Something Rhymes with Purple - Scurryfunge

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

We take on American English. Featuring the story of Gyles's Great Great Great Grandfather, Noah Webster's gift of making spelling easier and Trump's covfefe kerfuffle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of scenery? Come on over. Let us give you the tour. Grab a paddle and explore. Hit the trails and go. When you're ready, kick back and call it a night. New Brunswick. Always inviting. Visit tourismnewbrunswick.ca I'm having to start today because Susie's got a banana in her mouth.

And apparently bananas, did you know this, are not good for speaking? Broadcasting. Apparently not. Why is that? There must be a word for this. Well, apparently I need to drink a bit of tea. Excuse me a second. You're drinking tea? Mm-hmm. What's the origin of the word banana?

Banana, banana, banana. I just remember a Terry Pratchett quote, which is, Nanny Og knew how to spell banana. She just didn't know when to stop, because it's banana, nana, nana, nana, isn't it, when you're a child and talking about bananas. Anyway, the origin is, I suppose, originally it came to us via French,

then Portuguese, then Spanish, all sorts of languages. This is a good example, actually, of the many, many journeys that each particular word has meant. But it goes back to, ultimately, the name used in Guinea, Congo. So this is one of the many words that have come to us from around the world to the English language. Welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple, our English language podcast. My name is Giles Brandreth and I'm with my friend Susie Dent. Since we were last with you, we've been bang-a-bonking because that was the wonderful word you introduced us to last time, which means again bang-a-bonk. To sit lazily on a riverbank. Lovely.

I can still hear the banana, can you? I can still hear the banana. We probably will for the whole podcast. Do you know, there's something so irritating, can I tell you this? When people phone up and give you a call, I say, phone up, as if people are using landlines. Nobody uses a landline anymore unless, when they're at home,

we've still got a landline, don't ask me why, we've got a landline. Whenever it rings, I know it'll be somebody over 80 That's absolutely right, I no longer have one And when it rings, my wife says it's going to either be Barry Cryer or Nicholas Parsons and it genuinely is They're the only two people, now that June Whitfield

has died, they're the only people I know who still use the landline but even on a mobile this works, people phone up and as they're saying hello they bite into a sandwich or a wrap or indeed a banana. It is so annoying listening to somebody munching

and mulching at the other end of the phone. I really find it irritating. I promise you I will not do that. The banana has been put away and I've had my tea. I would just say, you know, you mentioned that phoning up and that's not something we do. It's funny how they're called, I think

they're called linguistic skeuomorphs, which is a really odd term. Linguistic skeuomorphs. Skeuomorphs. And they're essentially words that are fossils, really, because they no longer apply to the technology that we use. So we talk about dialing a number. When did we last have dials? We talk about hanging up. There may be older listeners to the podcast who will be delighted to remember the time when in London, because this is coming from London, England. I know people are listening all over the world, including London, Ontario, and indeed London, Ohio.

But in London, England, we used to have telephones that you put your finger in and you dialed because it was in a round. And in London, there were names. Flaxman was one. Trebovia was another. Piccadilly. And the first three letters were letters that you... So New Scotland Yard was Whitehall 1234. So W-H-I-1-2-3-4.

And that's how you did it. So we talk about dialing a number. We haven't had a dial for, you know, 50 years. We talk about phoning people. We haven't had telephones for a generation. When I'm calling somebody, that's what I'm doing. I'm calling somebody on my mobile, am I? You're calling someone on your mobile, yes,

but you're not hanging up on them, are you, anymore? And what's the other one that we use? We talk about filming things because nobody really uses real film. Well, I suppose some people do, but it's all digital now. So there's quite a lot of these linguistic skeuomorphs. Anyway, I digress. You do digress, but that is allowed. This is our podcast where we celebrate the English language and we talk about words. Susie is a word genius. She knows more about words than probably anybody on the planet Earth. She used to work for the Oxford English Dictionary.

