbing their habitat, we hope, too much. And we went twice.

And it was the most magical experience. It was very well organized. And it was the most magical experience. It was very well organized. We lived either under canvas or in a kind of open hotel out in the, I suppose, clearing in a jungle. We can ask about the word jungle in a moment. And we collected these big five. I'm trying to remember what the big five were. I suppose, I mean, there must have been lions. There weren't tigers because you don't get tigers in Africa, do you? There were giraffes. There were elephants. Antelopes, maybe? No, I don't think they don't count as the big five. Lions. Lion, yes.

Rhinos. Oh, yeah, rhinos. I've got them here. Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and American buffalo. So not the giraffe. Very good. So five of the largest animals that can be seen. Oh, well, that's interesting.

Maybe they were the super seven and not the big five because we certainly saw giraffes as well. Oh, lovely. Yeah, anyway. And zebras. It was huge fun. So here, oh, look, in Africa, ah, this is interesting. The big five game animals are the lion, the leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and African buffalo.

Yeah. And this term was coined by big game hunters to refer to the five most difficult animals in Africa. We don't like game hunters. We don't like any of this. If I speak for myself, I don't like it at all. We don't like it at all. But, oh, interesting. They're examples of charismatic megafauna.

Isn't that interesting? Featuring prominently in popular culture. Anyway, the whole point is that we went to see these animals. To look, yeah. Alive and well and looking beautiful. And we did collect all of those. And quite fascinatingly, the lions, they really did come quite close to the kind of Land Rover vehicle in which we were being driven by a guide who did have a gun. Not that they ever used them, we were assured.

And we were able to get quite close up pictures. It was fascinating. What about sleeping? Because I often wonder if you're sleeping out in tents, that must be slightly, or A, cold, and B, a bit chilly. It was both cold and chilling, and chilly, and a little bit frightening, but it was exciting for the children. They were quite young at the time. And we had, you know, it was organised by some marvellous people, and we had local guides who promised us they were staying awake all night. and we had local guides who promised us they were staying awake all night. But the waking up in the morning as the sun is rising,

it rises quite suddenly, and to feel the air, the stillness in the air, then the birds, it was a magical experience. I can imagine. Totally terrific. So, safari. Safari. Okay, so yes, safari uh appropriately enough um a journey or expedition and um as i say it goes back to um arabic what about the jungle i said we were in the jungle meeting jungle animals

yes so that actually um you can you can it's wonderful this actually because um appropriately enough given that we're going on an expedition, we can see just how English has absorbed words from other languages to describe things that are foreign to us and our way of living. So jungle is actually from a Hindi word, which sounds quite similar, I think. And actually in Hindi, it actually originated in Sanskrit and travelled through Hindi. In the Sanskrit, it means rough and arid terrain, essentially. Well, I did go into a jungle in India once in search of tigers. And some of the other people on this tour claimed they saw a tiger, but I didn't. I think they just saw it like, you know,

you've spent a lot of money flying up to see the Northern Lights and a flash of lightning. Oh, that's the Northern Lights, I've seen it. I think they saw something rustling in the underground. Oh, it's a tiger, we've seen one. But anyway, so that's the jungle. Do you remember the jungle book? Were you a great fan of that? Yes. My mother, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, was born in what was then part of India, in Rawalpindi, now part of Pakistan. And she was brought up, she was the daughter of a missionary who was riding around northern India on a donkey, trying to convert people to Christianity. My father always used to mock his mother-in-law by saying, yes, you think he was successful.

They were just, you know, while you were giving them a few coins and some sweets and your copies of the Bible, they were saying they were converted. But rest assured, mother-in-law, once you were on your donkey and away again, they were not very interested. I don't know the truth of the matter. But yes, I was brought up on the Jungle Book stories, Mowgli and all of that. And though Kipling is a controversial figure because he's associated with the height of

the British Empire, an imperial figure, people who know India said he understood and knew India quite well, the wildlife, and that Mowgli is an interesting character. And I can't be a judge of that, but I was certainly brought up on those stories. We get the phrase, the law of the jungle, from the Jungle Book. And in his book, in Roger Kipling's book, it's not entirely selfish. And it goes, now, this is the law of the jungle.

As old and as true as the sky, the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack. Oh, isn't that interesting? Isn't it? There's a lesson for life in that little verse, isn't there? Yeah. He was a great poet, as well as clearly a great storyteller and a fascinating figure. There was an actor called Alec McCowan, who used to do a one-man show as Rudyard Kipling,

which I remember seeing, but so long ago I've forgotten all about it. I was listening to a programme on Wimbledon because obviously Wimbledon is upon us very nearly. And apparently as the players go down to centre court and they pass through lots and lots of different corridors. There is a framed copy of If, the poem by Roger Kipling, before they go out, which is quite appropriate, really.

