Something Rhymes with Purple - Sinister

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

If you’re easily grossed out then probably best to cover your ears for this one… in honour of the spookiest time of the year we’re digging around words with gruesome origins. From black books to black boxes, sarcasm to travel, and from loopholes to chivvying along, we uncover the often bloody backgrounds to these seemingly innocent terms. We also recoil at those everyday words that send a shiver down our spines, Susie has a trio of words to remember, and Gyles tells some particularly gruesome tales involving Chevy Chase, Rod Hull, and a terrifying woodwork teacher. A Somethin' Else production. Susie’s Trio: Witches’ knickers - a term for plastic bags stuck in the branches of a tree Abibliophobia - the fear of being without books Balatronic - pertaining to a clown or a buffoon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Bit cold? That's Susie Dent. I'm Giles Brandreth and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. It's because Halloween is almost upon us, which is why I was getting a bit spooky. I think you need to do better than that, Giles.

Doesn't that frighten you? Does that not frighten you? In a word. No, clearly it doesn't. Well, I'm glad it doesn't. I don't want to frighten anybody. No, that's true. I always know, my wife and I, when we watch television, we can't watch anything that's even vaguely frightening.

The moment in any drama the cellos begin playing, my wife says, there's about to be a murder. We've got to change sides. And we've never seen any of these murders because the moment the cellos strike up, we're pressing the... What about Murder, She Wrote or something like that? Surely, surely you can stomach those. I love Angela Lansbury. She's amazing.

Murder, She Wrote is great fun. She was 95, you know, the other day. Remarkable person. She really is. But no, that's as far as we ever go. Okay. Even Miss Marple with Joan Hickson. She was the definitive Miss Marple.

She was amazing. She was amazing. She was quite scary, to be fair. There was something rather scary and spooky going on there. Yes. fair there was something rather scary and spooky going on there and when things and i at night if i'm alone and there's a little creaking floorboard i'm alarmed anyway halloween is in the air i'm glad i wasn't spooky even i was trying to sound as if i was we've covered lots of wicked words to do with halloween this time last year i think so if you want that sort of thing you can go back and find our episode called gobelinus

was that how you pronounce it oh gobelinus i think yes ah gobelinus absolutely it's to hear all about goblins and ghouls gobelinus uh why why was it called gobelinus can you remember oh i honestly i'll have to go back to our podcast good um they're worth listening to again especially for us we thought we'd focus on words that are gruesome and grisly rather than the words that have a specific connotation connected with halloween so let's let's look at some of the words connected with things that are thrilling and frightening and alarming, like the feeling I have when watching anything that's supposed to be thrilling. It doesn't thrill me. What's the origin of the word thrill, by the way? Thrill is one of the best English etymologies there is, because you probably wouldn't guess its relatives or its relations. So thrill goes back to

a really old word meaning to pierce. So actually, if you thrilled somebody centuries ago, this is Anglo-Saxon times, you would pierce a hole in their body. So it was to literally bore a hole in someone. And from there, a thrill or a thrill, as it was often written, was a hole. And a window before the Viking word took over, and we had vindalga, which means eye of the wind. A window in Anglo-Saxon times was called an eye-thirl, an eye-opening, because of course there was no glass. There was no glazing at all. It was just the eye of the wind. The Vikings were right.

And an eye-thirl was just a hole that you could look through. And our nostrils were originally nose-thirls or nose-thrills. So they were holes under our noses. So it's all about holes. The thrill is about a hole. Yes. Pierced with excitement. That's the idea of being thrilled. You are literally pierced through with fascination or excitement. So there are lots of words, are there, that have a kind of grim origin, but now mean something else because to be thrilled now is to be excited, to be happy. Exactly. That's what I thought would be fun to talk about today is not the kind of obviously

horrific or spooky words, but ones that actually are pretty grisly when you dig a little bit below the surface, but on the surface, they look actually pretty innocent. Give me another example then. Well, one other one, which I'm often asked about by Countdown viewers, is paying through the nose. And if you pay through the nose, you basically pay an awful lot of money. And there's a very grisly tale attached to the expression, which suggests that the Danes, again, the Vikings, imposed a hefty tax on people. And those who were unable or refused to pay had their noses slit. And those who were unable or refused to pay had their noses slit. But colourful as it is, the chronology of the phrase doesn't work because the phrase doesn't emerge until the 17th century. So that's quite a long time for a punishment from so long ago to kind of be reflected in language. And it's two theories. One is that it will make you have a nose year old slang term rhino which was a term for money and if you were

