Something Rhymes with Purple - Skiving

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

This week we’re heading back to school to discuss beaks, divs, rostrums, and to get to the bottom of why UK public schools don’t seem very open to the public. We discuss the benefits of an encyclopaedia education, why school is actually a leisure activity, and we debate whether it’s skiving, bunking, or playing hooky. Away from the classroom there’s lots of reminiscing about favourite school-related books and tv shows, and some rather grand claims to fame from both Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson. As always, Susie sets her three-word homework for us and Gyles reveals some bizarre morning rituals from his own schooldays. A Somethin’ Else production Susie’s trio Poppinoddles - a Cumbrian term for a roly poly Nix - an instruction to stop talking because someone is coming Duck’s dive - another phrase for skimming stones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast all about words and language and just general meanderings through English, really, with me, Susie Dent, and the person at the top of my screen in

a tiny little Zoom square, Giles Brandreth. Hello. I'm excited to be here. I really am. It's lovely to be with you because what we do here is we talk all about words, and I discovered a new word today, salmagundi. Are you familiar with this word, salmagundi? Yes, but I can't remember what it means. It's like, it means like it's in a dish. It's an Indian dish. Lots of meats and fruit and vegetables. So somebody said to me, oh, your Oxford book of theatrical anecdotes, it's a Salma Gundi of great stories. And I thought, is that a compliment or not? It's the new smorgasbord. The new smorgasbord with a touch of diversity. So I like it. Excellent. And I'm going to be putting it into my language.

Salma Gouli. I like it too. So it's good. And congratulations on the book, by the way. Mine arrived, for which thank you very much, a couple of days ago. So I'm really looking forward to delving into wonderful theatrical anecdotes. We must talk about theatre again sometime. So I'm feeling very, very jolly.

Isn't it strange how one, I had a wonderful review in the Daily Mail last Friday that said, you know, this is the perfect book for any theatre-loving person at Christmas, etc., etc. And I always say, oh, ignore all the reviews, ignore them. And yet when you get a nice review, I've been dancing around. Oh, aren't human beings strange? Well, I'm completely, completely dreading

any reviews of my book, obviously, after the sort of fiasco that I had. It is now reprinted, I'm glad to say. But I feel really, really nervous about it now. There's just a trail of anxiety that follows this book for me. I can share one bit of good news with you. They call it log rolling. People basically who review books are basically reviewing the books of their friends. I have for the Daily Mail chosen as my book of the year, your book, Word Perfect. Yes, but not just because you are my friend. I would certainly have given it a plug, a mention, but because I genuinely have read it and loved it. It's got a different word for every day of the year

and they're linked to the days of the year. It's fantastic. So if you enjoy this podcast, you will love Susie's book. I say that without question. That's the thing I'm most, most anxious about is people saying, after all this fuss, you know, it's terrible.

That, yes, gives me nightmares, to be honest. It gives me matutu lipia. Do you remember that? The grief of the dawn. you remember that the grief of the dawn i have that because of this ongoing this sort of the little mini lockdowns that have been happening again i think everyone is getting anxious all over again and but i'm now having headaches i'm waking up with little sort of starbursts in my head like like little migraines i used to have migraines and didn't have them and i'm now getting headaches anyway but i'm only

getting funnily enough i'm only getting them when i'm idle. I'm not getting them when I'm busy. And I want to be busy with you for the next half hour or so. You were never idle anyway. No, because at school, the reason I'm never idle is that Mr. Stocks, nicknamed Boccy, the headmaster of my prep school said, a busy boy is a happy boy. Always be busy boy. And I was seven or eight or nine when he said this to me, and I've never forgotten it. And so I like to be a busy boy. But he was called Bucky. That was his nickname.

