Something Rhymes with Purple - Sphallolalia

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

There’s no synonym for love. Today we’re talking about the surprisingly limited language for love. Featuring aubergine emojis, 16th Century hot cockles, enjoying some more fandango de pokum, the meaning of limerence, eloping like a thief, Gyles’s secret wedding, flirtatious talk that leads to nowhere, the ick factor, Aussie kisses, and Fanny Cradock’s contraceptive tips. A Somethin’ Else Production. Susie’s Trio of Words: Philodox: a person in love with their own opinion. Idiorepulsive: self-repelling. Quag: to wag something soft and flabby.  If you’d like to get in touch with a question for Susie and Gyles for a future episode, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm Susie Dent and I'm sitting opposite... Charles Brandress. And today we're talking about something we know a lot about. We're talking about love. And I say that because we are here because we love one thing in particular, and that is words. Oh, I was hoping that was leading somewhere more attractive.

We are here because we love each other in a nice, wholesome way. Of course, always wholesome. But we want to talk about the language of love. I find the podcast format, it sort of tempts you to be very confessional, don't you think? And you end up saying things that you think, oh my gosh, have I just told hundreds of thousands of people this? Not hundreds of thousands, not yet.

Oh, forgive me. But I have to be careful. We've had half a million people listening to our podcast. Half a million? Yeah. Good grief. I'm looking at Paul, our producer here. That's extraordinary.

Well, thank you to everybody who's listening. I'm going to stick with the language of love. But Giles, tell us about your love life. Oh oh there's not really a lot to tell but love has meant a lot to me and I think the language of love is very important as you know I've done this book called Dancing with the Light of the Moon which is about learning poetry by heart and I discovered in the course of it one of the values of learning a poem by heart is it's a very good way if you want to get... Seduce. Well, in the nicest sense, seduce.

Seduce the brain. This is the idea. You're going out on a date with somebody. I'm just thinking back to when I was a teenager. You're going out for a date with somebody. And initially, you know, having getting to know you chats. And what you talk about, things that you both like. And I remember a girl saying to me,

what's your favourite poem? And I told her what the favourite poem was. And then about three dates later... She had it tattooed on her left shoulder. No. Better than that, in a way, better than that. She said, oh, you remember that poem? She said, well, I've got a present for you. And sitting in the Cardoma coffee shop in Oxford, she leant forward and recited the poem. Oh, how lovely. It suddenly occurred to me that is a wonderfully, it's a wonderful gift to give people. It is. To give them something that they love.

And through poetry, there is a kind of, well, there is the language of love. Really what I'm trying to say is that words do matter when it comes to love. I remember I did a sort of class with some kids. And I was asking them about love poetry and love letters. And they knew what love poetry was. None of them knew what love letters was. And have I mentioned this before? The girl, I said, if you want to tell a boy you fancy him, what do you do

if you don't send him a letter? She said, well, I send him an emoji. An emoji? She said, you know, a smiling face. I said, well, that's quite nice. And if he fancies you, what does he do? He sends me a smiling face with a tongue hanging out. I said, oh, dear.

And if he really fancies you, what does he send you? Oh, a smiling face with a tongue hanging out. That's not what I do. And if he really fancies you, what does he send you? Oh, he sends me an aubergine. Well, that's fine in its own way. But I think you can do more with words. And I think the language of love. The whole emoji thing is quite interesting, though, because there are huge discussion threads online about the sort of subtle distinctions between various emojis

and what they might mean if they come from somebody that you are in love with. It's extraordinary. They are being discussed as much as any aspect of language, which I think is probably a good thing. Well, in a way, emojis are new kinds of word. It's a pictogram. It's a way of looking at words, but with a picture. But I think the essence of what we're saying is that fundamental to love, and of course, we're talking initially about, are we, what is love at the beginning of the story? Is it desire? What is it? What are the early days? It's fascinating because there's no synonym for love, and yet it encapsulates so many different things. There's no exact equivalent, a word that means

pretty much the same thing. What age were you when you first fell in love? Probably about 13, maybe. Yeah, I was younger than that. Okay. I think, I suppose, I first fell in love. And we can talk about love and in love, where the expression falling in love comes from. Yes, because I fell in love with my pet dog in a different way, much, much earlier than that. But if you're talking about romantic love, I think it's better. Yes, because in a sense, I don't know that you fell in love with my pet dog in a different way much, much earlier than that. But if you're talking about romantic love, I think that's better.