rhinocerical you were really rich and rhinos is the greek word for nose which is why you have rhinoplasty if you have a nose job and is that why rhinoceros is called a rhinoceros because of its great proboscis all that nose horn yes how interesting so the word rhino came before rhinoceros yes absolutely um so that's one of them. I mean, there's so many. It's mayhem. I mean, if something is mayhem, it's just very chaotic these days. But actually that is a sister, and in fact, there's alternative spelling to maim, to maim somebody. So mayhem was all about murder originally. Do you remember me telling you about sarcasm and sarcophagus and how sarcasm meant to burn the flesh? It goes back to a Greek verb for burning the flesh. And the idea is that

sarcastic comment is so caustic that it figuratively burns your flesh. And it's a sibling of sarcophagus. Sarcophagi were essentially made of a certain kind of limestone that decomposed the flesh, the corpse. So if you put in a sarcophagus, the idea was that your body evaporated quickly. Very quickly. So sarcasm and sarcophagus are related. So yes, sarcasm is a really grisly word. What about sardonic? Oh, sardonic. Yes. If you have a sardonic smile, it might be a slightly bitter one. And bitter is the right word there because sardonic is thought to come from a word meaning a plant of sardinia. And it was probably a legend,

but the idea was that if you sampled this poisonous plant with very bitter tasting leaves, it would cause you to kind of take on this really horrible, grinning, rictus expression on your face before you died. So a sardonic smile is because you had eaten the plant of sardinia. I seem to remember you telling me that there are some words that now have a very sweet connotation, but didn't start out that way. Bless being one of them. Yes, bless is an interesting one, actually. So bless goes back to the idea of blood, really. It goes back to consecrating with blood. So it was all about sacrifices originally before it took on the meaning of the consecration without the blood involved.

And in French, blessé is a wound. Is that connected in the same way? Yes, blessure. And absolutely, I think they're all linked. That's really good. I've never thought about that link before, actually. What I will need to do is look in a good French etymological dictionary, which, believe it or not, is a brilliant thing to do. And there are some free online ones, because quite often the dictionary will say to you,

from the French, and that's not really the story, is it? You've got to trace it all the way back and find out why the French called it that. So I'm going to do some investigations into that one. Give me some more everyday English words that have unexpected and rather gruesome origins. Well, have you ever been told that you have been in someone's black books? Yeah, constantly. Okay. Well, black books are said to go back to when Henry VIII was involved in the dissolution of the monasteries. It was said that any of the monasteries who were targeted for, well, closure is putting it very mildly, for dissolution, the sins or the misdemeanors of the monks in those monasteries would be all listed in a black book that was

kept by Henry VIII. And it was a very serious thing because obviously serious punishments could ensue. So that was the very first meaning we think of black book. To be in someone's black books means that you are not singled out for favour, shall we say. Well, the word black with black magic, black arts, this is all to do with witches and witchcraft, black with black magic, black arts. This is all to do with witches and witchcraft, black pointed hats and black robes and things. That's what black magic is about. It's black magic meaning wicked magic, is it? Black arts meaning wicked arts. Yeah, and quite often you have to wonder at what point some racism started to creep in, in that white was always the good thing and black was always the bad thing. But

certainly on the surface of it, black indicated darkness and the mystery of death. But, you know, we used to have white magic. So black was the opposite of white magic and white magic was for the good of people. It was benevolent as opposed to malevolent. Similarly, we used to have white mail as well as black mail. And white mail were the legitimate taxes

that were paid fairly to landlords, et cetera. Whereas black mail were bribes and money that were obtained through extortion so they've often been those kind of polar opposites throughout history but yes certainly to do with the darkness and mystery of death which is why the black box that you hear about on missing aeroplanes they're not actually black they're orange but black box was chosen not because in they're orange. But black box was chosen, not because in fact, another meaning of black box was a coffin, in fact, which is a bit grisly, but it was to the blackness inside it, the sort of, you know, the mystery. It's an all-seeing,

all-knowing system that we can't see, but that records everything. What about, you speak of being on an airplane, travel. I seem to have a folk memory that travel has an unusual origin. Yes. So travel, because travel was often quite arduous, well, it can still be quite arduous, as we all know. In French, travel is travail, which also means work. So it's all to do with quite difficult things. But also we in English have travail and travail is kind of painful or laborious effort and in fact it originated in an instrument of torture called the tripalium that consisted of three stakes but you know it was all about hard work so the two forms travel and travail were once completely interchangeable and as I say it was all about torture really so anyone thinking that you know

a long journey is torturous actually has some etymological backing there. I want a whole episode devoted to instruments of torture. No, people love that sort of thing. Do you know, English is full of it, but I did once get a letter from a Countdown viewer. We rarely get criticism, or at least it rarely gets passed on to me by the lovely Countdown office. But they did say, could Susie at tea time please stop telling us such grisly and dark stories. And quite often those are the ones that really get people going, ooh. But you know, they are fascinating and English is jam packed with words, as I say, that look very, very kind of happy on the outside, but have quite dark histories to them.