And I thought maybe today we could talk about schoolboy, schoolgirl slang. Yeah. And I'm lucky enough to have been to a good school. It was a co-educational boarding school. It's what in Britain we still call a public school. Many of our listeners are around the world, particularly in America, where a public school is a school that's paid for by the public, whereas in this country a public school is's paid for by the public. Whereas in this country, a public school is

actually paid for privately. Can you explain to me the difference between Public School UK, Public School US, why the name is the same, but what they do is different? Well, as so often, I think the Americans get it right here. At least it's far more transparent with the American usage, because a public school is exactly that. It's the American equivalent of the British state school. So it is a school that is designated free. In fact, they were called free schools for a while, you know, free for the community of a defined district. So very much like the state schools that we have here. And the public school, that name really emerged from the fact that these were schools that were former,

they were grammar schools, but they were endowed. So they were intended for public use and they were subject to public management and control, et cetera. And they were contrasted with private school, but they had developed most of them from former endowed grammar schools. And that was the kind of road that it decided to take. So the government kind of extended these public schools and applied them, essentially applied the name to ancient endowed grammar schools. Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby, Charterhouse, Shrewsbury, etc. And those have often been called the seven public schools, although, of course, there are more because you went to BDARs, didn't you? I went to a co-educational boarding school that was a private school, a little bit in the tradition of the old public schools, but it was different school, the ethos was Christian socialist with a touch of vegetarianism and outward boundness to it. And the look of the school, the feel of the school was very much William Morris, John Ruskin, arts and crafts. They did, and I think almost until the Second World War, for example, as well as having naked bathing, because we've got to be free and natural and feel uncomplicated about our bodies.

After breakfast, the headmaster, who was known as the chief, would take everybody, the whole school, out to a big field beyond the school grounds. Everyone would squat down to open their bowels. Seriously? Yes. How bizarre. And then what happened to the field afterwards? You just didn't go near it for weeks. Oh, no.

Is that a different field every time? No, I think that enriched... Oh, the soil, human compost. Yeah, human compost. Nothing nicer for your mushrooms than your sprouts. I'm so really wish you hadn't told me that. So I come, I mean, obviously mean obviously i went first of all an interesting education i went first to the french lise in london which is a french school and it was about a fee-paying school then i went to a prep school that's short for preparatory yes and i think the idea of those is it's preparing you for the public school. Exactly. And then instead of going to a public school like Eden or Winchester or St Paul's, had

I been able to get in, they sent me to this place called Bidale's. And you boarded. I loved boarding. I was a very happy boarder. I know not everybody was. At my prep school, I can still remember, I can still hear Bowden, who was six, so he cried himself to sleep every night. It does seem incredibly barbaric to me to send a child so young away from home.

For all we know, his parents were, you know, in Africa or India working, or they were in the armed forces. You know, one doesn't know the circumstances. And a lot of these schools, I think, were for peaceful, had been in the forces. Wellington was a school for soldiers, wasn't it? It was. For the children of soldiers. It was, in Crosthorn, yes.

Founded by the Duke of Wellington. So that's the British public school. The American public school is the free-to-all school. Yes. Do we know if there are other countries that have other school systems? I'm sure there are different systems across the globe. Whether or not they kind of mix the public and the state. I don't know. I think that might be peculiar to Britain,

that idea of a public school being so very not public considering the fees that they charge. But you mentioned that you called your headmaster the chief. Did you have any names for your teachers? Because I think I mentioned very briefly that I went to a convent that was by far and away my main education. But then because I wanted to sit the exams for Oxford and Cambridge, my school didn't cater for that. So all the local schools, all the people who wanted to apply for Oxford were kind of gathered up and then sent to Eton, which was a utterly terrifying moment, especially if you were a girl, because this is a boy's school in Eton near Windsor. And you were contemporary, I would say this for international listeners, of the present Prime Minister, Boris. So it was terrifying. You were there 16, 17 years of age, turning up to do your A-levels, and there was Boris at his

priapic best. I have no idea about the priapism because, yes, to be honest, I didn't really know him. I was very shrinking. I think I also mentioned that I used to stuff minstrels, which are these kind of chocolate treats, into my stomach before any lesson because my stomach would growl so loudly and it was the most incredibly embarrassing moment.

So, yeah, it was a strange time, but I have to say the teaching, as you would expect, was incredible. But they called their teachers beaks, which was quite a specific term. I think it's specific to... Now, where does that come from? Because I think that happens in other public schools as well. Teachers are called beaks. What's the origin of that?