Absolutely. And it's sometimes been voted, I think, Britain's most popular poem, If. Anyway, so there we are in the jungle. Do you remember the jungle book cartoon film oh i loved it by ball disney i loved it too oh yeah bare necessities i mean think we can all think that the bare necessities i liked shirkan about your worry and shirkan was that was he the tiger shirkan was the yeah oh yes he was the tiger and then then the snake. Oh, yes.

Do you remember? So the snake was very scary. The snake. And I'm trying to remember who did the voice of the snake. I know Shere Khan. It was the voice of an actor called George Sanders. Oh, yes. What a wonderfully rich, smooth voice.

Car. Car was the snake. Sterling Holloway, who I'm not sure I've heard of. He was the snake. But am I right that George Sanders was Shere Khan? Let's see. George Sanders' older listeners will remember the movie Rebecca, in which he appeared, all about Eve.

He was sensational in. I love that film. He took his own life, you know, George Sanders. He got bored with the world. He said, I'm taking my own life. I'm bored. Left a note to that effect. That is, I have to say,

one of my all-time favourite films, All About Eve. Oh, gosh, it's so good. It is so brilliant. Oh, my goodness. I recommend it to any purple person. If you've not seen, well, you're lucky.

If you've never seen All About Eve, you've got one of the great treats in your life in store. Oh, you really do. This is where we get, fasten your seatbel seat belt you're in for a bumpy ride it's one of the most famous lines in my view if i'd have three films on my desert island it would be all about eve casablanca and paddington 2 oh paddington was gorgeous i don't think i need to watch a casablanca again actually um because i I'm not sure I see it quite the same.

But there was another one with Bette Davis, which was Mildred Pierce. Oh, yes, Mildred Pierce. Mildred Pierce. And that was absolutely brilliant. I think it had Bette Davis in it. It was this kind of psychological thriller, essentially. So maybe it wasn't her anyway it was a brilliant film as well back to the jungle i was thinking about those elephants who have tusks um what is essentially interesting the word

tusk um not really although i suppose what is quite interesting is that if you take it all the way back to, um, to the ancient language that I often talk about, Proto-Indo-European, uh, it shares a root with, um, the French dent, meaning tooth, which of course gave us so many words in English, um, not just dentist, but, um, dandelion, which is dandelion, if you remember, the lion's tooth, um, et cetera. So, um, yeah. So, yeah, it's a tooth, I suppose. But elephant itself is quite interesting, although quite sad. It's surprising it didn't come to us from African or Indian, but do you remember it came from Greek, where elephas meant both ivory and elephant, and Homer wrote about it. So, that's quite strange. And then as we said very often,

because exotic animals were so unfamiliar to English speakers, they really muddled up the names and kind of decided to name many a new animal that they read about or saw pictures of based on its supposed similarity to others. We'll come to that with giraffe. But there was a word olfend, which was very similar to elephant, that meant a camel. And they had these really vague notions of exotic animals. Well, give us some more exotic animals that we may not have touched on before and the origins of their names.

Okay. So, well, I talked about Arabic and how you can see that thread through many things. Well, you can see that in giraffe, and that was called the camel lapard because they thought it was a blend of the camel and the leopard. But that goes back to the Arabic zalafa. You have famously the hippopotamus, which means in Greek, do you remember? Well, hippo is water, isn't it? It's horse. Horse, of course it is. Of course it is. Oh, please. What's happened to my mind?

Hippo, why did I think it was water? Well, because water is hydro, hydro. Yes, yeah, quite similar. Well, similar but not similar. Yeah, you have the horse and then you have potamus which is a river so it's a river oh well that's it i knew there was a water element to it i just got it the wrong way around there you go well there you go thank you i'm into i want you to know i'm into something new suzy called self-compassion good so oh is that good i don't know i think it's maybe a bit self-indulgent. I think it is. Love oneself before you love other people. That's what they say.

Well, this is what my physiotherapist is telling me, a bit of self-compassion. But it's not doing me any good at all. Instead of nutting up and getting my mind around things, I'm saying, oh, Giles, you've got that wrong. A little bit of self-compassion is called for. Oh, yes. And maybe you can give yourself a bit of self-compassion with that lovely chocolate cupcake over there. So, I'm not sure it's entirely working. Okay. Give me some more of these animals. Okay.