She is the toast of Countdown on Channel 4 in the afternoons. The best thing about 8 out of 10 cats do Countdown on Channel 4 late at night. And she is just a word guru. Do you have a favourite word? My favourite word changes all the time. One of my abiding favourite words, I suppose, is halcyon, because I love the sound of halcyon. Halcyon days. Halcyon days, the cool, calm,

tranquil days. Interestingly, does the word halcyon ever occur without the word days following it? Do you talk about... Very rarely. I do, but I don't think anyone else does. Halcyon's an adjective. Halcyon is an adjective. Capital H, small h? Small h. And it was another word for the sort of bird that was associated with a kingfisher, really. And it goes back to a legend, to a myth, that the kingfisher would lay its eggs, the female kingfisher would lay its eggs

on the surface of the water, and the god of the wind would calm the water so that the eggs could hatch in complete tranquility. And so Halcyon days, the days of the wind would calm the water so that the eggs could hatch in complete tranquility. And so halcyon days, the days of the kingfisher, and I love kingfishers, very important to me. But actually, that's what we want when we go bang-o-bonking. You can't get away from that, can you? We want a halcyon day when it's totally calm so we can be on the riverbank. And we can gongoozle our lives away.

What? Gongoozle. What away. Gongoozle. What's gongoozle? It's to stare for a long time at water and just drift away in your head. Gongoozle. Gongoozle. Oh, how lovely. You can look at boats as well.

Quite often people will call boat watchers gongoozlers. You are basically English, aren't you? Yes. I am partly English, but I'm a large part American. Are you? My great, great, great grandfather left the United Kingdom in 1833 and went to the United States of America. He left from Liverpool and he went out called Ben Holmes. That was his name when he got onto the boat. He got off the boat calling himself Dr. Benjamin Brandreth.

Wow. What happened? He wasn't a doctor and Brandreth was his maternal name. His grandfather had been someone who was a pioneer medicine man and had invented a pill, which he then called Dr. Brandreth's pill, which was a kind of homeopathic remedy. For piles? For everything. Okay. Because you mentioned in the previous podcast that a Brandreth was a... Substructure of piles. Of piles. Okay. But actually, Brandreth's pills cured everything. That was his claim. And he took these little vegetable pills to America in 1833. Mr. Holmes changed his name to Dr. Brandreth. little vegetable pills to America in 1833. Mr. Holmes changed his name to Dr. Brandreth. He thought it sounded stronger, more scholarly. He gave himself this

degree. He never had a degree. He was never a doctor, no more of a doctor than I am. Anyway, called himself Dr. Brandreth. He arrived with these little vegetable pills, and he made a major fortune. When I say major, he was one of the richest men in America. Wow. Multi, multi-millionaire. And became a New York State Senator. Great friend of P.T. Barnum, the circus man. Yes, yes. Anyway, he was... Amazing.

Yeah, he was amazing. It's amazing also to just, in the course of a voyage, entirely reinvent yourself. I'd love to do that. And he turned out... Well, so the point is, he had lots of children. The reason that we don't have any money is that he had 16 children with two wives and they all had lots of children. So by the time the Second World War came around, the money had all disappeared. I am descended from his son, who was sent back to England to run the British end of the Brandreth pill business.

end of the brandreth pill business. And 100 years ago, brandreth pills were famous. 130 years ago, they were hugely famous. Mentioned, for example, in Moby Dick, Captain Ahab is constantly taking brandreth pills to keep himself well. What I'm trying to get to is that I'm American in part. Okay. Were they tabloid pills, by the way? Because that was the first meaning of tabloid, was really compact tablets. Oh, they were round. I have got a little bottle of them. They were round pills. But that's the origin of the word tabloid. Tabloid, yes. So it's not keeping... Tabloid medicines, little tablets. And the tabloid newspaper? Tabloid newspaper was a compact newspaper, compact in size. And it means making it like a tablet. Exactly. Making it smaller. Yes. Dr. Brandreth was American.

