Something Rhymes with Purple - Snickerdoodle

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

P-p-p-p-p-ick up a podcast… and join us as we spill the tea (both figuratively and literally) and get busy dunking biscuits into our brew. From the Wagon Wheel to the Jammie Dodger, Susie and Gyles unpick the fascinating stories behind the names of our favourite twice-baked treats, as well as finding a little time to reveal their desert island biscuits… and quite how many they can eat in one sitting. There’s lots to digest as we learn about hobnobbing Italian Generals rubbing shoulders with flightless birds in a nice French town. And Susie reveals why she steers clear of candles on a first date… Later in the programme Gyles has a poem to get us through the darker days, Susie has her timely trio, and we get the chance to answer your myriad of questions including ones about jiffles and strops. A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s trio: Bitching the pot - pouring the tea Gwick - to make a loud swallowing noise Omnistrain - the stress of trying to cope with everything in life. 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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If you're new to the show, it's a celebration of words and language. We've been very lucky. We've had, well, several million downloads, which is fantastic. We've won an award as Best Entertainment Podcast of 2020. And from our point of view, the happiest thing about it is that around the world, we have people who tune in on a weekly basis to enjoy our enjoyment of the English language, the richest language in the world. And we can do it because I'm a word enthusiast, but I have with me a fellow word enthusiast who is also our leading lexicographer, a woman who understands words completely and knows more about the English

language, I believe, than any other person on the planet. She is Susie Dent. Hello. I'm sorry if I sniggered in the middle of that introduction, but my stomach decided to have a say as well. So did you hear the borborygmus? What's that? What's the word? Borborygmus. Borborygmus. That's a little sort of tummy. That was quite a loud gurgle for those who picked it up. Yes. People are extraordinary though. And now women seem to be able to do this sort of thing,

have a borborygmus. I've been making a television series with a lovely actress called Sheila Hancock. Oh, yes. And it's a series, I think, that goes out in the UK in November, December, but I think it's going to be seen internationally. We travel together on canals.

And Sheila is a remarkable person in so many ways. She's an actress, an entertainer, a scholar, a polemicist, but she also is a belcher, a burper. And she's 87. And we have lunch together. And she then sits back and issues in a public place, a sort of loud belch. I say, this is not acceptable. She says, it is totally acceptable. I say, I don't think it is. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. But do you know what? I think it's a bit of a class thing because I might be completely wrong about this,

but as I was growing up, it was always the really posh people, if I ever met them, who thought it was perfectly okay to sit back and, yes, hold forth from their stomach. Whereas the middle classes like you and me. We're just a bit more kind of, you know, holding on to our napkins and all that stuff. Maybe it's a sense of entitlement. I can do what I like. I can burp.

I can belch. What was the word you used to describe your tummy rumble? Oh, borborygmus. What's the origin of that? Borborygmus. I actually should know this straight off. I think it's probably Latin via Greek, but I'm going to look it up for you. I've used it loads and I've never actually

interrogated. That's why I love this podcast because it actually gets me doing, looking things up that I should have known a long time ago. Yes, modern Latin from the Greek, borborygmus. It's defined in some dictionary as a rumbling noise in the bowels. Well, I can assure you that wasn't my bowels. That was definitely my upper intestine. Thank you very much for sharing that. Well, last week, you introduced me to a modern phrase, spilling the tea. Young people are saying that to show they've got gossip. Spill the tea, give us the goss. And the week before, one of your trio was Thermo Pot, somebody who's a lover of hot drinks, which I think we both are. But if you want to have a goss, if you want to spill the tea over a Thermo Pot, I like to have a biscuit to hand to dunk into my brew.

What's the origin of the word dunk? And then let's get down to biscuit business. Okay, so the origin of the word dunk. Thanks for asking me something I didn't know was the very first thing. No, but it's good because people think, oh yeah, she spent hours mugging it all up. She hasn't. We just get together once a week for an informal chat. And if she knows it, she knows it. And if she doesn't, she's got access to a dictionary. I do. Tell me. Oh, this is lovely. It's American English, but it's from Pennsylvania,

German, massive German community there. And it's from dunker to dip, which is lovely. It's American English, but it's from Pennsylvania, German, massive German community there. And it's from dunke to dip, which is a middle high German, dunken, which I should know, given that I'm a Germanist, but I didn't. And so the idea in basketball of jumping up and pushing the ball down through the basket is similar to the action of dipping something into a hot liquid. Great. Well, if you're listening in Philly, Philadelphia, if you're listening in Pennsylvania, we love your language and we're grateful to the word dunking. I adore biscuits, Susie Dent. I know. I see your tweets where you're always showing your breakfast or your tea or whatever.