So do you remember, you may not do, but rhino, so rhinoceros. Something to do with the nose. Rhino is to do with the nose. It is. Because you can have rhinitis and all sorts of things. And what about the cerocer? You'll find it in lots of dinosaur names. Like triceratops.

Yes. Yes. Do you remember what it might mean? If you think about a triceratops. Scales? No. Armour? Sort of. no um armor sort of but what so what does the triceratops have three of horns very good yes it's a horn so um a nose horn is a rhinoceros um so triceratops yeah is um it's got two large

horns and a smaller horn on its sort of snout isn't it? And it's the one with that frill around its neck, anyway. I'm not talking about dinosaurs. So, the antelope, well, before the 17th century, really, an antelope was a really fierce creature of myth that had these really long serrated horns. And it was believed to live on the banks of the river Euphrates. And you'll often find it in heraldry, this antelope. And it was said to be able to do amazing things with its horns because they were saw-like and it was said that they could cut down trees and that kind of thing. But weirdly, although it's recorded in Greek as anthelops, we still don't know where that came from. So, the origin of that particular word in Greek is a bit of a mystery. But then in the 17th century, zoologists gave the name of this mythical

creature to the really fast-running horned animal we know today. Ante, though, A-N-T-E, usually means before, doesn't it? As in antenatal. Yeah, it does. It does, but it doesn't, that wasn't there in the original Greek. So it may have been that we adapted it to make it a little bit easier to pronounce. I just say, okay, very good. Let's take a break and then we will come back to, well, my favorite bit, as you know,

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Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcast, and watch full episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Welcome back. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, where we're exploring the world of safaris, jungles, and indeed crossing the savannah, world of safaris, jungles, and indeed crossing the savannah, which is a word associated with,

well, what does it mean? It's a treeless plain, really, a savannah, isn't it? I really love it as a girl's name. I think it's very beautiful, savannah. There's something rather exotic about it. And indeed, it is quite exotic because it goes back to a Native American word, zabana. And it was used in America, and indeed in Florida, it's a kind of low-lying marshy ground, so it means something slightly different. But yeah, on the savannah, I don't know, there's something sort something quite poetic about that, I think. And we didn't talk about khaki either, which is very much associated, I think, with safaris. If you think about what you might wear, you think about the khaki uniforms that people wear. It's actually from an Urdu word meaning dust. And ultimately, you can trace that back to

persian and i think arabic as well is kaki simply a color then kaki is the nowadays we use it as a color so originally it was dust colored cloth and it was used for uniform uniforms of um the british in india um then it was often used for camouflage purposes. And I suppose it still has that kind of military sort of feel to it, doesn't it? But yes, nowadays we would talk about khaki trousers as a way you would refer both to the cloth with which those trousers were made, but also, I think, predominantly the colour. Has the lion always been viewed as the king of the jungle? Because it's interesting that it is viewed as the king of the jungle? Because it's interesting that it is viewed as the king of the jungle. Male lions, are the male lions the ones that have got that amazing mane? Female lions don't have a mane like that, do they?

Yes. Is that, I mean, why are they the kings of the jungle? Why not the elephant, which is the largest land animal, isn't it? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe through ferocity? I'm not sure. I mean, as many people know, in ancient Rome, they had that horribly cruel entertainment in the amphitheaters, didn't they, where someone would literally be thrown to the lions. So So their ferocity were on full and very cruel display there. But yeah, I don't know.

That's an interesting one. Definitely worth an explore. Well, somebody may know who is listening because we have listeners literally all over the world and we will have some. We do. We know we have many in Africa and in India. So if you have the answer to these questions,

just drop us a line. What is our address nowadays? It is purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. We begin today with a voice note. Hi, Susie and Giles. It's Freya from Wellington, New Zealand. I'm 12 years old and love listening to your podcast, and I often do that in the kitchen while I'm baking.

I'm just now listening to your dialogue episodes, Faskicles, and I had the question about some native dialogue. In New Zealand, what we'd call a swimming costume or a bathing suit is togs, but I've never heard it used anywhere else. I was wondering about where the word came from, as it seems to have no similarities to its synonyms. Thanks for a great podcast,

and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Freya. That's brilliant, Freya. Thank you very much for listening. I'm familiar with the word togs as meaning simply clothes. And my guess is it's going to be people call them swimming. Are you wearing your swimming togs? And then over the years in New Zealand, they dropped the word swimming and they just became togs and particularly associated with swimming clouds. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely right. So the question is, where does togs itself come from? Well, believe it or not, Freya, it's probably related to the Latin toga. So yeah, so if you think of the toga, the kind of long, flowing robe that was worn by citizens of ancient Rome, So it was a single piece of cloth, et cetera, and covered the whole body. Very different to the modern swimming costume. And that probably threaded its way through English to become, in criminal slang, many centuries ago, a toga man. And a toga man was nothing to do with a man. It was a light