My forebears are American. What I want to talk about, please, today is American English. Who invented it? Why is it different from ours? In America, until the people went over on the Mayflower, what language did they speak? What did those who are now called Native Americans, the actual original inhabitants of America, what did they speak and how did they learn English? Oh, gosh, what a story.

Well, they spoke not one, but many, many different indigenous languages. So depending where you were in the States, in fact, even in one place, you would find several, several languages, which greatly influenced English. So we have to say that from the start. So you might find, if you look in the OED, you might find the language of Narragansett, so near Massachusetts, Narragansett it's called. You might find Arawak.

You will find, oh gosh, so many different languages. I couldn't even begin to list them all. And I'm jumping ahead here, but when those pilgrims, pilgr pilgrim fathers went over on the mayflower they um there was obviously a huge language divide and the story goes that it actually was a native called squanto who actually rescued them because they were actually in dire straits in terms of um communicating with the outside world and therefore sort of you know making any kind of living

because there's only a certain amount of self-sufficiency that you can have. And he was their sort of translator and interpreter. And it was he who really encouraged them to kind of pick up quite a lot of those native words. So what is this guy called again? He was called Squanto. Squanto. And he is a Native American. He was a Native American.

You'll find pictures of him if you look online, meeting a group of fairly bedraggled, fairly miserable pilgrim fathers who were really struggling. And they then took on words like possum or moccasin, raccoon. A lot of those words come from those indigenous um you know native american languages and of course we've changed them because we couldn't get our tongues around or they couldn't get their tongues around those very foreign sounding words which is what we do all the time um but you know we absorbed lots and lots of words from those encounters um into english and yeah i

mean honestly where to start because american english is one of the most vibrant, wonderful Englishes. And I use English in the plural because there are many Englishes across the world that you could possibly ask for. I am a staunch defender of U.S. English when in around 2.9 million U.S. citizens identify themselves as American Indian or Alaskan Native. Amazing. And while more than 70% of those say they only speak English at home, a native North American language is spoken in the homes of nearly 15% of them. Goodness. percent of them. Goodness. Navajo is the most commonly spoken native language in the U.S. with nearly 170,000 speakers, 10 times the number that speak the next two most popular native languages, which are Yupik and Sioux, as in S-I-O-U-X. So those are the original languages.

Then basically it's the people who invaded who, those are the other languages that are spoken. So it'll be Spanish and French and English. So many Spanish words, yes. But English has stayed as the dominant language. Yes, it has. And it's a very particular type of English, but actually it is in many ways not too far away from our own. I know we think that there's a sort of massive divide and gulf between the two languages, but actually they have so much in common. And so many of the things, Giles, that we complain about in Britain these days, you know, the American spelling, for example, you know, oh, they spell aluminium, aluminum, or, I'm sorry, I'm doing an American accent,

which I should be a positive. You're stereotyping, stereotyping.'m sorry, I'm doing an American accent, which I should be You're stereotyping, stereotyping. Like the best of them. No, that we complain about honour without the U, about colour without the U, etc. And what people don't realise is that actually Shakespeare, if you look at Shakespeare's first folio, he used those spellings far more than he used the apparently British version. And they're actually closer to the Latin, which is something that most British speakers, you know, quite like a bit of. My line on spelling is this. If you are writing as well as Shakespeare, you can spell any way you want. If you're not, you might as well learn the traditional spelling in whatever country you

are in, because it will help you make progress. Because people may be superficial, but they can't see the wood for the trees. And if you spell spell badly they may think that your thinking is sloppy. The point is in Shakespeare's day there was no settled spelling. There was no settled spelling and you know you will find I can't remember how many different spellings of Shakespeare but there were many many of them. He even spelled his name twice differently on the same document which was his will. The spelling of his own name that he never used was the one that we use today. I mean, it was in chaos. It was in splendid, unstandardised, isolated chaos. Because this is probably a time when very few people read or wrote. Yes. And we're talking about, you know, before the sort of heady days of printing,

which did standardise spelling very much. But the key thing is that Shakespeare used a lot of what we now consider to be American spellings. He also used the I-Z-E ending for verbs like realise. Now, I use that all the time. And whenever I use it on social media, there you go, I get the, what, you're using the American spelling? No, it's the Oxford way because it's closer to the Greek original. So etymologically speaking, the Americans even know a thing or two. And it's, you know, and who cares?