Well, I've discovered what people like when I tweet. They like cakes and cats most of all, but I also tweet my breakfast. And if I come across a lovely biscuit, I tweet that as well. What is – well, first of all, but I also tweet my breakfast. And if I come across a lovely biscuit, I tweet that as well. What is, well, first of all, we're calling it a biscuit. Globally, is that the right thing? Is a biscuit the same thing as a cookie? Biscuit for us in Britain is the same as a cookie, but biscuit in other places means something quite different. So in the United States, I think a biscuit is more of a kind of like a scone, isn't it? I think our American listeners will soon get onto us. I thought in America a scone was like a muffin. It's all quite confusing.

It is quite confusing. Wherever you are using the word biscuit, you can at least be sure of the etymology, which is from the Latin biscoctum, which meant twice baked, and that went into French as biscuit. As in the French, bis meaning twice and cuit meaning cooked. Yes, twice cooked. So this was because it was first of all, it was cooked once. And then in order to harden the biscuit mixture, it was cooked for a long time in a slow oven. So it was twice cooked, at least the early biscuits were twice cooked. I don't know if they still are. But the Americans, when they talk about what we would call a biscuit, talk about cookies. Yes, and of course we have cookies in our tea. I mean, a cookie is a version of the word cook, I suppose.

Absolutely. Yes, simple as that. We, of course, have cookies now as well, because our culture is quite often influenced by North America, often in a very good way. And the cookies have arrived here. But cookies for us are usually either quite large or just the perfect kind of chocolate chip American type biscuit that you would imagine. Though a fortune cookie, which comes from China, is a different phenomenon altogether, isn't it? It is. Yes. Fortune cookies, I mean, they are sort of biscuity, aren't they? Or maybe wafer. I think they're more like crackers in a sense, but you open them and it's got a little message inside saying, tomorrow's another day. Or ask not for whom the bell tolls. Or mine's a number 33. Do you remember when you used to go to Chinese

restaurants and you ordered by the number? I don't know if this applies worldwide, but there used to be Chinese restaurants where the dishes were described. It was a long description. Sometimes on the opposite page it was in Chinese lettering. And you said I'll have a number three and a number 17 and then we'll have two number 42s. That doesn't happen anymore, does it? No, it's funny, isn't it? And maybe it was our way of avoiding the beautiful Chinese names for things

because we couldn't quite get our tongues around them. As you know, that happens quite a lot in English. I've just looked up fortune cookie and apparently they were invented in 1918 by a Chinese immigrant to America who established the Hong Kong Noodle Company. And they handed out cookies with uplifting messages, but it was all part of a PR stunt. I love you. And I think I want to talk about biscuits, but you mentioned the word noodle. I adore the word noodle. It's almost top of my list of favourite words. A noodle is your head, a noodle is something you eat. What's the origin of the word noodle? It's Germanic, as you would expect. So in German, you can call someone a noodle top, which I love, which means noodle head. So for us,

that would be a bit of a tautology. But ultimately, it might go back to the Latin nodulus, which is a kind of nodule. But the idea really is it's the head or the back of the head. And noodle thatcher in the 18th century was old slang for a wig maker, which is great. We mustn't get sidetracked because I want to go now. I'd love to go. We'll have to do a whole episode on pasta. I want to know about spaghetti and where that comes from. Oh, pasta shapes. Yes, let's do that. But let's concentrate on this. What about crackers? Crackers, simply crack, I think.

So they are biscuits, they are biscuits usually of a savoury nature, I think. Yes, they are. They get cream crackers. I like a cream cracker myself, one of those square cream crackers. I like to crack a cracker. Wafer. a cream cracker myself, one of those square cream crackers. I like to crack a cracker. Wafer. Wafer is related to waffle and goes back to, we changed the G of the French gouffre, which I think in turn goes back to the Dutch word, beginning with G as well. And we changed that to a W, but I think ultimately it goes back to a root meaning honeycomb.

That's nice. People used to have ice cream served in wafers, didn't they? Yes. Oh, yes. I liked that. Oh, a knickerbocker glory. I haven't had one in ages. But that doesn't have a wafer. Oh, well, mine always did.

A wafer? Yeah. You didn't have a knickerbocker glory with a wafer? Yes, glace cherries and a wafer on top. Oh, was there a wafer on top? Well, maybe only where I went. I think a knickerbocker Glory for me is in a long glass, like a huge champagne flute, as it were, a glass that gets bigger towards the top.

