Something Rhymes with Purple - The Blind Leading The Blind

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

Rise and shine, Purple People! This week we're getting rather spiritual and delving into the majesty of the King James Bible, a book which, despite being written over 400-years ago still runs deep through our modern-day language and phraseology. So, at the risk of the "blind leading the blind", “rise and shine” and join us as we “go the extra mile”, hopefully arriving in the “land of nod” before we’re all “at our wit’s end”. We also go through some of your fantastic emails, Susie provides us with three useful words to take into your week and, as well as providing his weekly quote, Gyles reminisces about the times he’s spent in churches over the years. A Somethin’ Else production. Susie’s Trio: Cackletub - slang term for a church pulpit Gloppenment - a feeling of surprise or astonishment Tatterwallop - an untidy or slovenly person If you have a question for Gyles and Susie please email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about the passion for words. It may be words that we love, it may be words that we hate, or it may be the secret lives lying behind some of the words that we use every day. And I'm sitting this time, not in my kitchen, but in a London studio, and I'm sitting opposite my great friend and co-host, Giles. Hello, Giles. Well, it's lovely to be with you again, Susie. That's very sweet of you to say that, because some people think I'm the millstone around your neck. Really? People have said that to me. Gosh,

poor woman, what she has to put up with. I happen to know that the phrase, the millstone around your neck, meaning something oppressive, a burden, comes from the New Testament, rather than from the Gospel according to St. Luke. And the reason I know that is because I have spent, I now realise, a lot of my life in church. Don't think of myself as a spiritual person at all. Are you a spiritual person, do you think? I think I am spiritual, but without any specific seat for my spiritualism

or kind of target, if you like. When you were a little girl, did you go to church? Did your parents take you to church? I wouldn't say that we went every Sunday, but I did go to Ferrymantle. And then, of course, I went to a convent where church was compulsory and I loved it. And even now going into a church is such, it just inspires such serenity in me. There is something about the quiet. Was it Anglican, Catholic?

Well, I went to a Catholic convent. I don't subscribe, I have to say, to any particular denominational faith these days. But there is definitely something about the buildings where people congregate and pray that has something very, very special. And I love going to church, too. I still go to church, curiously. I say curiously because I wouldn't say that I'm a profound believer. It's partly habit and it's partly language. And that's why I wanted to talk a little bit about it today. I began going to church when I was a very little boy. I worked out why, it's because my parents

didn't like me, and they could get rid of me on a whole Sunday. And so in London on Sundays, when I was a child in the 1950s, I would go to about three different churches. One of them, I was a server. One of them, I was in choir. Well, two of them I was in the choir. Loved being in the choir because we got paid. We got paid a shilling for every main service. Then we got half a crown for weddings, five shillings for funerals. Choir boys, we sat there looking for the oldest person in the congregation and we prayed for them to die because that would mean five shillings.

That's the equivalent of doctor's ash cash, when they sign off somebody to be cremated, and they get the ash cash in return. Is that what it's known as? You get a little extra, you know, whatever your fee is known as, the ash cash. I don't know if there was a term for your earnings. So as a child, I went to church a great deal. I still go to church, and I go to the eight o'clock service on a Sunday morning, which in many Anglican churches still uses the King James version of the Bible, written at the beginning of the 17th century by a committee. Some people

think the language is so extraordinary, the committee might have included Shakespeare. Nobody, I think, knows exactly who's on this committee. But turns of phrase from the King James Bible still resonate. So a millstone around your neck is one of them. Fight the good fight is from the gospel, I think, according to St. Paul. It is extraordinary, isn't it, that it held its own at this time, because it was during the Renaissance, held its own amongst celebrated literary works by people like Shakespeare. amongst celebrated literary works by people like Shakespeare. And it's still now one of the most printed books in history and probably the most famous Bible translation ever.

So it's amazing it still has its power. And as you say, I think it's all to do with its language and its majesty because it's just got the most beautiful cadences. And I think the oddness of some of the phraseology that came about was because the translators decided to translate literally rather than try and come up with their own equivalent English idiom. So that, I think that's, you know, things like by the skin of one's teeth, et cetera, which is another one. You know, people think, well, what is the skin on your teeth?

What does it mean by the skin of your teeth? I think the idea, again, direct translation, but I think the idea was simply of the thinnest, thinnest veneer that's on your teeth. So by the tiniest amount. But they strike as being really odd today. But I think because of the kind of richness of these idioms, even if they weren't very transparent, it kind of lingers in the memory and in the mind. By the skin of your teeth comes from the book of Job, going the extra mile. That dates back to the time of Christ, because if asked by a Roman soldier to carry equipment, you literally had to do so.