Yes, because in a sense, I don't know that you fell in love with your pet dog. I think you loved your pet dog. No, I did actually fall in love with it as a puppy, but it's totally different. And that's what I mean is the language of love is amazingly limited, really. When does the idea of falling in love come about? Does Shakespeare use it? Yes, that's a really good question, actually. As opposed to loving? actually falling had many uses so for example women fell pregnant in the older days as though it was some

sort of sin i don't like that expression people still use the phrase falling pregnant do they so let's have a look and see what this is me typing on the laptop um in the oed okay no it goes back to old english so the anglo-saxons were talking about becoming enamored This is me typing on the laptop in the OED. Okay. No, it goes back to Old English. So the Anglo-Saxons were talking about becoming enamoured, passionately attached to, by expressing it as being taken, caught or falling in love. Well, I think I was probably about 10 when I started falling in love.

And I would fall in love on a regular basis with a wide range of objects of desire. And I remember I had a younger brother. I had a younger brother who was 10 years younger than me. And I was sent by my parents or by my mother to wheel my younger brother around the streets of London in his pram and later in his pushchair. So given I was 10 years old, I would have been 10, 11, 12 when I was doing this. And I do remember walking the streets of London, pining for different people, objects of desire. What is interesting is I can no longer remember

what the objects of desire, who they were. But I do remember the idea of falling in love. It's intoxicating. Someone, it was a quite recent coinage, really. So quite recently invented words in the grand scheme of things. And the exhilarating rush of falling in love was termed limerence. But it's really, really hard to express it, isn't it? Even words struggle to convey the whole exhilaration, intoxication.

You can say, I hate you in a whole variety of ways. I despise you. I loathe you. Yes. I think you're completely ghastly. But you can't say, I love you, except with the words, I love you. Pretty much. Yes.

There's nothing that really captures its whole spectrum of emotion. But the vocabulary surrounding love is very different. Tell us about that. Well, if you've got hot for someone um if you look in the oed you have concupiscence what does concupiscence mean it means having the hearts it means fancying the pants of somebody um or if you're excessively fond of your wife which i know you are i'm not sure excessive is the right word here you are uxorious ah yes you know that and the opposite if she's because that is lat? And the opposite, if she's... Because that axor is Latin for wife.

Yes. And if she totally dotes upon you, she is maritorious. I'm afraid that she doesn't. Okay. So let's move quickly on. Let's forget about that then. You know, any historical thesaurus will give you some juicy alternatives for sex, if you don't want to say sex. You can call it hot cockles, or at least you could in the 1500s,

doing the service of Venus in the 1600s. Or this is my absolute favourite, 1800s, you would be enjoying some Fandango to poke them. We love that. Which is great. And I know one of my trio of words in the past has been furky toodling, which is just a bit of messing around. Tell me about words to do with getting married. I got married a long time ago, and I got married at Marylebone Registry Office

because my parents were married there. Yeah. My parents were married. My parents met in the 1930s. My father bought the first set of Monopoly, the gay Monopoly, sold in this country in Christmas 1936 at Selfridges. He was front of the queue, bought the first set.

He went back to his digs in Gower Street, London, and asked the landlady if she'd be interested in a game, this new game he'd got. And she said, no, not interested at all. He said, but there's a woman along the corridor who's got a daughter. They might like to play with you. So my father went along the corridor,

knocked on the door, showed the couple who answered the door, a middle-aged woman and her 20-year-old daughter, showed them this game of Monopoly and said, fancy game of Monopoly. They played Monopoly. Six weeks later, my father and the girl eloped. No.

Yes. Oh, it's an amazing story. They eloped and they got married at Marylebone Registry Office. They didn't tell their parents. And they got the, they went up, they paid the license. And the registrar said, where are the witnesses? They said, what witnesses? He said, you're going to have witnesses. So they got one of the clerks who was working at the registry office. And my father went down and bought some flowers from a flower stall at the

corner and said, if I buy two bunches, will you come in and be a witness? So those are the witnesses. How fantastic. So many years later, when my wife and I decided to get married, we got married discreetly too, at Marylebone Registry Office, and we just had two witnesses. And our honeymoon, we went for lunch after the wedding. Among our witnesses was an actor friend of mine called Simon Cadell. You may remember him from IDI, no longer with us. And it was very exciting

because at the lunch, we went to a wonderful restaurant called The Empress. At the next table was an actor called John LeMessurier or John LeMessurier from Dad's Army.

Wonderful actor. So we thought that was rather exciting. And then Simon drove us to Heathrow Airport and we went for our honeymoon to Rome for the weekend. Oh, beautiful.