Give us another one then. I have a folk memory that you've got a good story about the origin of loophole. Oh, well, yes. Similar to the Eithel and the Windalga, the Wind Eye, because a loophole was a hole through which people in a castle who were defending the fortifications, they could then fire their shots. So there were these really narrow slots in a castle wall through which arrows could be fired. And it came to have its kind of modern legal use because quite often they are very, very subtle points, very fine, narrow points,

but they will give you an exit route, which is exactly what those loopholes did. Any more words with a sinister, sinister, I say sinister. Everyone knows the origin of that. Sinister is as opposed to dexter. Sinister is the left hand. And things that are sinister are because the left is supposed to be the bad hand and the right is the good hand. Yes, said to be behind so many different expressions in English, getting off on the wrong foot or getting out of the wrong side of the bed and all of that stuff.

It just seems very unfair, really, that left-handers have had such a rough ride over the years and i think in in pantomime not that we're getting many pantomimes this christmas i think i'm right in saying that the evil character always comes on from the left and the good character comes on from the right oh really yeah so that the exactly stage left stage right so the the good fairy is always appearing on the right-hand side of the stage. And the wicked figure, whoever it may be, the demon king, Abanaza, whoever the cruel, wicked character is, they appear always on the sinister side. looking for a book that was going to be incredibly useful. And I don't know where I put it. I thought I had it on my desk.

I had this great book about it that I was telling Lawrence about, but it's fine. It's disappeared. Anyway, shall I give you some others? Give me some words with a sinister origin, as it were. Well, bonfire. We're all gearing up for bonfire night over here. You may be. Bonfire night is something we have in this country to celebrate the,

well, what is it to celebrate? It's to celebrate the arrest of Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators. The saving of Parliament. The saving of Parliament. Good grief. But I don't think we're going to be

having many bonfires this year, are we? Well, only in our back gardens. Likewise, with trick-or-treating, I'm not sure we'll get so much now. Because we've got to have groups of six. That's the maximum outside. We've suppose six people around the bonfire six people but it depends what area you're in because we're all in britain we are all under different

jurisdictions aren't we depending on where we are in the country so we have three tiers i know other countries have different uh restrictions as well but um well bonfire wherever you have them that actually was originally a bone fire so not from the french bonfire meaning a nice fire but a bone fire um and into these fires were once thrown certainly the bones of animals who had been sacrificed but it is said the bones of heretics as well so pretty pretty grisly, the bonfire. Pretty terrible, in fact. And terrible, of course, as well as terrific, meant inspiring terror. Just as awesome meant inspiring awe.

So those ones have really become quite diluted over time. Yeah, they've been turned topsy-turvy, haven't they? Totally. More ones with a sinister origin. What about the expression chivvying along? Oh, chivvy. Yeah, that's a really interesting one. So the only thing I ever knew about Chevy Chase was really because he was an American actor.

Do you remember Chevy Chase? Of course I remember Chevy Chase. I've met Chevy Chase. Oh, of course. Tell us your Chevy Chase story. No, much of a Chevy Chase. He appeared on TVAM in the 1980s. This is a breakfast television station in this country.

And I used to appear on it wearing colourful knitwear. And Chevy Chase was over to promote a film of some kind. And he turned up and we met Chevy Chase. And I thought Chevy Chase was a place. He turned out to be a very good looking man. He was very good looking. And he was in quite a lot of silly American films as well, I think, which is how I knew him. But anyway, that was the only, to my shame, that was the only thing I knew about Chevy Chase. But he took his name, I think, from the Ballad of Chevy Chase, which was an incredibly popular ballad. A ballad.

Which is an incredible... Sorry. I don't know why I'm just talking about ballads now. Okay. He took his name, I think, from the Ballad of Chevy Chase. It's been a long week. It really has. Sorry.