Well, I honestly don't know. I have looked this up a little bit. There's all sorts of definitions in the dictionary, but it seems to be the person who was high up in the pecking order. And I don't know if that's an extension of the metaphor there. which was where orators, Roman orators, would celebrate victories, etc., and speak to the crowds. And the rostrum is Latin for beak, because these rostra, these stands, if you like, where they berated, were decorated with the beaks or the noses, the prows of the ships that they had conquered. This has nothing to do with school whatsoever, but I just thought I'd throw that in. Well, I don't know. Maybe it does.

Maybe Rostrum, the person on the Rostrum is a beak. The chief. And the beak's, I don't know, Rostrum at the front of the class. If people know, they can let us know. But one of the essences of a school is it's a closed community. Yeah. And within closed communities, we tend to get slang, don't we? Yeah, tribal slang, definitely. In Westminster, your home clothes were called your shag.

I think every school probably had Home Clothes Day or Mufti Day or whatever, if you had to wear a uniform. And then I think in Winchester, slang was called notions. So they even had a term for their own kind of lexicon, which was amazing. And a bob was a beer jug. And at Eton, a wet bob was somebody who rode. So I remember that. And I think a dry bob was somebody who played cricket. And a slack bob was somebody who didn't either. And lessons were called divs as well, I guess, because the day was divided up into things. What kind of slang did you have? At my school, I don't know. Well, there must have been slang. Yes, of course there was.

For example, the dormitories were all called flat. But it is. It's a language to keep the rest of the world at bay, isn't it? Yes. The reason we're talking about this is the other day, I referred to somebody being a good egg. And I wondered what the origin of that was. I wondered if it was a phrase invented by P.G. Woodhouse. And you looked it up and you said it dated from 19th century public school lingo. Are there lots of words that have spread out into the language from that world? Well, I think I also mentioned cool and how cool actually predated the jazz era in America of the 1930s and 40s, which is where it really became popularised and you were hep and you were cool.

But actually, there's evidence of cool being used as an adjective of approval from the late 19th century in English public schools. And there, you know, toff as well. Toff is another one that came from public schools. And a toff was originally referring to the tufts or the gold tassels that used to hang off the gowns of the scholars at Oxford and Cambridge. But the outside, the commoners, were called snobs, weirdly. And snob at that time was a term for a cobbler. So if you were considered quite common, like a cobbler was considered to be, then you were simply a snob. And then eventually it was applied to someone who wanted to be like the toffs and who aspired to kind of social climbing. Because that is amazing, because I always assumed a toff was short for toffee, as in toffee-nosed. Somebody who had a nose like a toffee that was

stuck up, you were a toff. And you considered yourself rather special and toffee-nosed. But in fact, it's to do with the tufts. If you picture a mortarboard, on the mortarboard are tassels. Yes. And on, as it were, a distinguished mortarboard, I'm lucky enough to be the Chancellor of the University of Chester. I have a wonderful gown that I wear and a mortarboard that has a gold tassel on it. Ah. You know, I'm just looking up toffee at the moment

because I thought that toffee nosed might be an extension of the tuft. But I think you're absolutely right. First recorded in 1925 as a soldier and sailor word. Toffee-nosed stuck up. And I think you're right. I think the idea is the stickiness. But yes, so the tuft, going back to the tufts, the gold tufts, I think they hung down from the gowns as well. I think their gowns were decorated and embellished with gold.

And from there, it was quite possibly extended to mortarboards and things i remember at oxford they had um if you were a scholar you had quite a beautiful flowing gown that was known as subfusk which means beneath the darkness and they are very very black and quite scary you look a little bit like batman or someone from harry potter And then if you were what's called a commoner, which is, I think, terrible that we still preserve that word. You just have basically this black strip that just kind of hung out behind you.