Roman holiday. Which was, exactly. But this is all leading up to honeymoon. Why was it called a honeymoon? Well, first of all, I'm just going to have to scribble from Paul, our producer,

sitting opposite me, saying why is it called eloping? And it simply comes from the German Entlaufen, which is to run away, steal away like a thief. Like a thief. And I suppose we were

running away like thieves because we didn't tell, funnily enough, our parents that we were getting married for several years, not until our first children were due. So it was three, four, even five years after we got married that we told our parents that we were married. This may seem completely immaterial to a modern young audience, but I have to tell you, 45, 50 years ago, it was considered quite shocking.

Absolutely. If you lived with your girlfriend or boyfriend, you were... You're still living in sin. That was the phrase. Literally, the phrase was... Or over the brush. Yeah. There's another one. I didn't know about over the brush.

What's that? It means that you aren't married, that you're just sort of living with someone. So it's kind of Northern expression and no one knows where it comes from. Possibly from the idea that when people couldn't afford a proper marriage, they would still carry,

the groom would still carry the bride, in inverted commas, over their threshold. And that would be perhaps covered in straw. That was the idea. I mean, no one quite knows where the tradition comes from or came from, but over the brush. commas over their threshold and that would be perhaps covered in straw that was the idea i mean no one quite knows where the tradition comes from or came from but over the brush let's get to these wedding terms yes honeymoon you asked me about honeymoon sounds lovely doesn't it yes honey sweet the moon lundemiel but actually the original allusion was a fairly sarcastic or at least pessimistic one because it refers to sweet

love that wanes as steadily as the moon oh not great oh you mean it all goes wrong it all well it all just fades away so the honeymoon really means it's the end yeah so actually when you think about it vocabulary is all slightly pessimistic so we talk about being um sort of hitched getting hitched getting yoked um holy. I mean, the lock bit doesn't sound very good. So the kind of potential for cynicism is everywhere, if you want to. There was a lovely term for getting married back in, well, we're talking about four centuries ago now, which was joining giblets. Oh, good grief. Don't laugh.

It sounds like fandango to poke them. We're joining giblets. They're actually meant to get married. So that's the sort of euphemism for getting married. When you feel a bit awkward about saying, what's happening in your life? Well, I'm joining giblets. They're actually meant to get married. So that's the sort of euphemism for getting married. When you feel a bit awkward about saying, what's happening in your life? Well, I'm joining giblets. I think it's quite sweet, really.

And any best man or woman looking for the sort of justification, I suppose, of a mother-in-law joke might enjoy the fact that matrimony goes back to the Latin for mother, mater. Oh, matrimony. Yes. So in the state of holy matrimony, does that mean you're going to become a mother? Possibly, or that you...

It's a gateway to marriage. Yeah, or it's also that matter is also behind matrix and the sort of, you know, the matter of life, really. Matter comes from matter, the whole substance of life. So mothers get a look in absolutely everywhere, which is quite right. I find myself quite often at Gatwick Airport, quite often there early in the morning. And I find what is so exhausting is I'm trying to have breakfast when out of Wetherspoons are emerging at break of day people dressed as brides and grooms. Men often either dressed as clowns or wearing bridal coiffure. And they are off to sunny climbs for a stag party, a hen party. It's gone wild.

In my day, a wedding, wellag party, a hen party. It's gone wild. In my day, a wedding, well, it was a simple thing. I had a wedding breakfast because literally you went out to church, you got married, you came home, you had breakfast. It was breakfast. Now the wedding is a whole day event and preceding the wedding is a trip. Why do we call these stag parties? Why do they call these hen do's?

Well, hen's a bit like bird. It's been applied to women in general since the 1500s oh it's a female so a cock is the male and a hen is the female exactly so they're female birds yeah and stag also like various other you mentioned cock as well have been used to mean a male of any species so stag party was exclusively male party. Have you ever been on a hen party? Yeah, I have. I'm not a great fan of just such massive gatherings, single sex gatherings. What goes on? What do they do? What happens at hen parties?

Well, they can be really nice. I think if you've got really close friends around you and then you just go and have lovely dinners and, you know, might do some fun things. But then that's great. But I think if there's sort of 20 or 30 people, not for me. But I do want to mention Love Island. Please. Now, as a linguist, you're almost obliged to watch Love Island. Because linguistically speaking, it's actually really interesting. Because a whole lexicon of new words have come out of Love Island.

Have you ever watched it? Of course. Okay. So you might have a muggy person. A muggy person is somebody who is easily mugged. In other words, sort of quite gullible, really. If you're melt, you're a bit soppy in a dorkish kind of way. If you're prangy, you're a bit anxious.