I mean, IZE to me looks right. But why do people care so much that it's not ISE? Because we want to get it right. But OK, you are getting it right both ways. I have to say the dictionary will give you both. Oh, break time. we will give you both. Oh, break time.

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We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at dignitymemorial.ca. Now let's just, let's hone in on American English. Am I right in saying that basically spelling becomes standardized through the evolution of printing, and then particularly when dictionaries come along, the most famousish dictionary being the one created by dr johnson in the 1750s yes although there were many dictionaries before then yes yeah but that's when it began to become standardized because you needed the same sort of spelling in a dictionary yes yes yes more or less yes more or less in america yes noah webster is the equivalent of dr. Johnson. Yes. He creates the first big American dictionary. And he is today. It's worth saying that English, as I say, English spelling is very, very difficult. And we know that our kids struggle with it and they struggle with it for good reason. But for me, once you learn the stories behind the spellings, you actually

unpack the reasons for them. And that's part of the excitement. That's part of the adventure of English. But the reason, one of the reasons that's part of the adventure of English but the reason one of the reasons why our spelling is so difficult is that pronunciation and spelling divorced really centuries ago and we still live with the consequences so unfortunately for us just when those printing days were coming along and William Caxton was setting up his printing press we had a bit of a phonetic trauma if if you like. And we began to change the sounds of words, but left the spellings as they were. There was something called the great vowel shift,

which sounds incredibly boring, but basically we think it was because Londoners started to talk in a sort of cool, slangy way that other people wanted to emulate. It was fashionable. And their cool way was changing the sort of sound of things. And so gradually the sound moved away from the spelling. So that is kind of where the British were, but it was seen as British and therefore correct in their standard. What Noah Webster wanted to do, as you say, was to simplify things, but also

incredibly importantly, he wanted to distinguish his language of the new independent nation from that of british english he wanted it to be a badge of identity um so reject i think lynn murphy who's written a wonderful book on this called prodigal tongue what she said was rejecting the king's english was another way of rejecting the king and i think that's really important. He wanted a national language and that national language was going to have its own spelling rules. Gosh. Where are you on this?

I mean, if we are in English, we would spell analogue G-U-E at the end, wouldn't we? We'd spell catalogue G-U-E, dialogue G-U-E. Yeah. But Americans would not use the U-E. No. We would spell travelled with two L's and they'd spell it with one L. Yes. We'd do, I don't know, manoeuvre, as in O-E-U-V-R-E, and they'd do it M-A-E-U-V-E-R.

Yeah, because that's the way you say it. I mean, we're just sticking to the French, but who's to say that the French is any better? I'm not arguing against a standard at all. Of course, we all need to follow certain rules if we're going to be understood correctly. So that's the importance of rules is that we communicate clearly and effectively. we reserve this hatred for American English when sometimes it is much simpler and it's not just spelling jars either because sometimes their words are much more obvious than ours. So for example, if you talk about black pudding these days, it gives you no idea about what's in a black pudding, but the Americans call it a blood sausage. I mean, how much clearer can you get? They talk about expressways rather than motorways, which again is much clearer. They talk about torches as being flashlights. They talk about the main street for the high street, you know, why is the street high? I just think in those cases, American English is quite clean. I'm not saying it's the better kind,

but you know, it makes sense. I'm just looking for my list. I have a list of amusing words. For example, a skipping rope, I see it's called a jump rope. That makes more sense. Those rules are called coveralls. That makes sense too. They talk about dishwashing liquid, not washing up liquid. Again, makes much more sense. It should be said. This is interesting. This could raise confusion. A sleeping partner

is a silent partner. We talk about both, don't we? Well, I think a sleeping partner, I think they mean there, somebody in a company who is the sleeping partner. We talk about silent partners. Do we? I don't think we do. That's American influence, probably. And what about a slow coach being a slow poke? There could be confusion there.