You had to go the extra mile. But it's phrases like rise and shine. We say rise and shine comes from the book of Isaiah. Rise and shine. Isn't that amazing? You think of it as a modern Kellogg's world, some kind of serial maker's slogan. And when it was first originated,

rise and shine meant stand up and allow the light of God through you. Literally, shine with glory. Blind, leading the blind. That comes from the Gospel according to St. Matthew. At the 11th hour, doing something at the very last minute. That comes from St. Matthew as well. Being at your wit's end from Psalm 107,

how have these things lasted when other turns of phrase has? Is it the majesty of the language? Is it the words? Well, I think it's partly timing as well, because printing had been invented, but it was still in its sort of fairly early stages. And it made copies relatively cheap for a start. But also suddenly, the Bible is accessible to all those people who could read English and who could afford a printed Bible. The impact of printing on English generally is just enormous. For example, I mean, do you remember me talking about the H in ghost and how that came from one of William Caxton's typesetters who he brought over from Flanders because he couldn't find enough typesetters in this country? One of them, a Flemish speaker, looked at G-O-S-T in Old English,

ghost, and thought, that doesn't look right. So he lobbed an H into our word, and it stayed there ever since. And it was things like that that just became crystallised, both in terms of spelling, but also in terms of people's imagination. You know, what went there was reprinted, was disseminated far and wide, and it helped to standardise not just spelling, but also phrases as well. I mean, in Shakespeare's time, famously, he spelt his own name twice differently in the same document, which was his will. Spelling was absolutely all over the

place. People from the North couldn't necessarily understand people from the South. And what printing did, and this had a huge impact on the Bible as well, is, as I say, it kind of crystallized things. It's partly why spelling and sound divorced as well, because the spelling began to not reflect the sound and it's not changed very much since. But I think that's why, I think it's why it had such a huge impact, because it was one of the first times that people could A, afford a Bible, B, they were all reading the same translation. You probably don't know this. I don't't i'm going to put you to the test scapegoat i know it's a word that occurs in the book of leviticus we know what it is oh you do do you know what the original is scapegoat isn't it it's originally escape as in escape i think what happened is there were two goats who were chosen at a time when sins were to be atoned for, so kind of expiation of sins. And one of them was sent for

sacrificial slaughter, while the other had all the sins of the nation, all the sins of the people figuratively laid upon it and was sent off into the wilderness. And that goat, I mean, whether or not it survived, was seen as the escape goat. So it was the one that kind of got away, but it carried the sins of the people with it. My gut feeling is it's the power of the language that has made these phrases last. Man does not live by bread alone.

Fears in Deuteronomy and in St. Matthew. A man after my own heart. Be a man. How are the mighty fallen? These are phrases that resonate. And it's so vivid as well, the imagery. Some people have said that the King James Version sounded to many like the voice of God himself because it was so glorious and so majestic. People still talk about going to the land of Nod. They do. Nod is mentioned in Genesis. It's where Cain was exiled and Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.

That was a famous film as well, wasn't it? And I think it was Jonathan Swift who first used it for the state of sleep. And it was he was riffing off the idea of nodding your head. Very good. So the land of Nod, which first appears in Bible, east of Eden, Jonathan Swift thinks, makes the two, puts the two together. Puts the two together. You're drifting off to the land of Nod. A leopard cannot change its spots. First featured in the book of Jeremiah. Oh, really?

Going like a lamb to the slaughter from the book of Isaiah. Moving mountains. Can you imagine the idea of moving mountains? Faith can move mountains. Point is, let's salute the Bible. And I have to say, the King James Version of the Bible is the one that has stood for me the test of time. And people say, oh, you need a more modern version so that people can actually understand what they're reading and what they're having read to them. And I say, okay, fair enough. But I like to have

the King James Version still available because it speaks in a different way. Sometimes you go to a Shakespeare play, certainly in the first 20 minutes, I never understand anything. But gradually, somehow, you do understand as the play wears on. And in an odd sort of way, if you go to a service where you hear the language of the King James Version of the Bible, and indeed, from a few years later, the English Book of Common Prayer, the majesty, the poetry of that language lifts you into a plane. You may not need to believe all the details, or indeed believe in a specific God, but there is something rather special and spiritual about the words. No, I totally agree. Let's have a break, because there's some modern examples as well, which would be quite good to talk about.

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as we set off on a stunning journey of curiosity on a new subject and dive into the archive of more than 370 episodes. Listen to Getting Curious wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, we're back on Something Rhymes with Purple, and we've been talking about the enormous impact that the King James Bible, the King James' version of the Bible, has had,

not just upon the English language, but upon popular culture as well. Coolio's Gangster Paradise has some Bible quotes within it. Handel's Messiah, going back a little bit, but, you know, the sort of staggering, searing articulacy of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, he reached the King James Bible, you know, hugely. It is amazing that something produced by committee has had this amount of impact. I mean, how many other committees can we think of? This is something for our listeners, actually.