And it's a variety of ice creams inside, possibly topped off with a glass of cherry. I do not remember the wafer. The wafer for me was between a slab. You had two wafers and a bit of ice cream in between. Like the butterfly wings. Yeah, I think you still get those. I quite like that. Well, possibly not in COVID times, but yes. Speaking of communion wafers, I had an extraordinary experience this week. You've heard of Jane Austen? Yes.

The great English novelist. Yes. World famous. Her father was a clergyman. Yes. The Reverend George Austen. I, this week, was in a beautiful church where he was the rector for more than 40 years. And they showed me the chalice and the plate that contained the wafers that he served communion from. And so I handled this plate that would have been handled by Jane Austen when she took communion. How fantastic.

Isn't that amazing? I love that. Anyway, that's just so inside. Tang. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. I love that. Anyway, that's just an aside. Tangible history. Yes. It is. I love tangible history. Me too. And this is edible history of language.

Biscuits, cookies, crackers, wafers. Let's talk about some of the brands, some of the individual biscuits. And some of these will be familiar to people in the UK, less familiar internationally. But we'll come to Gary Baldy and his biscuits from Italy in due course. Let's start with British biscuits. Do you have a favourite one? Now, asking someone what their favourite biscuit is, a little bit like asking them what their favourite word is, because you can be there for hours. But I think if I had to choose, and it would have to be with a cup of tea, it may surprise you, it would be a rich tea biscuit

because I have been known quite frequently to dunk an entire packet of rich tea biscuits into a single mug and eat the whole lot. And we're talking 30 or 40. Yes. Oh, they just, they are the most dunkable biscuits in the world. Was this a very troubled time in your life? No, no, I can easily do that now. Really? We're not recommending you try this at home. Even those of you who are the most demented dent followers do not dunk an entire packet

of Rich Tea Biscuits. Why are they called Rich? Was it like the Mars bar? Was there actually someone called Mr. Rich who had a company that made biscuits? They were originally called Tea Biscuits and they were developed in the 17th century in Yorkshire. And they were intended for the upper classes as a light snack between the full course meals. And then, yeah, I don't know why the rich was added on. Maybe they were for the rich or maybe

they thought they were, you know, particularly rich. Well, I think it gives the impression they are in rich. There's something so luxurious. Yes. I'm a luxury fugue. Well, in fact, they're as simple as you can get. Do not give me a rich tea biscuit without a cup of tea though, because they're very bland. But in a cup of tea, they transcend, I am afraid, all other biscuits. What's your favourite? A chocolate oliver. A chocolate oliver is is a bath Oliver covered in a thick coating of dark chocolate.

Now tell us about bath Olivers. These are very famous biscuits in the United Kingdom. And I think in luxury places around the world, they still serve a bath Oliver. Yes. So they, a bit like digestives in a way, they were thought to be curative. So they, a bit like digestives in a way, they were thought to be curative. So digestives were sold by Huntley and Palmer's of Reading in England. They were sold as an aid for digestion and they were prominent in ads for the Cunard steamships. And the idea was probably that if you were wealthy enough to go on a steamship cruise, you were likely to eat incredibly rich food that would

need a digestive aid or antacid at the end of it, hence digestives. And Bath Oliver similarly was thought to be kind of remedial. So they were intended for those suffering the effects of a really rich diet. Oliver, because they were invented by a William Oliver, and he was a physician from Bath who apparently treated people who were a little bit bilious and quite rich with it. So they could afford to go and see him and then afford a rich diet for which they then needed the Oliver antidote, if that makes sense. If you've not been, if you are one of our international listeners in Dubai or wherever you happen to be, come to Bath. It's the most beautiful city in the west of England, famous for its spa. And 200 years ago or more, people would go there to take the cure, wouldn't they?

To take the waters, to both drink the waters, swim in the waters. And there were lots of doctors, some legitimate, some more of the quack variety. And they would have cures of different kinds for things like biliousness, the gout, hypochondria. That's the one I've got most of. And Dr. Oliver was one of those. So the Chocolate Oliver is my favorite biscuit based on the Bath Oliver, created by Dr. Oliver in Bath. You mentioned Reading and the firm of Huntley and Palmer. They had a biscuit factory in Reading for many, many years. And this happens to be, this week happens to be the anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde,

a great Irish playwright and poet, born on the 16th of October. And he was a remarkable person. And you may know he was imprisoned in Reading Jail. And one of the visitors to Reading Jail was Mr. Palmer of Huntly and Palmer. And the Palmers were good friends to Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance. Are they ever known as Reddings? Do you get Reading biscuits? I don't think so. You get digestive biscuits. Did they pioneer the digestive biscuit? Yes, so they gave us the digestives. Another one, I don't think she came from Reading. In fact, probably as far away from Reading as you could possibly get,