cloak. So you've got that sense, again, of something long and flowing. Then it came to mean a coat or an outer garment. And then it became even more diluted to mean clothes in general. And as for its root then into New Zealand English, and you have given it clearly a twist and a lovely twist. So it's actually narrowed again on something very different to a toga, something far skimpier. Very good. Oh, I would just say, we also use togs. I don't know if you do, Freya, but we also use togs to mean a unit of thermal resistance. So it's a sort of how much heat a duvet, for example, will give you. You can buy

differently togged duvets and blankets, and they will have different insulating properties. And that goes back to that same tog meaning clothes. And it was tog, maybe toga again, on the pattern of an earlier unit, which we don't use anymore, which was called the Clo. And that was a shortening of Clo's figure. There you go. Well done, Freya. Thank you very much for being in touch. Yeah, very mature question. Thank you for listening. New Zealand is fantastic. It's the other side of the world. And, you know, whenever we are, it's sort of 12 hours difference in time. Extraordinary.

It's fantastic. Now, who else has been in touch? Oh, another voice note. Yes, and this time from Germany. Dear Susi and Giles, I'm an English teacher in Germany and one of my pupils has just asked me for the translation of due and mit, as in to subdue and to submit. Please help me not to embarrass myself,

as I've promised her to provide her with an answer soon. Yours, Nils Keller. Vielen Dank, Nils, für Ihre Frage. Thank you, Nils. Just even honestly, just hearing the German accent, I'm just, I'm all agog. I love it so much. And it's a very good question. And it's the sort of question that English speakers, native English speakers, probably wouldn't ask, because we just pass these words by. But if you are trying to cope with the mechanics of different words as a non-native speaker, you might well think, well, what's the do in subdue and what is the mit in submit? And we don't use them separately in English. The do and subdue has nothing to do with, I am due to see the doctors, for example. It's a very different word. And actually, it goes back to a Latin verb, ducere, meaning to lead. That ducere has given us educate, because you are leading someone out into knowledge. Induce,

because you're leading someone in. Leading away is is seduce, reduce is kind of leading back, et cetera, et cetera. And subdue really means to draw from below because if you were subdued, you were sort of almost kind of sinking into yourself. So it's the whole idea of being led downwards, which is quite interesting. So that's the do and subdue. And the mit in submit is from another Latin word, mitere, meaning to send or to put. And if you submit, the sub means under, and the mitere is to put or to send. So you are almost undergoing something, you are submitting to it. And if you submit a document by presenting it to someone else, you are sending it almost under someone's nose, if you like, for their inspection. So it's an excellent question. And the do and the mit are

not separate components in English. So we congratulate your student, Niels. Can I be a bit cheeky and ask Susie if Niels Keller, this very distinguished English teacher in Germany, may not be guilty of a bit of tautology himself? Okay. He writes, please help me not to embarrass myself as I have promised her to provide her with an answer. Is one of those hers redundant? Yes, you could say I have promised to provide her with an answer. Or I have promised her to provide an answer. I have promised her to provide an answer.

That's less, that's probably a bit less fluid. So it should be as I have promised to provide her with an answer. Yes. Exactly. So we're only offering you this perfection because you are on the edge of perfection. And also, Nils, we thought it would amuse your students that we are correcting you. And I've got a nerve because my German is schrecklich. Aber the Deutsch of meine Freundin Susi Dent is very good.

Freundin. Was ist Freundin? Freundin. It's a female friend, is it? Freundin. Say it again. Freundin. Der Freund ist sort of masculine and Freundin is the feminine.

Und Freundin ist the plural. Meine Freundin Susi. Das ist gut. Das ist gut. My French now consists of donker. And my German consists of my deutsches Schrecklich. But you know you were swinging the praises of the German accent there. I read a survey.

And it was very light, I have to say. It was charming. It was charmingly light. But I read somewhere, one of these surveys, the sexiest accents in the world. German did not feature in the top 10. And Italian has just overtaken French. French. Which is intriguing.

With Scots as the third sexiest accent. Oh, interesting. Isn't that interesting? I would say, I love the Irish accent. I mean, I love the Scots accent, but I love Irish as well. The Irish lips. I've said in the top 10, but I'm afraid Germany, German is not in the top 10. Well, Niels, we can agree to differ, I think, on that one.