How many committees have produced something of such impact? That committee in the Sahara that created the camel did a brilliant job, didn't they? That's my joke. It's a little joke. But no, has there ever been anything quite like it? Yeah, it's extraordinary. But we'd love to hear from you. If you have anything to say, you can tweet us or you can email us at purple at something else dot com.

There's no G in something else. And our Twitter handles are, well, mine is Susie underscore Dent at Susie underscore Dent. And Giles, yours is at Giles B1. That's right. At G-Y-L-E-S B1. Henry Donoghue has been in touch about Kybosh. Hi, both. Totally addicted to your podcast. I'm even replaying them.

Wow. People do say that on third listening, there's a kind of richness, a texture to them. I still, this is not being a humble brag here. I do get genuinely touched and also quite surprised when people come up to me and say, I love your podcast, because it's unlike a TV studio where you've got an audience, etc. It's quite easy to think that no one in the world is listening to us as we record this. Yeah, I'm listening, sort of.

Thanks. A word I often hear in Ireland, says Henry Donoghue, which seems to be listed as unknown origin in some dictionaries, is kibosh, K-I-B-O-S-H. You made a kibosh out of that, meaning you completely messed up something. It was handed down through generations to me that the meaning originated during the Breon Law era in Ireland. When a judge was pronouncing the death penalty, he would put on his black cap before doing so. In Gaelic language, it was a capin bash, shortened as kai bash, kai meaning cap and bash meaning death, but pronounced kai bosh, kai rhyming with I and bosh rhyming with the German name Bosch.

So is he right? What's the origin of kai bosh? Well, the honest answer is we're not completely sure. That's one of the most popular theories. It's quite a dark one, isn't it? Which is why it captures the imagination. But we know it was first recorded in the 1830s. One of the first records is a case in a London magist at the time was illegal. Poor sweeps. Poor sweeps anyway. And they would find a shilling each plus cost, which is, you know, not an inconsiderable amount in those days. But their plot was kiboshed. So that's the first reference we have to it. kurbash, which was a whip, quite a long whip, about a yard in length. And it was made of hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide. And so it's quite possible that this was a sort of weapon that was kind of brandished and which destroyed everything in its path, which is why putting the kibosh on something is to ruin and annihilate it today. So the answer is we're not sure. And the detective work will keep going on. Have you got one? Yes, I have got one.

So anyone with sensitive ears might want to just cover them up just for the next one, because this is from Saren Gad Havas. It's Danish. I would love to learn Danish. But he says, I'm currently on the Thunderplump episode, trying to desperately catch up. And he has a question. Why on earth is wanker an insult? He says, as far as I know, wanker exists as a swear word in at least English and German and Greek. Where and how did this originate? Because the Scandinavian languages don't seem to have this idea.

Well, this is quite an interesting one to look up in my study with the door closed. It's just, again, we've been talking about religion today, haven't we? But there were all sorts of kind of religious condemnations of masturbation. It was something certainly in the Catholic faith you must never do. And in 1950, in the dictionary, there is something called wanker's doom, which was a supposed affliction or a terrible fate that would result from excessive masturbation. So I think it was all about self-gratification being a huge taboo within the church. And because of that, it kind of migrated into, you know, a word for a contemptible person. That's my guess.

And self-indulgent too. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. What about Doodah? Stephen Naish has been in touch. Hello, Giles and Susie. I've heard so many ways of referring to the TV remote. In my family, it's known as the doodah. Is there a reason why remote has so many alternatives? After all, it's not like it's a hard word to say. And where does doodah come from? It's not a hard word to say. It's such a

boring one. I think that's the point. You know, can you pass me the remote? Can you pass me the remote control? It's really funny because a while ago, the English Project, which is a wonderful charity at the University of Winchester, who does a lot of fantastic public service work, encouraging people to take an interest in the history of the English language. And they kicked off a campaign many years ago now, which asked people for their own homespun words for various things. And the one that came back with the most variations, nothing within a country mile of it, was the TV remote control. And they had Doobly, Podger, Blipper, Twitcher, Melly, Ponker, Clicker. Someone called it the fat controller do you know

what this echoes what we were doing a couple of weeks ago when we did the parts of the body yes we did a thing a whole thing on euphemisms

for the private parts the male private parts podger certainly but it's todger I don't think anyone calls a remote the todger pass me the todger

that would be an old different thing it's quite a funny thing pass me the todger oh I meant't think anyone calls a remote the Todger. Pass me the Todger. That would be an old-fashioned thing. It's quite a funny thing. Pass me the Todger. Oh, I meant the... What was the other word, Rich? Podger. Yeah, pass me the Podger.