So, you know, that sort of distinction is preserved quite severely, I would say still. I wonder if it still goes on because I was lucky enough to be a scholar and asked me why I was. And I loved it. I loved the bigger gown, the full I loved it I loved the bigger gown I loved the bigger gown too I was like you I think I got what's called an exhibition at Oxford

it was worth something like 40 pounds a year not a lot a lot but the gown you're right was everything and when I wanted to change subject they said yes you can change subject you'll then become a commoner no no thank you very much i shall stay i shall struggle on with this subject i'm not going to lose that gown that much to you oh funny i've still got my gown upstairs i've still got mine upstairs i haven't worn it it's good for halloween i wear every halloween oh do you yes it's the one bit of clothing i've got from when i was 18 that i could probably still get into now i tell you what i do remember from school scan slang i remember that we called slackers, people who didn't work very much, we called them slackers. And people who didn't turn up for class, we called them, we said they were skiving.

Yes. Now, what's the origin of skiving? Well, we think, and it's so hard to pin this down as it's slang, it's very difficult. But we think it either comes back to a dialect word meaning to move very quickly, which is of course what you do if you're skiving off. Or more likely from the French esquiver, which meant to dodge or to slink away so i think that seems to be the most likely we used to call it bunking off and that's lincolnshire dialect but where that comes from we're not completely sure playing hooky oh yes i don't think i used the phrase but i know what you mean What's the origin of playing hooky? Well, that's simply from Dutch, apparently, hoekje. Hoekje spelen, or spelen in Dutch, which is to play hide-and-seek,

which is quite a nice little extension. If you're playing hide-and-seek, you're actually bunking off school. But I'd love to hear from purple listeners, actually, what they called Skybean, because I think there's so many dialectal variants within there. We haven't even talked about the origin of school, which is quite interesting. And if I ever speak to kids, they love this one, or at least they find it heavily ironic, that school is actually from the Greek for leisure, because leisure actually included learning. Learning was thought to be a real form of relaxation and improving the mind and the body was seen as really important pastimes.

There were various schools of philosophers you probably know, and they gave us many, many words in English. So the original cynics were members of a school of ancient Greek philosophers, and they took their word from, I think it was Kounosages, I'm sure my pronunciation is terrible, but that was the name of the school where they used to meet. And peripatetic comes from Aristotle because apparently as he taught in the peripatetic school, he would walk up and down and up and down. That's why we get our modern meaning, because he liked to teach as he walked. So Aristotle, because he walked about while teaching, gives us the word peripatetic because he taught in a peripatetic school. I mean, his philosophy was peripatetic. Yes. If you are peripatetic, you were an

Aristotelian philosopher, essentially. And yeah, it was all down to the fact that he loved to walk around. Did your teachers walk around? Were they standing in one place? No, my school really suited me in fact, but didn't suit anybody who was remotely cool because I really liked quiet. I grew up in quite a quiet house without any boys. So it was not remotely boisterous. It was just quite reflective. And so that's what I wanted from school. I felt quite anxious if there was a lot of bluster and noise going on around me. And my school suited me perfectly because it was very, very much sit down, focus and work. This is the convent school. Yes. It was very, very structured. Were you taught by nuns, nuns by sisters yes i was taught both by nuns and lay people you say there were no boys

in your family so it wasn't so boisterous is the word boisterous related to boys in any way oh good point um no that's a really interesting one actually because sometimes people say that garrulous goes back to the word girl because because girls stereotypically talk a lot. So I'm going to look this one up because the honest truth is no one has ever asked me that before. And I don't know. Oh, obscure. Maybe that's why I don't know. Obscure. We hate it when they don't know the answer, the dictionary. If you think you do know the answer, let us know. Wouldn't it be nice? I mean, it may be rather like garrulous being connected with girls, boisterous being connected with boys. It's too good to be true.

Yes, it says of uncertain etymology, not connected with boast. And originally, actually this is going back to the 14th century, meant rude, rough, rustic, unpolished. So again, slightly classist in its beginnings. So there you go. So the school, the word school in a nutshell, give me the origin of that. Yes. So that goes back to the Greek for leisure. A pedant, the first meaning of a pedant was a schoolmaster in Latin. So the very first schoolmasters were thought obviously to be quite nitpicky. So in the 16th century,

that's what it meant in English as well. A pedant was a teacher or a schoolmaster. And pedagogy, is that how you pronounce it? Or pedagogy? That is the sort of art of teaching, is it? That is the art of teaching. And is a pedagogue and a pedant anything to do with each other as words? Well, yes, because you've got the whole, you've got the root from Greek and then via Latin of teaching. It's also linked to the torpedo, I'm afraid, which was a boy or a child because essentially they used to mostly fix on the boys as the recipients of education. And a pedagogue, the first meaning of that was a schoolmaster and also quite often a slave who in Roman times would take the children to and from school.