Oh, that's true. That's not quite so obvious, is it? I'm letting my, you know. Anyway, what is this? A tick is a checkmark. A ticket tout is a scalper. They don't have timber. They have lumber.

They don't have a titbit. They have a tidbit. Yeah. They don't have a titbit. They have a tidbit. They don't have a toffee apple. They have a candy apple or a caramel apple. Love it. I put my hands up. I did live in America for four years. British English accent was brilliant. I lived in New York

because I went to Princeton for a few years. Princeton? The university? The university. What were you doing there? I did a degree in German, comparative literature in German, that kind of thing, which is a bit of an odd thing to do, but I didn't know what I wanted to do after university

so I went there and absolutely loved it and then I taught German to freshmen and sophomore students. Explain that to me. I've never been able to absorb that. Sophomore is the first year? Yeah, sophomore is the second year. And sophomore is the second year. What've never been able to absorb that. Sophomore is the first year? Yeah, sophomore, second year. And sophomore, second year. What's the third year? Third year. And then they have a fourth year. They have to go on year after year after year.

There is a word. I can't remember what it is. Apologies to all American listeners. But yeah, you could get me started on American English. They've given us so many wonderful words like skedaddle. Where would we be without skedaddling? What's the origin of skedaddle? I don't think anyone knows. It just sounds like kind of absquatulating, which is a sort of more boring, formal, made-up English, British English word for leaving somewhere in a hurry. Absquatulating. Absquatulating. I've been to America a great deal.

And during my gap year, when I left school, I had a year off before going to university. And I went to America, which was then quite an exciting thing to do. I mean, now, curiously, people, children, my grandchildren, they think of going to Vietnam during their gap year. That's their idea. Well, when I couldn't go to Vietnam, there was a war on. You now go, people are lying on the killing fields as though they were beaches. Anyway, that's a different matter.

I went to America and I ended up teaching at a school in Baltimore, Maryland, the Park School, Baltimore. I remember it vividly. To date this for people interested in history, Sparrow T. Agnew. Oh, wow. Sparrow Agnew was the governor of Maryland at the time. Yeah. I remember this because an anagram of Spiro Agnew is grow a penis. And that was the first graffiti I saw when I arrived.

I thought, what are these signs all over Baltimore saying grow a penis? And they said, oh, it's the governor. I said, what do you mean it's the governor? It's an anagram of his name, Spiro Agnew. He became vice president, I think. OK, yes, he was, definitely. He was very political, yes. But speaking of vice presidents, and this is an aside,

but we can come back to it. You've heard of Dan Quayle? Yes. Another vice president. Why have you heard of Dan Quayle? Exactly. But no, this is why language is important. If you're wondering why you're listening to this podcast,

it's because language is power. We have a vice president of the United States of America. The only reason I have heard of Spiro Agnew is his name is an anagram of grow a penis. The only reason you have heard of Dan Quayle is because at a school somewhere in the Midwest, he corrected a kid's spelling. The child had spelt potato. Yeah, I think he was just exemplifying plurals and accidentally missed off an E.

Yeah, and he spelt... Let's face it, Dan Quayle's linguistic misdemeanors are as nothing compared with Donald Trump's. As nothing. I agree. We'll come on to Donald Trump in a moment. Yes. Just all I'm trying... I'm wanting people to understand is that language does define you. It has nothing. I agree. We'll come on to Donald Trump in a moment. All I'm trying, I'm wanting people to understand

is that language does define you. People remember you because of your use of words. There's no question of that. I'm a friend of the British politician, John Prescott. People in America not knowing who John Prescott is. He's a former

British Deputy Prime Minister. He's an amateur pugilist. And a man who has the gift of using the English language like a Rubik's Cube. The last time I saw him was in the house. He's now in the House of Lords. And he was looking very green about the gills. He was looking peaky. He said, I'm peaky.