Which do you want? Make up your mind, then. So, go on, give us some more of these. I'm loving them. Hoofer, doofer. Doof, licky. Honor, offer. Zapper.

I mean, you name it. Oh, zapper. Zapper. I think maybe we call that at home, the Zapper. The Zapper. What do you call yours? I realise now at my home we do call ours the Todger. This explains so much of what's been going wrong in recent years.

But yeah, it's just, it's very, very strange. But I think it is all down to the fact that it is just such a boring term. And also, you know, we all use it. Although, as we're all migrating to screens screens and that's why I hesitated there because I very rarely sit down in front of the tv I will normally watch catch up on an on an ipad or something which is not very sociable let's face it but I don't have that much downtime at the moment so you know I think when it did become such a sort of family thing when people would say pass me this and family viewing was was much more common it just borned a sort of family thing, when people would say, pass me this, and family viewing was much more common,

it just borned a whole lexicon of things. But also, Stephen, wasn't it, asked where do-da itself comes from. And this is quite nice, because we think it came from the old American folk song, is it Camp Town or Campton? Oh, do-da, do-da, the Camp Town races. That's it, do-da, do-da day, that one.

What a lovely, sweet voice you've got. Oh, that's a terrible song. Musical theatre beckons for you. So it's the Camp Down ladies sing this song. Doodah, doodah, that one. So we think that's where it comes from, the doodah. If you'd like to petition for Susie Dent to take part in the revival of Mary Poppins, please do get in touch with us.

It's purple at somethingelse.com. Oh, can I just add one last thing? Yes. This is from Richard Cook, who emailed us in from jaguar land rover he enjoys the podcast and he says i know you like the word growler this is honestly this is becoming the motif of our podcast isn't it growler long history to our discussions about growler but he says i thought you both might like to know that here at jaguar we refer to the jaguar face image found on the front badge of Jaguar cars as a growler. And he sent us the image and you understand why, because it's a fairly ferocious looking Jaguar. So growler,

you know, growlers are everywhere. We are supposed to be grown ups, but inevitably we seem to end the programme talking about todgers and growlers. So sorry. That's the way it goes. But we began with the spiritual element. Have you got three fabulous words, new words, different words, words we may not know or old words that need reviving to share with us? Well, we were talking about the church today and the Bible. Well, one very mocking, I guess, term for the pulpit

from where a priest or cleric might deliver a sermon with the cackle tub. The cackle tub. So more figuratively you could say, well, don't get on your cackle tub. In other words, stop preaching. So that's quite a nice one. That's centuries

old, that one. Also, do you remember I told you quite a while ago about the adjective blutterbunged? If you're really, really astonished by something, you are blutterbunged. Well, there's another lovely one, this time from old Yorkshire dialect in Britain, and it's gloppenment. So gloppen is G-L-O-P-P-E-N. Gloppenment is old Yorkshire dialect. M-E-N-T at the end. M-E-N-T, exactly. Gloppenment.

For surprise or astonishment, again. So if you're dumbfounded, you are gloppened and that is gloppenment, which is quite nice. And finally, if you are often to be found in your hufflepuffs, that's a word that I've mentioned before. In other words, your kind of old, comfy, cosy clothes that you shuffle into on a Friday evening. You might also be described as a tatterwallop. And a tatterwallop is simply an untidy, slovenly person. A tatterwallop. A tatterwallop. That's a very good word. I shall be introducing my grandchildren when they come for sleepovers

to this word. Don't be such a tatterwallop. I love it. Oh, time for my quotation too. Oh, yes. And I'm going to end today with some words that were shared with me by a man who is a political leader, but he's also in his country regarded by some as a spiritual leader as well. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is the ruler of Dubai. And I interviewed him some years ago, and he gave me, as I was leaving, a present. And it was full of bits of philosophy and prayers and wisdom. And given that we were talking about matters spiritual, I thought I would end with something from Sheikh Mohammed. Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Gosh, that's deep. That's deep. That's deep. Well, something rhymes with purple. Occasionally is deep. Yes, we need to be profound sometimes and less focused on the growlers. If you did enjoy today, please give us a nice review or recommend us to a friend. It would mean a lot to us. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer, or you'd just like to get in touch about anything really, you can also email us at purple at somethingelse.com.

And as we always say, that's something without the G. So it's something else dot com something rhymes with purple is a something else production produced by lawrence bassett with additional production from steve ackerman and gully oh my goodness he deserves to be blutterbunked