Tell me about gymnasium. I didn't like P.E. Games. Did you not? I didn't like P.E. short for physical education, sometimes called P.T., or sometimes called gym, which is an abbreviation of gymnasium, isn't it? Yes. Now, why do I have this faint memory that gymnasium means something naked yes i think we talked about this probably uh that's why it's one of my favorite etymologies at least again kids love this one if you tell them this one yes it goes back to the greek a greek verb meaning to exercise naked uh gymnasium and essentially that

meant if you had an incredibly buff body which was incredibly important and it was proof of so much more than kind of virility it was it was the be all and end all quite often for for greek men and then later roman men and consequently they would train in the buff to show off these rippling muscles of theirs they would also collect and gather in the gymnasia and in those gymnasia i have say, they learned all sorts of other things as well. You know, academic stuff. Oh, I see. I thought, man, they're learning in the new, they learned all sorts of other stuff as well. I'm sure they did that too. My goodness. I think we should take a break because I know your shopping is about to arrive

and getting these slots nowadays is very difficult. and then i want to talk about school boys slang that i was brought up on from the dandy the bino yaroo yikes oh crikey that sort of thing okay bumble knows it's hard to start conversations hey no too basic hi there Too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. 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.

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I started off by writing a fantastical story. Or how 24K Golden gets inspired by his favorite opening themes. There are certain songs that I'm like, whoa, the melodies in this are really amazing. No idea what bro's saying at all, but I'm jacking these melodies. And you know, I hear Megan Thee Stallion is also a big anime fan. So Megan, do you want to trade AOT hot takes? We're here. Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcast, and watch full episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel.

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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.

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 just 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. Oh, crikey! Yikes! Yaroo! I, as a child, loved a television series about the adventures of Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School. This was a series of comics that had begun at the beginning of the 20th century, written by a man called Frank Richards,

the most prolific writer in the history, apparently, of the world. Nobody wrote more words than he. And he created a whole series of schools, of which the most famous was Greyfriars School, where his original heroes were people like Bob Cherry and Harry Wharton. But he had a fat schoolboy called Billy Bunter, who became like Falstaff in the Shakespeare history plays. He overwhelmed the drama and he became the hero. And he would say things like, oh, oh, crikey, oh. He would talk like that. Yaroo! I've not heard yaroo. Okay.

Yaroo! Yes, there was a lot. Whenever he was beaten on the backside, and he was often beaten, he was beaten by the masters because he was a naughty schoolboy. Oh, there's my shopping, Giles. Oh, there's your shopping. She's gone to collect her shopping, which leaves me to sit here with you and share with you my reminiscences of Billy Bunter of Greyfriars

School. These books, the stories, the original stories, appeared in comics like The Magnet and The Gem from about 1900 onwards up until the 1930s. Pipe down, please. I'm trying to tell people in podcast world about frank richards the most prolific writer ever his one weakness in life he had a fondness for gambling and though he earned a lot of money he um spent most of it gambling and he had to sell his rights in the billy bunter characters which he did and as a consequence he then wrote a series of books featuring Billy Bunter and Greyfriars School and went on doing that until he died in about 1960. Are you still going? Of course I'm still going.

Did you hear that conversation? Well, I tried not to. I tried to talk over it. While you were away, I was giving people a few details about Frank Richards, the creator of Billy Bunter and the World of Greyfriars School. He's now long since forgotten, but people of my vintage remember him with affection, both from the original stories and from the comic strip that existed of him in the 1950s, and from the TV series that ran hugely successfully from about 1950 to about 1960, starring somebody called Gerald Campion.

And there was a world of language that Billy Bunty used. But mustn't talk too much about that because it's gone. It's over. Let's talk about more contemporary stuff. The Bass Street Kids, Grange Hill, St Trinian's, Mallory Towers, Hogwarts. Hogwarts, yeah. Did you have favourite schools when you were young?