He said, I've just come off an airplane. He said, a terrible flight from Brussels. He said, thank God I'm back on terracotta. The way you use words defines you. The way Dan Quayle spelt potato, I've read his autobiography, and not a very fun read, but he admits in it that it was the most awful experience of his life. That is how you are seen. How you use words makes a difference. Though you can, talking about Donald Trump, I mean, I'm fascinated by Donald Trump. What a phenomenon, Donald Trump. What a phenomenon. Looking askance. You can look askance. I think it is amazing. The very fact that Donald Duck and Woody Woodpecker

had a love child seems to me incredible. And he has succeeded in making the tweet the means of communication from the head of the largest, most powerful country in the world. Grammatically incorrect tweets, let's face it. But anyway, I'm not really a pedant, only when it comes to him. Can I just introduce you to one word that I love? I'm obviously showing my political colours madly here, but it's a wonderful word that I discovered in the OED. And that is trumperiness. Trumperiness, going back to the 19th century, and it means

something that is showy and kind of boastful, I guess, but ultimately, utterly worthless. Say it again? Trumpery. Something that is showy, but utterly worthless. And what is the origin of that? Does it come, because there's, Trump is short for trumpet, isn't it?

Trump is short for trumpet, or if you're talking about cards, it's, you know, sort of show your trumps or the game trumps, indeed. No trumps. That's short for triumph. So Donald will probably choose that version. But of course, it's also blowing hot air

or blowing air of any description if you're talking about the British trumping. But haven't you found how curious it is that people often live up to their names? No. Nominative determinism. Is that what it's called? Yes. But it is an interesting phenomenon.

Yes. I mean, Oscar Wilde was a great believer in it, you know. Was he? I think if he hadn't been called Wilde, he wouldn't have been quite as he was. People do deliver. Wasn't there the head of the judiciary who was called Lord Judge? Probably. Yeah, there definitely was.

And there's some. So there you are. Trump. He is Trump. Yes, it depends which definition you choose. But it's perfect for you. He either triumphs or he's full of hot air. Yes.

Take your pick. You take your pick. When I was, I taught at this park school in Baltimore, and there was a wonderful teacher called Mr. Russell. This was the days when, I don't even know what his first name was. You call teachers Mr. or Miss or, you know, Mr. Russell. He taught English. And he was very keen on traditional American spellings and traditional punctuation. And I remember him saying to me that without the apostrophe, really believed in the apostrophe,

this perhaps tells you more about me than it does about him. I remember him saying that without the apostrophe, how are you going to tell the difference between feeling your nuts and feeling your nuts? What's your favorite American, totally American word? Maybe it is skedaddle. Scurryfunge. Scurryfunge? Scurryfunge.

Anyone who knows me on Twitter will know I talk about this all the time. Scurryfunge is from the most wonderful American dialect dictionary. There's a project which I think is sadly very slowly winding down, but it's called DARE, the Dictionary of American Regional English. winding down, but it's called DARE, the Dictionary of American Regional English. And they collect words from across the country because, you know, American English has vastly more dialects than we do, local dialects than we do. And scurryfunging in American dialect is to basically run around the house in a frenetic attempt to tidy up just before visitors arrive. Oh, that's great. That's scurryfunging.

to tidy up just before visitors arrive. Oh, that's great. That's scurry-funging. Speaking of American presidents, I was a great fan of George Bush Jr. because he did amazing things with the English language. He is the fellow, isn't he, who said the trouble with the French

is they don't have a word for entrepreneur. I used to collect Bushisms. I'll see if I can find a couple to share with you. And then you can tell me if actually, I know you don't think much of Mr. Trump. You made that clear. Do you think Trump has had an effect?