I've lost my book. Hold on one second. She's lost the plot, everybody. Okay. So he took his name, I think, from the Ballad of Chevy Chase, which commemorates a landmark battle in the history of medieval Scotland and England, and it was honoured in lots of popular songs from the period. So in the, I think, actually late 1300s,

there was basically a border feud between the House of Percy and the Scottish House of Douglas. And lots of raids across the borders and across the Cheviot Hills, which were locally known as the Chevy Hills. And one skirmish in particular took a really heavy toll when the Earl of Douglas led a raid across the line, ravaged the countryside. The battle, which is called the Battle of Otterburn, killed nearly 2,000 people. And it was pretty awful. But as I say, it became a landmark battle. And it was called Chevy Chase because it took place across those Chevy or Cheviot hills. But you know, it also gave us the word to chivvy because when you're chivvying along your children or your team or yourself or whatever, it goes back to the idea of chivvying, so harrying or harassing or attacking someone.

And yeah, we get it going back all the way to the Battle of Otterbourne. How amazing. What year was that? Otterbourne, even. That was in the 1380s, 1388 it was. So that's extraordinary. When you're chivvying somebody along, you're using a word that has its origin in a 14th century battle between people in Northumberland and people in Scotland.

It is. And if you want something really macabre to finish that one off with, the change in spelling from chivvy to chivvy was probably influenced by a term from the criminal underworld. This is going back to the 17th century and it was chiv, meaning a knife,

and chivvy, which was to slash someone with a knife. So all really quite grisly. Grim stuff. We are doing grisly talk today on Something Rhymes with Purple. Susie needs to find a book. Go and find your book while we take a quick break. Okay.

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Effect. It's a weekly news show with the best celebrity guests and hot takes galore. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Also from something else.

Katie Piper's Extraordinary People. Join Katie for a series of powerful and inspirational conversations with people who have triumphed over adversity. With guests including Fern Cotton. And what about when you get really lazy journalism? So like people that draw just one line, they take it out of context. And that's really sad because... It is, it is.

And I've also been on the receiving end of it so many times. Sometimes to really tragic levels for me where I've really not felt able to cope with it. Yeah. Zoe Sugg and Nadia Hussain. Zoe Sugg and Nadia Hussain I think the thing with women, firstly, is that women sometimes don't always like to see other women succeed. I think that's right, yeah. And I think there's a lot of that,

and I think that's why it's really hard sometimes because in the last four years, I've changed so much. Listen now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all good podcast apps. Susie, did you find that book? I did. I'm so sorry. I can tell you a little bit more about some of these grisly words because I wasn't sure I was going to get my dates right. But being possessed by a god has inspired lots of words. We've talked about fanatic before, fanaticus, which was to be possessed by a demon of some kind, not always a good one. So any football fan, you know, clearly has also been possessed by a demon

in a good or bad way, depending on your point of view. But if you were giddy as well, if you were giddy and kind of drunk with exhilaration or elation, that again was from the idea of being possessed by a god. So you were goddy as well as giddy. And a ventriloquist, I find ventriloquists incredibly creepy. Do you? Well, people clearly do. Not the people, but the puppets. No, but people do because they make movies, don't they? That brilliant one with Anthony Hopkins. Was it called magic? Yes. The dummy takes over and kills the ventriloquist. And I know it's got something to do with the

stomach. Yes. Ventri. Absolutely. So in fact, if you're ventripetent or ventripotent, you are big bellied, powerfully bellied. And so it's the same ventri here. And ventriloquist means speaking from the stomach. And again, the original ventriloquist was said to hang around outside temples and be speaking prophets, quite often of doom, because they were speaking from the stomach, which was occupied or inhabited by these demons. It's pretty grim stuff. The ventriloquist I knew best was a man called Ray Allen, who had a dummy called Lord Charles. And we appeared in pantomime together and my dressing room was next to his. And I would regularly hear Ray Allen

in his dressing room chatting to Lord Charles. And Lord Charles would be replying. He'd say, well, the show didn't go badly today. I thought it went quite well. No, I don't know. And you weren't on form. Oh, I was doing my best. Now, okay, it's time to go to bed.

I don't want to go to bed. And Ray Allen and Lord Charles would have a little ding-dong and eventually he would sort of put the doll in the box and you could hear the doll protesting from inside the coffin. Extraordinary. Oh, I just, yes, that really puts fear into me. There was somebody called Rod Hull.

Do you remember Rod Hull and Emu? Yes, oh goodness. He had this ridiculous, sorry, sorry Rod. Is Rod, actually has Rod passed away? I'll tell you why Rod is no longer with us. It's a perfectly... I mean, he is dead. Dead.

Gone. Sorry, Rod. It was your emu I really didn't like. A lot of people didn't like the emu, but he was a huge... He was really painful. He was... Oh, did he peck you? Well, no, he didn't peck me, but I could see...