Well, I loved Enid Blyton. I loved Mallory Townsend and all of that. But Enid Blyton was banned from my school and I think many others because she was said to encourage poor quality of writing, which I think is probably quite unfair. But it was said to be sort of quite, you know, easygoing. I guess it was thought to be quite casual, but then, you know, looking back, it was completely appropriate for a group of school kids. So I was obsessed with Ina Blyton and there was a bit of a black market going on in her books. So that was quite interesting. And if you'll remember, much to my horror, but then to my delight later, I was appointed chief librarian at school when I really wanted to be a sports captain or whatever. But that was what I got. And it also meant I got first dibs on the Enid Blyton books that were hurried away and quickly hidden.

First dibs, first dibs. What's the origin of first dibs? Dibs, dibs. Yeah. Also, what did you say? Well, what did you say? If you were playing a game and nowadays kids would say safe so if they are if they get home if they reach home or if they want to say

truce i think we may have said it you would say it if you were playing chase though wouldn't you you're it i'm it but if you're safe what would you say home i think you would say home because um for things like truce or whatever i used to say packs which is very posh which is oh means peace yes but there's all sorts of things up and down the country like fainites and very strange expressions that we really can't get to the bottom of but again much as i often say regional dialect really collects around certain themes and playground slang in fact we should do we've talked about this before we should do a whole pod on the language of the playground inspired by the opies do you remember we talked about iona opie indeed we must do that yes um tell me about first

dibs yes so a dib was a pebble in a children's game ah it's a variation of dab which is if you dab something you don't just apply it with light, quick strokes, but you also, in dialect terms, you grab it. And also your dabs are your fingerprints. So the idea is you will get your hands on it. First dibs is I'll get my hands on it first. Very good. Now, Mallory Towers, one of the schools created by Enid Blyton. I think you're right. She was accessible. She was easy to read. We loved her. She was and remains the best-selling children's author in the history of the world.

Seriously? Still? Yes, still. More than J.K. Rowling. Wow. More than Roald Dahl. Enid Blyton. It's partly because she wrote so much over such a long period.

Yeah. And created these amusing characters. Noddy, as you can imagine, has long been my role model oh noddy and big ears i grew up with those there was actually they were resurrected on british children's tv sorry people who are not from britain won't have a clue who we're talking about but they were they were much loved children's characters and in fact it's this one thing to get people going apart from what's your favorite biscuit and what's your favorite english word it'll be what's Your Favourite Kids programme. Well, I've told you.

Billy Bunter of Grave Run School. Oh, Billy Bunter, of course. There was another one, forgive me, there was another school afterwards called St Jim's and it was also a comedy. Was this on TV? It was on TV. And the school, no, it was called,

the show was called Wacko. And it starred Jimmy Edwards as this irascible headmaster. It was called Wacko because all the children were regularly whacked. And the program, it was a comedy for the family. And it began with Jimmy Edwards flexing his cane. And the theme music was done to the rhythm of the cane going, slashing down. And he spent the whole of the half hour show, it was a sitcom, flexing his cane in the hope of being able to beat one of the boys. It was intended to be amusing and it was amusing. And I loved that. And of course, Frank Richards had

never been to a public school. It was a kind of comic version of it. And St. Jim's was again, it was a St. Trinian's view of the world. It was lighthearted. It wouldn't survive in the age of political correctness, but it certainly made me chuckle as a child. So those were my two, St Jim's and Greyfriars. What about you? Well, I mentioned Mallory Towers. I think in terms of kids' programmes, I loved Grange Hill. I used to run home to watch Grange Hill. That was brilliant. It was very much the kind of school that I just didn't experience. So it was at one removed from me and therefore considered safe. And I think I might have had my first crush on someone in Grange Hill,

but I can't remember who it was. In terms of other TV programmes, I mean, when I was really, really little, there were things called In the Herb Garden. And when I loved The Clangers and Rachel Riley, who I work with on Countdown, she is now introducing her daughter, I think how old is Maeve now? She's just over six months, to the Clangers. They brought the Clangers back, which is brilliant. Do you remember them?