And how do these words come into being? Is somebody inventing these words? Or they, I mean, how do they spring into life? I think sometimes, I get the feeling now that in the most recent programmes, there's this almost kind of deliberate planting of words to see if they kind of take off. But I don't know. I think it's just one person's perhaps homegrown word that they then use. And it sort of takes off.

My favourite recently was the ick factor, which is that overwhelming feeling of revulsion that you suddenly get. Oh, the icky factor. The icky. I like to think of them as an icky, the recipient of your ick. So yeah, but you know, that's a fairly good reason to watch Love Island.

Perhaps the only reason to watch Love Island, some might say, but anyway. Have we had our break yet? Okay, time for a break. Time for some Love Island. Let's have a break and then let's talk about sex. Baby. I'm Nick Friedman I'm Lee Alec Murray

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We're back. And I thought we talked about sex on a programme before, but we haven't. In Charles's Dreams, we have done a whole podcast on sex. I had to tell him we haven't. We're going to do many programmes on sex over the coming months and years. But we are talking today really about love. And love doesn't necessarily need to lead to sex. But if we're talking about being in love and forming relationships and seduction, sex does seem to play a part of it.

Are you okay? Your voice almost went there. Well, it's both the emotion of the subject and the fact that I may have asthma. Not a good combination. Sorry. Here we are. Shakespeare, of course, used a euphemism for the act of sex. And he talked about making the beast with two backs. Where does a bit of rumpy-pumpy come from? A bit of rumpy-pumpy. Oh, yes, rumpy-pumpy.

Well, I think it's just rhyming, reduplication of rump and pumping. I think that's the idea. That's it. What about this? Making whoopee? Making whoopee, yes. As in having sex?

Yes. This is an American expression, I think. Baking the potato. Shall we go bake the potato? Oh, God, definitely wouldn As in having sex? Yes. This is an American expression, I think. Baking the potato. Shall we go bake the potato? Oh, God. Definitely wouldn't turn me on that one. Okay. Fancy the four-legged...

Okay. I can get it out. That was your ass, then. I don't think I can get it out. That's bad enough. Let me try and get the line out. Susie, do you fancy the four-legged foxtrot? Oh, dear.

Having a horizontal refreshment. Oh, no. That's quite nice. No way. They were having horizontal refreshment. What about... Yeah, terrible. I haven't heard a single one yet that's...

Wait for this. These are all legitimate ones. I've not made these up. I wouldn terrible. I haven't heard a single one yet that's... Wait for this. These are all legitimate ones. I've not made these up. I wouldn't. I couldn't. Hiding the sausage. Ah, dearie me. Ah, this is quite nice.

Extreme flirting. Yeah. Do you think we could do some extreme... You know that sphalolalia is flirting that goes absolutely nowhere. Sphalolalia? Sphalo. Sphalolalia. Why is that? I've no idea. Flirting that leads nowhere. Sallow lalia? Sallow. Sallow lalia. Why is that?

I've no idea. Flirting that really leads nowhere. What was the word for people? I do know it's Greek, sorry. People used to do this. I remember, you know, I was a friend of the great television chef, Fanny Craddock. Yeah? Fanny Craddock.

Bad joke coming up. No, no. No bad joke at all. Okay. Younger people who don't know what I mean, I was described fairly craddock really. She was a television chef, pioneering television chef. She was very rude, wasn't she? She was very rude to people, but in a jokey way.

Towards the end of her career, there was an unfortunate broadcast with Esther Ransom where she was, she put a downer on somebody who'd cooked something that they hoped was very nice. She was actually a lovely person. Okay. Big hearted, but she was a strong personality. She was really, in a way, a curious cross between Mary Berry and Jeremy Clarkson. Anyway, Fanny Craddock introduced me to the word, it's going to come to me now, for what people used to do before they got married, when they couldn't have sex. Because in the olden days, before contraception became, before the advent of the pill in the 1960s, if you had sex with somebody, Susie's having a little bit of a meltdown here,

so I will go on talking. If I'm talking, listener, it's not because she's left the room, it's because she cannot speak, because she's having respiratory problems on the other side of the table. Before people could have sex when they were boyfriend, girlfriend, they, because it was risky to do so apart from anything else, it was considered sinful, but it was also risky because you might conceive. Yeah. They used to do this thing called something like dumpling.

Anyway, what it amounted to was you got into bed. Listen, we were all just staring at Charles. You got into bed and it was before we had duvets. You had sheets, you had blankets, you had an eiderdown. And one party got under the sheets. You cuddled, but there were sheets. You spooned. Sheets and blankets were in between you.