I think he pecked Richard Whiteley. He used to present Countdown. And I think he really, really didn't like it at all. Well, he was a curious character, Rod Hull. And I feel in part responsible for his death. But since you brought it up, I wasn't going to raise it. I was going to celebrate this remarkable act. But on the night before he died, I happened to see him. We were both guests at the first night of a show in the West End called Animal Crackers. It's a show about the Marx Brothers. And I went with a friend of mine and sitting in the same row this first night was Rod Hull without emu. It was a cold

and windy night. And Rod was complaining that he couldn't get a proper television reception. And he was desperate. It was a football match or something he wanted to watch. He just couldn't get good reception. So my friend said to him, you know what you're going to do, Rod? You've got to get up on the roof and you've got to adjust your aerial. It will be an aerial problem. Everything he describes makes it clear it's an aerial problem. So Rod Howell left us at the theatre and went back to his home. It was a windy, wet, stormy night. He got out a ladder, It was a windy, wet, stormy night. He got out a ladder, put it against the side of the house,

climbed onto the roof, and unfortunately, trying to mend, trying to fix his aerial, he fell off. The aerial that you told him to fix? Yes. Well, my friend actually told him. Okay. Trying to shift the blame a bit. I was there. I was witness to this.

And he fell off the roof. Oh, no. So at one remove, I feel I almost killed Roy Hudd. That's the way he went. Is it Roy Hudd or Rod Hull? I mean, Rod Hull. Roy Hudd is also no longer with us, but he lived to a greater age. He is a record breaker.

And it was a lovely man. No, no, no, no. That is Roy Castle. Roy Castle is the record breaker. No, that is Roy Castle. Roy Castle is the record breaker. Roy Hud was an actor and an authority on Music Hall and a lovely man. And he died last year. And a few years before, Rod Hull died.

He was the man who had emu. But the point is, at the funeral of Roy Hud, Rod, at the funeral of Rod Hull, at the funeral of Rod Hull, as they brought the coffin of Rod Hull. At the funeral of Rod Hull, as they brought the coffin of Rod Hull down the aisle, you could hear the tap, tap, tap of the emu inside the coffin. I don't know how he did it, but it was brilliant. Are you serious? I'm serious.

And then did he have his voice being played? Had he made a recording saying, let me out or anything? No, because if you remember, emu never spoke. Emu was just a ridiculous bird. Oh, that's true. That's true. It was like sooty. We had a puppet in this country called sooty and it never spoke.

Sweep squeaked. Sooty never spoke, nor did the emu. The emu just bit your bottom. Or your nose, in Richard's case. Okay. Give me one more word with a sinister origin, please. Oh, I'll give just a few. To haggle used to mean to cut to pieces.

So just as you might slash your prize, you also used to slash or mutilate. That's pretty nasty. To be caught red-handed is simply because the blood on your hands makes them red. And so on and so forth. And I haven't even talked about the ones that actually really get on people's nerves.

So we ought to really talk a bit, if not today, then another time, about words that actually people find grisly and make their skin crawl. I've got past moist, as I will often tell you. Moist doesn't really do anything to me anymore. It used to absolutely make my skin crawl and toes curl. The reason you mention that is it regularly comes top of the poll when people ask to name the word that makes their flesh creep that's an expression given to us by charles dickens isn't it yeah flesh making the flesh creep the idea of your skin actually creeping across your body but moist is a word that makes

some people's flesh creep what are the words you don't like that make you feel gross? Flange, bulbous. What's flange mean? Flange is a kind of flap. Let's leave it there. It can mean all sorts of different things, actually. I think to a tools person, I can't always have a flange, means an awful lot of things.

Oh, I remember that. I just hate the word. I remember that from doing woodwork at school. Do you know we had a woodwork master who only had three fingers because he'd lost a finger. And I was in the woodwork class when he showed us his hand, doing a sort of safety talk kind of. I know.

Yes. And he said, this electric saw goes round and round and round. I've only got three fingers because. And he put his finger to demonstrate. this electric saw goes round and round and round. I've only got three fingers because... Ah! And he put his finger to demonstrate too close to the circulating saw. Not when he was giving you the lesson. Yes, ended up with two fingers.

No. Yes. Charles, I'm not sure I can believe all these preposterous stories. That's not true, is it? It is true. He had the finger restored. He didn't lose the finger completely,

but he was explained to us how he'd lost one his fingers and he in doing so did cut very severely his finger and he introduced me to the flange well i think i take a flange over a cut finger any day but i still don't like it what's what was the other words you get what were the other words you mentioned bulbous and scrofulous bulbous is as in a great big gross nose a bulbous nose yes what's the origin of that? It looks like a bulb? I think so. I don't even want to think about it, to be honest. Pendulous is something hanging loose.