I do remember them. Yeah, with the weird noises. Did you have schoolgirl comics? I belong to the Eagle generation and also the Dandy, the Beena, the Beezer. I think there was the Jackie annual, which was quite cool. So that's where I learned what a French kiss was, for example, was in the Jackie annual, which was quite cool. So that was where you learnt, that's where I learnt what a French kiss was, for example, was in the Jackie annual, because that's not something my parents would ever go near.

Well, good grief. No, but you need to know these things because, you know. Do you? Yeah. In case you meet a Frenchman who says, may I kiss you? Exactly. You know what a Swiss kiss is, don't you? A Swiss kiss is a French kiss through which you yodel.

Oh, I would never have got that one. Makes a terrible noise and there's a slight aftertaste of El Montal. Moving swiftly on, I didn't realise that's what Jackie was. Yes. Well, no, it wasn't all about French kisses. They had really important things on there, which were, you know, the things that girls needed to know. It was a really good thing.

It was way ahead of its time. And in fact, it was called Jackie because its editor was Jacqueline Wilson, the famous children's author. Goodness, now Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Yeah, and she's amazing. Sometimes children's laureate. Yes. And Jackie was named after her. Yes. Anyway, we're going slightly off the point here because this is not to do with schools.

Shall I give you some school terms? Please give us some school terms. Do you remember where pupil comes from? Because it's possibly, it's up there in my etymological greatest hits for sure. Might even be number two. It's got to be something to do with the teacher who was cross, because the pupils were looking in different directions. I don't know. Well, yes, the two senses are related. So pupila in Latin meant little doll. So if you were a little child, you look like a little doll, and hence you might be going to school.

That hence the school pupil sense. But the pupil of the eye is related because that pupila, little doll, inspired the name because when you look into the pupils of somebody else's eyes, you see a tiny doll-like reflection of yourself. I find that really deep for some reason. I love it. It is deep. It is deep.

And that's, in a way, you know, what the early stages of a love affair are all about. You gaze into one another's eyes. And you see, no, but you see a reflection of yourself. Well, that's true. It's all narcissism in the end. But also if you're attracted, your pupils dilate, don't they? So it gives you more of a chance to see yourself reflected. didn't know that did you not i didn't know i spent years

on first dates trying to work out whether the person opposite me whether their pupils were dilated or not so that's the origin of pupil it's charming it is absolutely beautiful isn't it um encyclopedia is quite nice as well because an encyclopedia means an education that goes all round. So it's literally an all round education because it is encyclical, if you like. It literally goes around you because the circle of arts and science was considered essential to the Greeks for a liberal education. And I have to mention something I'm sure you will remember, Giles, but I always loved the fact that glamour and grammar are siblings, very close relatives in English, because grammar once meant all learning in medieval times. It comes from the Greek for learning.

And that learning, the learning of grammar, included the knowledge of alchemy and the magical dark arts. And eventually the dark arts kind of split off and went into Glamour, which was a spin-off from Grammar. And that took all the magic and enchantment and the Grammar kept all the learning. I love that. I love that. And that's what your book has given us, Word Perfect. It is the glamour of language, the glamour of grammar. The glamour and grammar. Now look, I think that's enough on schools. I'm saying school's out. I'm ringing the bell.

It's the end of the school day. We can come back to this subject again because I never, never left school. But we've got to get in. Please. We have so much correspondence. We have to answer a couple of queries from people. And thank you so much for the letters and emails you do send us and the tweets you send us we do up we do see them all and we do our best to answer as many as we can if we've not burbled too

much already mither this is joe dodds has been in touch dear suzy and giles my south african friend sharon always calls her children's trainers tackies okay remember we were talking about that's right tackies and all of that yeah yeah she also called traffic lights robots a word i grew up with in north wales was mither was that mither mither ah m-i-t-h-e-r yes as in is stop mithering me to beseech children to stop bothering their parents do you know where it comes from asks joe dodds of seven oaks i do it comes from the irish actually early irish and it's modaha modaha and that means dark or murky or morose so if you have a kind of dark mood and are feeling a bit morose you might well mither. So yes, stop your mithering is quite a