which is the niece biscuits. So niece biscuits are ones, they're quite sugary, aren't they? Kids love them. I thought they were called nice biscuits because they're delicious. That's it. So they've got N-I-C-E written on them. And depending how you think of them, they can either be niece or nice. But I think the company wants us to think that they're a nice the hull daily mail apparently in 1929 carried an ad for huntney and

palmer's nice biscuits um using the phrase delightful as the town after which they are named so whether or not they thought of nice right from the start or suddenly did it oh hey nice could be nice i'm not sure but But anyway, I think nice is the official pronunciation. Nice is the official pronunciation. I love a nice biscuit. They are very sugary, but that's a favourite dunking one. Wonderful. What about the Shrewsbury or the Shrewsbury? Gosh, I don't know about that one, actually. Shrewsbury are the ones with currants in, aren't they? And they're really nice. And they're also quite sugary and they're sort of slightly fantailed. I think they're called Shrewsbury's. And again, if you're international, you won't know this. It's a great debate about the pronunciation

of the town of Shrewsbury. And again, it's in the West of England and it's a brilliant town. There's a school there, a famous old school, which definitely calls itself Shrewsbury. school there, a famous old school, which definitely calls itself Shrewsbury. But the people who live in the town mostly call themselves Shrewsbury people. So I think the biscuit is called a Shrewsbury. I'm just looking it up here because this isn't a piece from Shrewsbury school, which say Shrewsbury or Shrewsbury biscuits have a long history and can trace their origins back to the 1600s. So they're almost as old as the school itself. First included in a recipe book in 1658, apparently. So incredibly old.

Have you ever performed at the Seven Theatre in Shrewsbury? I have. It's beautiful, isn't it? It is beautiful. Susie and I, in happier times, we have separate shows and occasionally, because there are going to be some live, oh, by the way, there are going to be some live shows of Something Rides with Purple.

Oh, I hope so. It's exciting, isn't it? Yes. And we might go. That might be the theatre we go to. Oh, that would be really nice, yeah. Because we've done our live show at the Seventh Theatre in Shrewsbury. And what I do to keep everybody happy there, in the first half of my show, I call the town Shrewsbury. And the second half, I call it Shrewsbury.

Oh, I love that. My wife says, you're so pathetic, Giles. You so want to be loved. You want to upset anybody. That's why you do that. I say, no, I'm trying to be fair, but you're so pathetic, Giles. You so want to be loved. You don't want to upset anybody. That's why you do that. I say, no, I'm trying to be fair, but I think she knows me quite well. Look, let's take a quick tea break, and then I want to discuss Hobnobs, Gary Baldis, and I want to know about the Jaffa cake. Is it a cake or is it a biscuit? Back in a moment. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me.

I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, who do you want to be comfortable with? Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons,

who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, 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. We are spilling the tea here, having the goss and dipping our biscuits into our favorite thermopod.

Tell me, let's cut to the chase. The Jaffa cake. Is it a biscuit? Is it a cake? Does it come from Jaffa? Does it come from Jaffa? Well, it was named after the Jaffa orange because of course the Jaffa cake, for those who don't know, is a, gosh, how do we describe this? It's kind of spongy with chocolate and it has an orange filling. So the orange filling gave it its name after the Jaffa orange. And in the early 90s, there was a tribunal in Britain, which was to decide whether or not Jaffa cake could be taxed as a cake. And the idea is that when stale cakes go hard and biscuits go soft. And Jaffa cakes, I think, go hard. So the Jaffa cake is a cake, not a biscuit. And I think that made all the difference to the VAT. Have I got that right? I think you have got that right. You're on the money. Hobnob. I love a

hobnob. Yes. Hobnob goes back to, I mean, the idea of hobnobbing as well, which is kind of not just mixing with people, but there's a sense of social climbing in there as well, or she's hobnobbing with the royals or whatever. That goes back to quite a nice drinking toast actually from centuries ago, where you would say hab or nab, and that meant to have or to have not. So I think it was more like, come what may, cheers, you know, to whatever comes. To hab or nab became hob or knob. And eventually you got the idea of drinking toasts, presumably with people that you wanted to suck up to. And you get the idea of hobnobbing.

But the biscuits, certainly they would want, you know, the sort of old sense of conviviality to be the one that you remember. Chocolate hobnobs, I think, regularly voted as Britain's favourite biscuit. Goodness. Well, if you've got a favourite biscuit, do let us know. If your country has a favourite biscuit, because we do have an international audience, it's purple at somethingelse.com. That's where you write to us, something without a G. Gary Baldy. We know he was a real dude. Yes.