Yes. Pendulous is buttocks hung down in pleats. And what was the other one you didn't like? A scrofulous. I mean, we'll never get to use that these days, thank goodness, because it's all about a disease of the lymphatic glands that Samuel Johnson had. But it's just a horrible sounding word, scrofulous. Do you have a psychiatrist or an analyst who can go to see? Because these words that you're

telling me that you can't cope with, pendulous, bulbous, I think this may be telling some of our more acute listeners more than they perhaps need to know about the problems of susidenta. Quite possibly. And the dog next door doesn't like them either, as you can hear. Oh, is there a dog yapping in the background? There a dog yapping next door doesn't like the word bulbous clearly so those are the words you don't like i'll tell you words i don't like i don't like phlegm phlegm's pretty horrible and it's partly the association with it it's a difficult word to spell p-h-l-e-g-m what's the origin of that uh phlegm is almost certainly greek but quite where it comes from i shall now look it up

for you. But it was one of the bodily humours, wasn't it? So it was very important in medieval medicine. And somebody was phlegmatic. It suggests that they're even, that they're calm, that they can cope with things. Yeah, because they had an excess of phlegm, which obviously wasn't considered to be a very bad thing. So it goes back to the Greek actually for inflammation or heat or a morbid clammy humour. Horrible word, I agree. I think I've seen the word clammy feature on a list of words people don't like. Clammy. Yes. It says obscure, I'm afraid. Lots of regional variants, but there was a mud or sticky clay in Old English that was known as clome. So because it was sticky, it might then have moved to mean clammy heat. I came across a list of words that

made people feel gross or that made them feel, oh, or that feeling that you had in the old days when there were blackboards that people wrote on with chalk. Yes. And that noise when either a piece of chalk broke on the blackboard or somebody's fingernail went down, that scraping sound. Yeah. It's awful, isn't it? That's awful. There's no word for that as far as I know. Ah.

Well, maybe. Oh, is there? Maybe our purple people can tell us if there's a word for that terrible noise. Let's not linger on that anyway. Well. It's hideous. In the list of words that annoyed people, to my surprise, was the word hubby, short for husband. It apparently irritates a lot of women and a lot of men don't want to be called hubby. Do you dislike that?

I really don't like wifey. And in the dictionary, it is classed as being derogatory. My little wifey, you know, it's quite patronising and diminutive and all of that. But actually, Rachel, who's younger than me, said, oh no, me and my girlfriends use wifey all the time. And they wouldn't mind at all if their boyfriend called, said my wifey. So that's changed. Absolutely. It's totally changed. I have a friend called Susan Kalman. Do you know who I mean by her? She's great. She is great. And she refers to her wife as my wee wifey. So she introduces her. Her wife is a very distinguished lawyer.

And she says, oh, you must meet my wee wifey. And it's not considered... I get that in Scottish. I can get that, actually. I guess it depends who's using it. I'm not sure I would get it if they weren't Scottish. But anyway, that's just a generational thing, clearly. Two more before we finish on this and we get to our listeners' questions. I want to know about the words gruesome and grisly.

We've been talking about words that have either gruesome or grisly origins or words people feel are gruesome and grisly. And I've been pondering, what is the origin of those two words? They're fairly onomatopoeic, aren't they? Well, gruesome is quite easy because that goes back to a great German word. And we are, as I keep reminding you, a Germanic language at heart. And they have grausam. And grausam means horrible or even kind of inhuman.

It's really, really horrible. So we've kept the kind of horror of the word, I think, with grizzly. kind of horror of the word, I think, with grizzly. And the origin of grizzly, I think, is an Anglo-Saxon verb, grizz, which meant to shudder with horror. But actually, further back, we don't quite know where that came from. Again, probably Germanic. Okay, one more question, and then it's our listeners' questions. Ghastly. What a ghastly selection of words we've had. It's a ghastly day. Is that anything selection of words we've had it's a ghastly day is that anything to do with ghostly is it a yes well yes so the h in there if you remember was put there by the flemish typesetters that william caxton called over and they were getting ready