Has Twitter had an effect and Trump, the way he uses language, had an effect on the way we use language? Has the tweet changed our English usage? I don't think his tweets have necessarily. I don't think his tweets have necessarily. I think, as you say, it's far more about kind of political style because he is arguably the first person to, you know, to use new media in the way that he has. Well, I just love the covfefe, covfefe. What was that about? were um but he just said something something covfefe and then that was it and it was very late at night c-o-v-f-e-f-e and um it clearly was either too tired or possibly too compromised to finish his tweet and compromised what is that supposed to mean anything you like and so there was so much speculation as to what covfefe you know meant although obviously everyone knew it was just an error. But what was awful and cringably embarrassing was that his communications director,

whoever it was, now gone, obviously, like the rest of them, said that clearly President Trump knew what he was saying when he put that down as if it had some kind of secret meaning that the rest of us didn't know.

But it was great because so many brands grabbed the opportunity and just went with went with you know grab a cafe today if you need all sorts of things anyway it was great because it could mean anything you wanted it to can we just end with um the phrase that everybody sees as being quintessentially british because there are so many misunderstandings you know i think um marty wilde in a program i did about american english in which i was championing um you know, the wonders of the American language. Marty Wilde said, well, my favourite, favourite American word of all has to be wow.

The three letters that just say it all. In fact, it's first recorded in 16th century Scotland. So that's one misapprehension. Yes. Wow. Okay, listen away. Wow. It's a Scottish word.

It is a Scottish word. It is a Scottish word. What, how, can you think of anything? And did it mean, was it an exclamation? It was. It was.

Right from the beginning. Yes. And when you say 1600, do you mean 1500s? It was 1500s, I'm pretty sure. Yes, it was 1500s.

1500s, fantastic. What could be more quintessentially British though than the stiff upper lip? Right, we think about our stiff upper lip. It makes you think of all sorts of kind of Monty Python. Can I say I'm in favour of the stiff upper lip right we think about our stiff upper lip makes makes you

think of all sorts of I'm in favor can I say I'm in favor of the stiff upper lip we've had enough blubbing honestly we really have we're talking about snowflakes the blubbing has got to stop the blubbing but do you know what stiff upper lip originally American really yes where's it come from it was I'm not actually sure about the first record, but the second record that we have was from Uncle Tom's Cabin. So, you know, so many, so many wrong ideas about American English. And we love Indian English. We love Singapore English. We welcome, you know, all sorts of varieties into our language,

except, it seems, American English. Let's relax that stiff upper lip and let some of them in. OK. Have you got one? Should we give us a threesome of words? Maybe you've given us so many. I've given you scurryfunge. Scurryfunge, definitely one of my three today.

So scurryfunging. What did I mean again? OK, so scurryfunging is madly rushing around the house. Oh, yes. To tidy up, throw everything in cupboards just before visitors arrive. Very good. Scurryfunging. When was that invented?

That was US dialect, so it's probably been around since the 1800s. It's a good American word.. Scurryfunging. When was that invented? That was US dialect, so it's probably been around since the 1800s. It's a good American word. Stop scurryfunging. Stop scurryfunging. So I've also mentioned skedaddle because I just love skedaddle. I love skedaddle.

Skedaddle is great. What does that mean? It just means to rush off. Let's skedaddle. Let's skedaddle. I love that mischief about it, which I really like. And my third one is something i actually tweeted um about um

not so long ago which was boondoggle now american listeners will know this very very well a boondoggle if you say someone's off on a boondoggle they're often a kind of fruitless um expedition but a bit of a sort of freebie you know a bit of a jolly is a boondoggle but actually for us in british english it tends to mean an entirely futile or unnecessary undertaking. Is that a complete waste of time is a boondoggle? Well, this hasn't been a boondoggle as far as I'm concerned.

Let's hope not. I have learnt a lot, as I always do, in your company, Susie Dent. I think let's skedaddle. Let's do that thing. Oh, look, if you've been enjoying this please do rate and review us and also press subscribe

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I'm saying that only as a tease because in the next podcast, we're actually going to talk about bad language. Yes. So we may well have edited that out before we subscribed. I think our studio director's just fainted. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Paul Smith with additional production from Russell Finch, Steve Ackerman and Josh Gibbs.