And what's the biscuit like and why is it called a Gary Baldy? Well, to anyone who used to love Gary Baldis when they were little, this includes me, we used to call them dead fly biscuits. Do you remember? I do remember. Do you ever call them dead fly biscuits? That's exactly what we call them. Because that's exactly what they look like. They look like they have got lots of squashed flies in them, essentially. Named after Garibaldi. He was a general, wasn't he? Giuseppe

Gary Baldy. Nothing to do with the fact that he used to like eating them. It was just simply in honour of him. And apparently a beard, a cocktail, and also a rugby trophy have also been named after Gary Baldy. So not just the biscuits. He was a great and controversial Italian leader. Quite a controversial figure at the beginning of the 20th century. So I don't know why it's called a Gallyball, do you? Well, no, I think it was just honouring a sort of contemporary tribute, if you like, because bourbon biscuits, which are lovely, kind of like a chocolate biscuit sandwich with a kind of lovely soft chocolate filling, that was perhaps chosen just because it sounded quite regal, but it was named after the House

of Bourbon who provided the Kings of France for a very long time. So I think they were quite often, as they say, contemporary tributes. Penguins are lovely. Now, I would love to think that penguins have crossed the world. In Britain, as I was growing up, and Giles, you'll remember this, the ad that we all remember for penguin biscuits was pick up a penguin. And there was a great tune, which I won't sing. And they were apparently, now I have to thank Lawrence, our producer for this, because I had no idea. They're named after the penguins gifted to Edinburgh Zoo

in the early 20th century. Well, that's nice. And, oh, here we go. He also says that Australian Tim Tams, named after a successful racehorse, are based on the penguins. So in Australia, they're Tim Tams. Penguins are Tim Tams in Australia. How wonderful. Yeah. What about the Jammy Dodger from our childhood? Oh, Jammy Dodger. Well, these were named after, well, obviously they've got a jam filling, but they were named after Roger the Dodger,

who was a character in the Beano comic, which was probably your generation, wasn't it, Giles? I love the Beano, the Dandy, the Beezer, the Hornet, all those comics from the 1950s, published by DC Thompson in Dundee. I loved it. And Jammy Dodger comes from there. One of the characters in that. Roger the Dodger, who was always dodging things. Roger the Dodger enjoyed a Jammy dodger. Yeah. Well done. And also it has to be said that some of the most successful biscuit names do use the rule of Ablaut reduplication that I mentioned ages ago, which sounds so boring, but it accounts for the fact that we will never wear flop flips or bells will never go dong ding.

And similarly, we will never eat a cat kit. We will always eat a kit cat. And those words that have a kind of twin element to them, a bit like a Twix biscuit, in fact, but kit cat, hobnob, et cetera, they seem to be especially successful as names for biscuits. Ablout reduplication. Yes. I mean, it's an unspoken, unconscious rule that we all have. So you will have a chit-chat, not a chat-chit, and clocks will go tick-tock, not tock-tick. And wheels will go wagon-wheel, not wheel-wagon. Wagon-wheel. Do you remember a wagon-wheel? Wagon-wheels, I loved. Wagon-wheels are huge biscuits. That's probably why I like them,

which they've got all sorts of things going on in them, haven't they? They've got a kind of biscuit. They're chewy. What if they've got some sort of white stuff going on in them as well? They have got some, yeah. And yes, so named because apparently they look like the wheels of wild Western wagons. They're all marketing ploys, obviously. And yeah, clearly very successful ones. Let's go global. The Florentine. I like a Florentine, which is a little kind of biscuit with chocolate on and little things on top of that. That, I suppose, comes from Florence. From Florence, exactly.

You've got the Shrewsbury biscuit or the Shrewsbury. You've got Florentine. You have got Leibniz, named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who is from Hamburg, as are the biscuits. He was, I'm just reminding myself of this now because my history is terrible. He was a prominent German polymath and one of the most important logicians, mathematicians, and natural philosophers of the Enlightenment. There you go. Very good. And there's a Leibniz biscuit. I don't, I'm not familiar with that. I am familiar with the amaretti biscuit. And it used to be in my drinking days, there was a certain drink that they served you in an Italian restaurant and it always came

with an amaretti. But I never liked the amaretti. There must be something on it like almonds that wasn't to my liking. Yes, they are actually quite almondy, aren't they? It simply translates as little bitter ones. But amaretti, I don't think are that bitter. I wonder if it's because they went with bitter coffee or whatever. But yes, you're right. I mean, there's amaretto as well, isn't there, which is the almond-flavoured liqueur. Oh, I know. It must be a reference to bitter almonds. I think that's where we're getting it from. What about macaroons? They also serve you. In restaurants, I don't like it when they bring the coffee. And I don't want an amaretti biscuit, thank you very much, nor do I want a macaroon. I want a proper chocolate, maybe a truffle.