for their printing press they had a lot of experience which is why william caxton brought them over they saw the old english ghost g-o-s-t and ghast g-a-s-t and thought we need to make that look right because their flemish word geist for a ghost had an h in it and so they lobbed an h into our words and that's how we've got the silent h in our ghost ghastly and aghast because there was a kind of ricochet effect. That's completely fascinating. Ghostly and ghastly, the H in there are to do with a printer's, not a printer's error, but a printer's addition. That's why I love it because it was possibly just one typeset as it could be the legacy of one single hand in history that changed our spelling forever. This is amazing. This is why I listen to you every week with awe

at the magisterial way you understand our language. Thank you for sharing all that with us, Susie Dent. People write to us. They kindly include my name in the letter. They say, dear Susie and Giles, but it's you they want the answers from. So what have they been writing to us about this week? Well, our regular listeners will know, and you know all too well, Giles, that I had a bit of a horror with my book because it was called Word Perfect and the wrong version was printed and it included lots of typesetting errors.

So it was very much Word Imperfect. And we mentioned this in our last pod and we've got an email from someone in Australia. They have signed themselves rather mysteriously as an Antipodean admirer. So whoever you are, thank you very much. But they have sent a newspaper clipping that just mentioned my cats and yummer of a week. And they say, you made it all the way to the odd spot

of the Age newspaper here in Melbourne. And they've sent a clipping. It said, the lauded lexicographer later tweeted that she could testify to the effectiveness of lalokesia, the use of swearing to alleviate stress and frustration. So thank you very much, our Antipodean admirer. And they also say, speaking of swearing, here in Australia, we have the phrase no wucks, which is an abbreviation for no wuckers, which is itself an abbreviation for no wucking forries as a euphemism. Is there a name for this process of swapping the initial letters around to hide a cuss word in plain sight?

Well, that's a spoonerism, isn't it? I suppose it is in a way. I hissed my mystery lecture, that kind of thing. I don't know if there's a specific term for adding a fig leaf to a swear word by doing a spoonerism but i love that i will i will go on thinking we must try and find a word for that i like it adding a fig leaf to a swear word it's a nice way of putting it you must come up with something yeah we certainly must i agree there's another nice one here which is appropriate to ha, which says, Dear Giles and Susie, and they mentioned how funny you are, Giles. I don't know which kind

of funny they're talking about, but I would agree. They say, I was wondering if you can tell me anything about the word galoshes. This month as we get ready for Halloween and kids get ready to go trick or treating, as it has now become in inva clyde we have always went out on galoshes so i have not heard of this anywhere else is it a word you've heard before and can you tell me anything about it this is from paul renfrew have you heard that galoshes giles galoshes how does he spell it g-a-l-o-s-h-U-N-S. Something to do with galoshes? There's that footwear? No.

Well, I have to say, I had no idea, Paul, about this at all. And it's one of the wonderful things that the editors of the Scottish dictionary, the concise Scots dictionary, have discovered. Because they knew quite a lot of terms that they thought to be completely obsolete. But now, in fact, they are learning that they're still current and this is one of them apparently they say in the diction of the scots language galoshans is defined under its original name of galatian and takes the name from the ancient province of galatia in modern day turkey and galatian was originally the name of a mama's play performed by boys at ha at Halloween and or Hogman on Hogmanay. And it's first recorded in 1825 in brilliant etymological diction in the Scottish language,

where it says Galatians or boys go about in the evenings at the end of the year, dressed in paper caps and sashes with wooden swords, singing and reciting at the doors of houses. So that's pretty much what we would call guys, we would call guising or going as a geyser, which is pretty much another name for the Mama's Play. So that's a lovely piece of Scottish history that I had no idea about at all. Me neither. And you'll see in a moment that it's an extraordinary coincidence, but I'll explain that in a minute. Any other letters? This one is from Marina Kerschbaumer. I don't know if you're German, Marina, if you're not. Sorry if I gave it the German pronunciation.

But you have asked us about the origin of the word meniscus. So that's either part of the knee or the little rise where a liquid meets glass. She says, they seem like two totally unrelated things. And I never made the connection until I googled how to spell the phenomenon of where a liquid meets glass and got a picture of a knee. Now I'm intrigued. Does it have something to do with the shape of them? So yes, Marina, thank you for that. It does have everything to do with the shape because it's all about a crescent or crescent

shaped thing. So it can be, as you say, the curved upper surface of liquid. It can be a cartilage within a joint of the knee. It can be a lens of the eye. And they all go back to the Greek meniskos, which means little moon or little crescent. And that gave us menstruation. It gave us month and so on. And yeah, so they're all linked, but that is the meniskos. It's a lovely question. Brilliant. Have you got three lovely words for us to improve our word power? Well, sticking with our Halloween theme, I love this. This is a word that we use in our family and it comes from local dialect.