It's time for my trio, I think. These are three interesting words that are genuine words, aren't they? Some of you must think you make them up. They are genuine and they're not at all sexy. So no wonder English probably didn't feature on the list because they don't sound particularly euphonious or mellifluous. So the first one is catelate. And this is not something that humans should do, but it's what many a cat and animal does regularly. It means to lick the dish. So, if you are guilty of picking up your dish at the end of a meal and having a good lick,

please refrain. Not the same as cantilate, incidentally, if you put an N in there, because that's to chant or intone a passage of religious text. because that's to chant or intone a passage of religious text. My next one is very recent, and it was part of a deliberate campaign by an Australian dictionary to plant a word in the English language and to see whether or not it would take off. And it has actually bedded itself in the language, although perhaps not quite as successfully as they would have hoped. But nonetheless, it is still around and it fills a definite gap. It is fubbing. And we may have talked about this, Charles, you and I.

So fubbing, P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G. And it is a portmanteau of phone snubbing. And it's essentially when in a social situation, such as in a restaurant, you are basically not talking to your companion, you are on your phone, looking at your phone, swiping on your phone, whatever you do on your phone, you are fubbing them. It really, really does plug a gap, that one, because we all, probably many of us are guilty of it, and we all know someone who does it. We all do. And can I just throw in something? I, as you know, host a lot of award ceremonies and go to grand functions. I was at one not long ago where there was an entire table, about 10 people, at this very grand dinner. Lovely food was being served. It was a black tie event, a special occasion. And they were all fubbing. There were literally 10 people at the table, simultaneously fubbing. Not talking to each other? Not talking to each other, just on their phones extraordinary yeah that's quite sad i the thing

that always gets me is if you go to a concert um or it's something where you can witness the spectacle may morning for example in in oxford beautiful event people are witnessing it through a screen so they are literally just looking at their phone as it's filming and on the phone it will never ever be the same that makes me quite sad i mean it's not an original thought but um okay and the third one is to blandish do you remember what to blandish means i think this is um probably the most recognizable of the three it is to black well do you blandish compliments do you spread them about yes yeah exactly it's to cajole or gently flatter someone yeah blandishment um is is soft flattery, if you like. So there you go. That's my trio. Do you have a poem for us, Giles?

I have got a poem, and it perhaps is an obvious poem. It's a famous poem written by William Blake. And it came to mind, of course, because we were talking about wild animals on safari across the savannah in Africa and in India in particular, and this poem is called The Tiger. It's by William Blake, great poet, great artist, 1757 to 1827. This is the poem. Many will recognize it because it used to be certainly often taught in schools. Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art could twist the sinews

of thy heart, and when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand and what dread feet, what the hammer, what the chain, in what furnace was thy brain, what the anvil, what dread grasp dared its deadly terrors clasp, when the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night,

what immortal hand or eye dare frame thy dreadful symmetry? It's beautiful. I remember when I learned that as a child, and I've completely misremembered it now because I remember the second line is in the middle of the night, not in the forest of the night. But would symmetry have rhymed? I should know the answer to this with I. I often wondered whether it would be symmetry. Well, there are lots of the answer to this with I. I often wondered whether it would be symmetrized. Well, there are lots of debates about this, and I think it probably would have done. People often do this when they're trying to make recordings of Shakespeare in what was the authentic accents of the period.

They decide to make the words rhyme. And this has been an interesting topic of discussion because the word symmetry, as you know, is spelled with two Ys. And the tiger in this poem is always spelled with a Y, T-Y-G-E-R. That's because, as you often explain to us, that was an archaic spelling of the word and old style and spelling has modified and people spelled tiger with a Y in those days. But the reason we keep the Y is twofold. Some people say because deliberately, Blake used the word symmetry both at the beginning of the poem and at the end,

dare frame thy fearful symmetry, the Y. And so the tiger, tiger, symmetry, the two would echo one another. And also we know it has to stay as a Y because Blake illustrated his poems. And in the original artwork, there is Blake's Y in tiger. So it's there forever. Okay, how wonderful.

Well, I'm going to ask a wonderful expert who I always ask when it comes to Old English, Katie Wiles. I'm going to message her and ask her that symmetry. But it was beautiful. English, Katie Wiles. I'm going to message her and ask her that symmetry. Symmetry. But it was beautiful. And we hope you agree. We hope that you really enjoyed going on a safari alongside us. Please remember, you can find us on social media at Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook

or at Something Rhymes With on Instagram. Something Rhymes With Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Naya Deo with additional production from, well, if not the Big Five, at least the mighty four. Jennifer Mystery, Richie Lee, Olly Wilson and Idom Sentia lurking somewhere in the jungle. Do we still even know his name? Did he ever go on a safari, Gulliver? He did.

Gully.