I don't mind a little square of dark black chocolate wrapped in some gold wrapping. I quite like that. I do not want a macaroon. I'm with you. Although the modern macaroons have got this lovely filling in them and that you have to refrigerate. They are very good. They're quite chewy and quite different. Well, Tina, I'm going to take you right back now. Do you remember a song which was Yankee Doodle went to town riding on his pony, stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni? Of course. So this was basically reflecting the English view of Americans who, it's not very nice. They were still under British rule, I guess, colonial rule. And so they were seen as hicks, lacking sophistication. And macaroni was a name for a dandy. And macaroni,

the pasta dish, was thought as being quite exotic in that time. And so the macaronis, who were young men who had traveled abroad and liked to think of themselves as being incredibly exotic because they wore these continental fashions, you know, they were seen as fops by the British, but thought a lot of themselves. That's the idea, obviously, very disparaging at the time. But macaroon, just to get to the point, is linked to macaroni. And again, they were seen as these kind of exotic foods. So it's quite interesting. Macaroon itself and macaroni goes back all the way to Greek, meaning food made from barley, I think. But it's all because of these macaroni fops who ate the macaroni pasta and

dressed like dandies. That's a very long story, isn't it? It's a good story. Let me tell you my macaroon story. Okay. Macaroons are often served wrapped in light tissue paper. Can you picture it? Yes. And people sometimes flatten the tissue paper, take out the macaroon and flatten the tissue paper. And if you light the corners of the tissue paper, they float upwards. Have you seen people do that?

Yes, I have. I was speaking at a very grand dinner, attended I think, by, let me get this right, the finance minister of Singapore, who was a very significant figure and came with a lot of guards. It was a very grand dinner at a hotel in central London. And it was quite a long evening. And at one of the tables were some young bankers. And they got these macaroons, they removed the macaroon, and they flattened the paper,

and they lit the corners. And this is a kind of competition. And so we had floating to the ceiling, these burning bits of macaroon tissue, which, wait for it, set off the water. Exactly. The fire alarms, the water shoots. The room was suddenly flooded with water. Oh, no. And you often go to a place and you see up there, if you look at the ceiling, you'll see the spouts that the water's going to come out of.

I assumed it would be a gentle trickle of water. It's like being in a shower. The whole room was suddenly flooded. All these ladies in their finery, the men in their black ties, the finance minister of Singapore. All because of the macaroon wrappers. It was the macaroon wrappers that set the sprinklers going. So whatever you do, don't light your macaroon wrapper. Just take it off, screw it into a little ball and put it in the bin. I've never told you one of my first date stories, which I will come to another time or tell you

off air. But essentially, I set my hair alight. Oh, no, come on. You can't tease us. I'm sorry. We're spilling the tea here. We're spilling the tea here. Have you got the receipts? Can you show us some pictures? Tell us what happened. I was going to say it was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Tell us about that first date. What happened? Okay. So I was in a restaurant. I had been very nervous about these dates. I hadn't really eaten very much. And I was one glass of wine in, okay, went straight to my head. It was probably getting a little bit giggly. And there were some candles on the table. And probably in my sort of nervousness, I was flicking my hair about.

And I accidentally flicked it into the candle. At which point I heard this. And I don't know if you've ever smelled burned hair, Giles, but it is the worst smell in the world. So I quickly put the hair out. That was okay. Not in the wine. I had some water, so it wasn't too awful. But the smell permeated the restaurant so much that they evacuated it.

Good grief. Yes. Well, that was a date you wouldn't forget. What happened to the relationship? Yes, unsurprisingly, it didn't go much further than that. I'm wondering if I'm inventing the evacuation at the end. I may be, but I know certainly there was real disgust at the smell that was wafting around. This is what happens with stories, remembered in retrospect. I've recently published a book called The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes, which is theatre stories.

And indeed, towards Christmas, we might talk of theatre stories. There's some good, funny theatre stories. But one of the stories I wanted to put in the book was one that I couldn't work out whether it was true or not. It concerned an actor called Peter Wingard, who was a great matinee idol in Britain in the 1950s and 60s and early 70s. Very good looking, dark haired, handsome, a bit of a macaroni. And Peter Wingard appeared in the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. He appeared in the Bristol Old Vic. Very celebrated. And one scene, he's running across the stage holding a lit candle.