But the only way to make those plastic bags that swing from the boughs of trees and quite often block the landscape, you know, when they get whisked up by the wind and you'll just find them stuffed into a tree branch. We know those as witch's knickers. So I love the idea that witches have descended, they've lost their knickers and they've become lodged in the boughs of a tree. So that's what we call them in our family, witch's knickers. Good. Anything else? Yes. So there is also something that you and I probably both suffer from. Forgive me if I've mentioned this before, but I have just been on a spending spree on buying some books because I felt like I didn't have anything that would completely distract me and I really needed some distraction. So

I suffered momentarily from abibliophobia, which is the fear of being without books. Abibliophobia. Abibliophobia. It's all one word beginning with A. Abibliophobia. A meaning without there. So amoral, all of that stuff. It means without. So the theory of being without books. Very good. So I was abibliophobic. And finally, just some people might want to apply this to politicians or someone in their life. Or, you know, I know everyone's got a bit of kind of anger to vent at the moment, and this might be quite useful. Balatronic. Balatronic means pertaining to a clown or buffoon. A trio of delights. I've got a little poem for you this week, and I chose it

before I knew which letters you were going to respond to from our listeners, and that you came up with that word galoshes really struck me because obviously I now know it's to do with Galatians. There were letters to the Galatians from St. Paul or someone in the Bible. Yes, in the epistles. In the epistles. Yeah, exactly. But I had already decided my poem for you this week because I found I had a pair of them. It was raining yesterday and I got out a pair of galoshes. You know what galoshes are? Yeah. I mean, they come up quite high, pair of galoshes. You know what galoshes are? Yeah. I mean, they come up quite high, don't they? They do. They're like boots that you put over your shoes. And they're made of rubber,

and they're to keep the wet out. And once upon a time, they were very fashionable. But the curious thing is, when you said galoshes, I thought this is unbelievable, because she doesn't know that the poem I want to share is called Goloshes. So it's just a coincidence. Life is full of coincidences. There you go. Should I just tell you where Goloshes comes from? I want to know, please. It was a shoemaker's kind of model. You know, they call them the shoemaker's last. And it comes from the Greek for wooden foot. And then it went on to mean a wooden shoe, I guess, a clog, and then an overshoe. But I imagine that they are the older version of today's Crocs, which are everywhere.

And the person who wrote this poem was once upon a time everywhere, was a journalist called Paul Jennings. And he wrote a musing verse. And this poem is called simply Galoshes. I am having a rapprochement with galoshes. And some would say this heralds middle age. Yes, sneering, they would say, does he also wear pince-nez? Old Josses wore galoshes when women's hats were cloches. Ha! Were in combinations of this dodderous next stage. Well, let the people snigger, just because my feet look bigger. For colossal galoshes, they are dry among the sploshes.

A story that won't wash is the story that galoshes, dry at slushy crossings make a man a sloppy figure. Oh, crossly and still crossly, I have bought shoes even costlier, which still quite new let water through before I've crossed the street. There's nothing manly, I repeat, in always having cold, wet feet, and I utterly refuse the expression over shoes. To make galoshes manly, I would scorn this feeble ruse. That's amazing. Can I also say what's amazing, Giles, is that so often when you do, are you still doing your poem a day on Twitter? No, I did 150 and now I do them occasionally. So I do them off and on. You memorise these things and I know you've written a lot about these, but you memorise them. And I know you think that's a really good exercise for the

brain and things, but it's astonishing how every I do. And I know you think that's a really good exercise for the brain and things, but it's astonishing how every single day of those 150 days, you just recited a poem from heart. Yeah. That's incredible. That was what your book was called, wasn't it? It was, thank you.

Dancing by the Light of the Moon. It was about the power of learning poetry by heart. It keeps the synapses supple and it's good for us, particularly as you get a little bit older, as I am. You've just got to, you know, the brain is a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it. And it's fun to us, particularly as you get a little bit older, as I am. You've just got to, you know, the brain is a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it.

And it's fun to learn poetry by heart. I love doing it. And so there we are. What a coincidence. You bring up Galatians. Yes, Galatians, Galoshes. Galoshes. And I've got galoshes to wear for you.

Excellent. That's us making a splash. That's our lot for this week. I think that was our 82nd podcast. And we'd better keep going. I don't know what we're going to talk about next week, but I want, as Christmas approaches, I want to challenge you one week.

I want to give you lots of games and puzzles to play as Christmas approaches. Excellent. I look forward to that. Well, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale,

and the ever invisible, actually, Gully. He's Balotronic. Well, I always knew that.