common expression in many parts. And it's linked to mardy. Do you remember mardy, which goes back to mard, M-A-R-R-E-D, meaning you're a little bit spoilt and therefore a bit sulky. If you're mardy, you're a bit sulky and sullen. Well, let's go from Sevenoaks in England all the way to Canberra in Australia. Hi, Susie and Giles. Recently found your podcast. I've been enjoying sharing it with friends and family. Thank you for sharing it. I was wondering if there is currently a word to describe the items children rub between their fingers to soothe themselves when tired,

e.g. the tags on clothing or sometimes the cloth itself. Our family has used a word for 45 years, passing through three generations now. The noun for the item, which is rubbed, is a twickle. And the verb is twickling, is the rubbing movement of the twickle between fingers and thumb. Is there an official word for this? Is this a thing? There's not an official word. I like twickle because it sounds like a child's pronunciation of tickle. And there's also piggle in a dialect, which means to pick at something or keep touching

it. And there's a brilliant kids' programme in the UK called In the Night Garden, which your grandchildren might well know. And In the Night Garden features a blue, I don't quite know what creature he is, but he is lovely. He's blue and he's soft and he's called Iggle Piggle, which again replicates a child's language, but he has a blankie. So I think that's why he's called Iggle Piggle, which again replicates child's language, but he has a blankie. So I think that's why he's called Iggle Piggle. And there's also Thimble from Yorkshire, which means to kind of stroke or touch lightly. So they're very... Not as in thimble, but thimble, F-I-L. Thimble, yes. So I don't think there's any official name for it, but I like Twickle. I think that's really sweet.

I think we must work on Twickle, get that into the language. Well done, Mark Stevens in Canberra. Give us your three special words of the week, Susie Dent. Okay, well, I'm going to give you some playground language, given that we've been talking about school. And I'd love to return to this because I think it's lovely. So in Cumberland, and this is going back a bit, i'm not sure if it's still called this now but there was a lovely word popping noddles popping noddles and that was a term for a somersault and in some parts of birmingham the black country now i think they call them gambols so those are roly-polies essentially popping noddles or gambols great and then know, I was talking about packs, meaning peace, truce. There used to be a warning amongst school kids that somebody was coming and they needed to stop whatever they

were talking about. And they'd say, Nix, N-I-X. And we still talk about Nix, meaning nothing. So that one's lasted quite a while. Also, did you ever used to play a game where you would throw a stone into the water and the whole idea was you would never make a splash oh i do remember that game it's quite difficult to do well that was called duck's dive it's not it's not a great word to remember but it just made me remember that past time because i love it so as well as um shimmying what do you call it when you shimmy pebbles across skim are you skimming the water skimming not shimmying um yes well as that, there was the duck's dive, which I really liked. So those are my three. They just remind me of my childhood, really,

although I don't think I have ease to say nicks. I've got two things to offer you. You offered us those three words. Thank you for them. They're brilliant. I went to see my doctor yesterday and he had a joke to give me, which I rather liked. An invisible man married an invisible man, married an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

Do you get it? But the other thing is, and see if you can beat that, I think this is rather good. This is most feared words in the workplace. A survey has been done, and this is what's come top of the poll. Let's have a chat. Oh, yes. I was going to say something like that. come top of the poll. Let's have a chat. Oh yes, I was going to say something like that. Let's have a chat. Let's have a chat.

Isn't that frightening? Whereas the best four words are it's job in Guinness time, which means it's Friday, we can go off now to the pub. It's job in Guinness. Yeah, that's what builders say. When I was doing my book on the language of various professions and peoples, job in Guinness time meant job well done, we're off now. Well, look, I look forward to us spilling the tea again in a week's time. We have a new show out every Tuesday, but you can pick it up at any time. We've got 80 past episodes that you can find here, anywhere that you get your podcasts from.

Please recommend us to a friend. Get in touch with us, purple at somethingelse.com. Purple at something else, something without a G. And who's responsible for all this, Susie? Well, it was produced by Lawrence Bassett, with help from Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale, and actually, I haven't seen him today, so I don't know why we should credit him. Where's Carly?