And it was a lit candle. And unfortunately, the lit candle set fire to his hair. Same thing. Yes. And so his hair was ablaze. And he was running around the stage trying to put out the blaze on his head. And eventually, because he couldn't put it out, he pulled off his wig and he revealed to the world that he was in fact a bald man. Wow.

This handsome matinee idol was bald. That's a great story. Bald men can be attractive. It can be attractive. But he, as it were, sold himself as a dark haired man. Now, the point of the story is it's a good story. But somebody said to me when he played Serrano de Bergerac, he was a young man. He still had hair. This can't have happened.

So that's the problem with an anecdote. So you can't remember when the... I can't remember, to be honest. But I genuinely do remember the fact that a lot of people were looking around trying to locate the source of the smell. Because, yes, burnt hair. Good. Well, if you want to spill the tea, listeners, and share with us your most embarrassing moment at the time you set light to your hair, or indeed tell us tales of your first date, give it a linguistic twist.

That'll justify us bringing it up on Something Rhymes with Purple. You can tweet us or email us at purple at somethingelse.com. Who's been in touch this week? Yes, I just want to say we haven't even mentioned Oreos, which I love, the Oreo cookies, which nobody knows the origin of this. But one theory is it goes back to Oreo Daphne, which is a plant in the laurel family because there was a laurel design on it originally. And then there's the snickerdoodle in the US as well, which is just such a brilliant name. What's the origin of snickerdoodle? Is it to do with snickers? I think German, some people say it goes back to Schneckennudel, which is a German, I think meaning a simpleton. I'm not sure. Not sure what Schneckennudel is actually. Schnecken

in Germany are absolutely gorgeous. They're a bit like panne au raisin, those raisin round croissants that you have. When I worked in Germany, I would have quite often three or four Schnecken a day. There you go. Can we do a pasta and cakes episode? I want to talk about the origin of all those pasta names and I just want an excuse to talk about cake and eat it. If anyone can hear lots of tip tapping on my end of the podcast, by the way, that is the rain. It is raining incredibly heavily here and dropping from the eaves. It's the original eavesdrop outside my little study.

Right. A correspondence, Stroppy from Lucy Eaton. She asks, Lucy asks, while taking an online online barbering course she came across the term stropping razors and this led me to wonder if this is linked to the term stroppy or throwing a strop where does it come from i've never heard stropping razors ever i have have you i was confused by her email because when i first read it i got really excited i thought oh this is going to be about the elephant i I adore Baba. But it's barbering. She has been learning how to cut hair.

And I think barbering is usually men's hair, isn't it? Yes. Hair dressing would be for women. It's usually you go to the barber. Anyway, Lucy's been taking this barbering course. Yes, the strop is the bit of leather. And you have a razor blade that's a fold-out razor blade and you would sharpen that blade on the strop. And they do that just before, as it were, scraping the back of your

neck and taking off all those little hairs. So that's what a strop is. But where does the term strop come from? Well, that strop, I'm just checking that that strop has nothing to do with stropy. I don't think it does. So yes, you're right. A device typically a strip of leather for sharpening razors. And that goes back to a Germanic adoption of the Latin stropus, which meant thong. And I can confirm that although if you're stroppy, you might want to go around thonging people. It actually is probably a formation from back formation from obstreperous. And if you are obstreperous, you are basically bad-tempered, aren't you? And irritable, etc.

And that goes back in turn to ob, meaning against, and strepere, to make a noise. So throwing a strop is from obstreperous, being obstreperous, nothing to do with the strop that you use when you've got a stropping razor. I don't think so. And obstreperous is also being quite noisy, isn't it? I think if you're stroppy, you can make a noise. Next letter, Susie. Okay, so this is from Louise Kieft.

I'm hoping I pronounced that properly. She has a word which she uses all the time. She grew up in East Anglia, South Lincolnshire, North Cambridgeshire, she says, and she wonders if it's specific to that small area. She now lives near me in South Oxfordshire. And Louise's word is jiffle, meaning to fidget and not sit or lie still. So she says as a child, she was told to stop jiffling or was even called a jiffle bum. Now, I hadn't heard this at all. Had you, Giles? No, never heard it. Never heard it. I've not heard it either. But I have to say, I had quite a nice time looking around for it.

No one knows, I'm afraid, Louise, where jiffle comes from. It is a dialect word, as you would guess. You will find it in dialect dictionaries. But what it did make me come across was some other lovely dialect words. It's actually mentioned as a Norfolk word. So maybe it goes a little bit further than where Louise grew up. But there's lovely words in there like lollop, which is to walk about in a kind of slightly ungainly way, a lolloping person. And also lummox, a clumsy person. I love that.