Shaking of the sheets was a 16th century dance, but that was then applied to the euphemism for sex. That's a bit like jingling jangling, which is another one. Oh, let's have some correspondence. Who's been in touch this week? Lots of people. Yes, a lot of people are going to get in touch after this week, that's for sure. Hi, says Hugh Griffiths.

Very much enjoy the podcast. Listen as I commute to work in Perth. Whether this is, oh no, Western Australia, he says, not Scotland. I think you will find the cloth at the end of hotel beds is because guests don't take their shoes off. Do you remember a few weeks ago, I was banging on, having a rant about not only the ridiculous number of pillows that there are on beds in hotels, but also these ludicrous bits, strips of cloth at the end of the bed.

Yes. And we... Do they call? And someone provided us with the word? No. Oh. Somebody hasn't provided us with the word, but they have provided us with the reason that hotels have those cloths.

It is because guests often don't take their shoes off. Oh. And it's easier to clean a multicoloured cloth than a white sheet or duvet. So that's the reason at the end of your bed there's that little strip of cloth. We still need to find the name, the term for that strip of cloth, don't we? Well, we do have the answer to what it's called as well. Peter Jones, he's not a shot, but not a dragon, not an actor, although I'd entertain the idea of recording the next edition of the Galactic Hitchhiker's Guide. That's Peter Jones. He has come up with the answer. He says, Dear Susie and

Giles, in your podcast on sleep-related words, you were looking for answers about the sash at the foot of a hotel bed. It is called a bed scarf, a bed scarf, or a partial coverlet. A coverlet. There you are. That's what it is.

That is quite good. I have one. Maybe we should finish on this one. me smile ian nichols a little bit saucy the comment about french and swiss kisses reminds me of a joke from an australian comedian an aussie kiss is like a french kiss but down under cheeky what is your trio this week for us okay this word i think is highly useful for our times in fact probably has always been very useful some people people say Twitter is full of these. I personally love Twitter.

But a philodox, P-H-I-L-O-D-O-X, is a person in love with their own opinion. Ooh. It's quite useful, isn't it? Philodox. Yes. You mentioned you love Twitter. What is your Twitter handle? It's Susie underscore Dent.

Susie underscore Dent. I follow you. She follows me. I'm at Giles B1. G-Y-L-E-S B1. What's your second word? Anybody who's had a bit of a rough night, gets up the following day and is forced to look in the mirror when they're cleaning their teeth. They might find themselves idio-repulsive. Idio-repulsive.

Self-repelling. That Amazon. There we go. is idio-repulsive. Idio-repulsive, self-repelling. That ever so easily, more and more. I used to shave in one of those mirrors that amplifies the size of your face. I've recently turned it to make it smaller. It now makes my face look further away. So I'm not shaving so well, but it's a happier sight. I thought that when I finally started to wear glasses. I enjoyed the sort of soft focus. This might be appropriate to round off today. We've been talking about love, haven't we?

And if something soft and flabby shakes about, it's quagging. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you for raising the tone with that last word. Something soft and flabby that wags about is called what? It's to quag. To quag. To quag. To quag is to shake of something soft and flabby. Now, I may not be able to do this, but because I knew we were going to talk about love today.

Yes. And because I've worked on this Dancing with the Night of the Moon collection of poetry to learn by heart, I thought I would try and learn a poem to recite to you. Oh. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being an ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need by sun and candlelight. I love thee

freely as men strive for right. I love thee purely as they turn from praise. I love thee with a passion put to use in my old griefs and in my childhood's faith. I love thee with the love I seem to lose with my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life. And if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. Beautiful. Good. Utterly beautiful. And that's the first time I've

recited it out loud. Amazing. So that was for you, Susie Dent, a little love poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her story was a great love story. And what's interesting is when she published the poem, it was a sonnet, it was called Poems from the Portuguese, and she pretended that they were translations from sonnets written in Portuguese. But they were her own. But they were her own. And she did that because she thought people wouldn't necessarily take her seriously. Anyway, so though we've given you a lot of nonsense today, at least we've ended up with a proper piece of love poetry. That was beautiful.

Good. Thank you. That's our lot, isn't it? It is our lot. If you enjoyed the podcast today why not uh review us or rate us to help spread the word if you've got a question you'd like to ask whether you just want to get in touch you will of course email us at purple at something else dot com something rhymed with purple is a something else production produced by paul

smith with additional production from steve ackerman lawrence bassett and someone called gully so sorry gully