So yes, it's a great word to jiffle. But unfortunately, no one quite knows, as is the case with so many dialect words, where it comes from. We don't know about jiffle and we don't know about dog. And there was one other you mentioned the other day we don't know the origin of. There's so many we don't know the origin of. Boffin is another one I'd love to get to the bottom of. If you know the true source of the word boffin, do please get in touch with us.

This is our 80th episode, myriad words we have discussed across these last 80 episodes. And the word myriad is one Emma Robertson wants to know more about. Could you please explain it? It means, she believes, 10,000. It does. Absolutely right. Are there other words like that? Well, yes, it does. It comes from the Greek myrioi, which was 10,000 exactly. But because it then became a large number, it was extended in kind of figurative use. And myriad is an interesting one because technically speaking, if you say a

myriad of, which is very tempting because it makes sense to say a myriad of letters appeared, it's wrong because myriad already contains that idea of of. So you would say a myriad letters, not a myriad of letters. Intriguing. That's the joy. We learned so much from you. Thank you for being in touch with us, Emma. Emma has been in touch with us from New Zealand. I love the global reach of Something Rhymes with Purple. It makes me proud and moved at the same time. do please communicate with us. Email purple at somethingelse.com, something without a G. We always have three special words from you, Susie Dent. Have you got three interesting words for us this week? Maybe from your Word Perfect book?

Well, yes. This one is all to do with biscuits, really. But it's just quite interesting, the whole vocabulary that was around tea drinking. And maybe we should do a special episode on tea and coffee because the associations of drinking tea, particularly when it comes to females and the gossip that goes with it, has been very interesting and quite sexist in the past, I have to say. Whether or not this is sexist or whether it was created by women, I don't know. But, you know, when you're pouring from the teapot, you might say, who's playing mother? Who's mother? know. But you know, when you're pouring from the teapot, you might say, who's playing mother? Who's mother? Well, bitching the pot was one other term for who is pouring the tea. Who's bitching the pot? Because it's usually women. So my turn to bitch the pot. I think women can reclaim this and say, it's my turn to pour the tea and get the biscuits out. So that's the first

one. The second is, I had Borborygmus at the start of this, but actually I've also been accused of this too, which is gwicking. To gwick is to make a large, loud swallowing noise. And I can't swallow a cup of tea without actually making a loud swallowing noise. I find that so irritating. I'm really sorry. I really find that irritating.

I'm going to try really hard now. Did you hear that? No, I didn't hear that. Good, good, good. All right. Well, I'm perfect. That's probably the quality of the sound. Gully's in charge today. And you've got the rain behind me. Anyway, so what was that word? What was the word you wrote? That's gwicking. So G-W-I-C-K. G-W-I-C-K. And a third one?

The third one, well, as you know, I had a bit of an omni shambles recently, which is a great word invented for the TV serial comedy called The Thick of It. So there's another word associated with this, which I love. It's very transparent and very obvious, but I think it's something we all feel at the moment, and that's omni-strain. And omni-strain is the stress of trying to cope with everything in life. Well, one of the best ways I think of coping with the stresses of life is to pull down an anthology of poetry, open it at random and read a poem. And the great thing about poetry, and T.S. Eliot says this, so it must be right, you don't need to understand it. You don't have to understand it. You don't need to understand all the words. It is, in a way, like music using language. And I have put together an anthology of

poems, my favourite poems, called Dancing by the Light of the Moon. And these are particularly poems to learn by heart. And in it, there are lots of old favourites and some surprises too. And I pulled it down today because recently, we lost a wonderful poet, an Irishman called Derek Mahon. And he was born in 1940, 41. And he died the other day in Ireland. And he was a man who had a wonderful way with words and a very big heart. And I'd like to read one of his poems. It's the last poem in my anthology. It's called Everything is Going to Be All Right. It's really very much a poem for our times. How should I not be glad to contemplate

the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window and a high tide reflected on the ceiling? There will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that. The poems flow from the hand unbidden, and the hidden source is the watchful heart. The sun rises in spite of everything, and the far cities are beautiful and bright. I lie here in a riot of sunlight, watching the day break and the clouds flying. Everything is going to be all right.

That's beautiful. I have to say, when things get really dark, for me, a massively effective antidote is to go and look at the sea. So, yes, it's that kind of similar thing. Everything will be all right because we are just specks, aren't we? Specks in the ocean. Well, on that note, thank you for that, Giles. That was beautiful something

rhymes with purple is a something else production it was produced by lawrence bassett and with additional production from steve ackerman grace laker and with a mouthful of jaffa cakes golly yeah he's been bitching the pot