Something Rhymes with Purple - The Heavens Opened

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

We are live and direct from Salisbury Playhouse! Join Susie & Gyles as they go on an illuminating voyage through the intricate web of etymology, uncover the untold tales lurking beneath our everyday words. In this week's episode, we immerse ourselves in the fluid world of water, tracing its linguistic currents and unearthing the surprising stories that ebb and flow through its etymology. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week: 1.Supervacaneous: over the top 2.Spissid: thick 3.Splurgundy : a sparkling red wine from Australia Gyles' replaces his weekly poem with funny epitaphs that he has come across: 1. Here lies the body of our Anna, Done to death by a banana. It wasn't the fruit that laid her low, But the skin of the thing that made her go. 2. Here Lies Lester Moore, Four Slugs from a 44, No Les, No More 3. Here lies my wife: here let her lie! Now she’s at rest, and so am I. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts   To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] 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

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. Make your nights unforgettable

with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main We'll see you next time. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Welcome to another episode of Something Lines with Purple. I'm Giles Brandes and I'm joined as ever by my co-presenter of this celebration of words and language. It's Susie Dent. How are you, Susie?

Hello. I am extremely well, but I have to ask you about your jumper because you're looking a bit like Richard of York. No, what is it? It's an emblem, isn't it? It's an emblem. It is a Tudor rose. It's a Tudor rose. And the reason I'm wearing this is that I, the last show on a stage I did was a little while ago. I was at Hampton Court Palace.

Ooh, such a scenic place. Performing with the great Dame Judi Dench. Yes. We did a show celebrating the English language, Shakespeare in particular. And we had a lot of fun to a huge audience because it was a special charity event for the Queen's Reading Room. And it was very exciting, Hampton Court Palace, where Shakespeare had been in 1604 to be on the same ground where he performed. And I wore this Tudor rose because I'd planned to wear the jumper, which I think you've seen,

which has the cipher of King Charles III on it. And the king saw this, and I thought he would be admiring it, and he certainly, he was courteous about it, and then said, I think a very effective hearth rug, don't you? We have come to Salisbury. We have. For this episode, a special episode with a live audience. And what are we going to talk about in this episode

of Something Rhymes with Burble? Well, I don't know if there is a hosepipe ban at the moment here, but coming very soon. But we're going to talk about possibly the most precious commodity on earth, which is water. Excellent. Water. It appears in so many different expressions and in different English words, actually, where you may not expect it. Yeah. What is the origin of the word water? It's a very ancient word, as you might expect. It's one of the very, very first words probably ever to be spoken. And we think people living around the Black Sea, maybe more than 5,000 years ago, had a word which has literally and appropriately trickled down into lots and lots of different languages in many different forms,

but we think it all goes back to the same root. But it came to us via Wasser, which is a German word for water. Pausing for a moment, you're telling us that you think that water was probably one of the first words that were articulated by human beings. I think so, because what linguistic archaeologists have done is looked at some of the earliest words in languages across the board, particularly languages that share, you know, in the same family, such as the Indo-European family. And they look to see similarities between these words, which suggests that they in turn go back to the same Ur, if you like, ancestor. And from there, they can reconstruct which words were the earliest. And you have very enterprising words like fire, like danger, like, you know, words for food, et cetera.

And I'm pretty sure water was on their list. I mean, it's, you know... It's fundamental. It's fundamental. Water is fundamental. Where does water come from? Well, I was just going to tell you some of those words that it's trickled into. So, in Greek it was hudol, that's some bad pronunciation, but that gave us hydraulic, hydrogen, hydrotherapy, and that kind of thing. We have Latin under, you can see these actually feel and look very different.

I thought Latin for water was aqua. It is, but under was another word from the same family. So we often in languages have similar words for the same phenomenon that have come from different sources. And in Latin for the Romans, under was one of them. So that's given us undulate and inundate. And that was all about water. And abound as well, believe it or not. And then the Russian... Abound, explain that. Abound. So abundance, you've got that under again in it as well so the idea originally probably was to have lots and lots of water and then to have an abundance of anything and then in russian it was i'm not quite sure how to pronounce this voda which is that gives vodka the water of life and

german wasser and then we have wet and all sorts of things and they look and feel so different but actually if you take them far enough back they are so similar that we think they have the same ancestor. Very intriguing. What I really meant was, where does water come from? It springs from the earth, it comes from the oceans and seas. Yeah. Ocean, sea, interesting origins of those words? Seas is simply Germanic, so as we say in almost every episode, at its heart,

we are a Germanic, well, German well germanic speaking country so it's a germanic language really but it's had all so many different influences as we often say from the vikings from the normans and from the normans of course we get not just french but we get latin and that in turn looks back to greek so we've had all these influences coming to bear but germanic again for c that's from z and ocean's a really nice one. So this comes from the classical world. And the ancient Greeks believed that the earth was a single land mass, essentially, and that it was surrounded by a great river, which they called the Okeanos. So they thought it was just one river. And in the middle was the inner sea. So the sea in the

middle of the earth, which is Mediterranean, Terra being the earth and Medi being the middle. You've got the, I don't, I'm not quite sure whether for them it was round, probably not, but they had this outer river, which was the Okeanos, and then they had a river running within the middle, which was the Mediterranean. So Okeanos means outer water, outer river. Yeah, outer sea, yes. My gosh, the Okeanos, then the land, and then right in the, outer river. Yeah, outer sea, yes. My gosh. The Okeanos, then the land, and then right in the middle was the Mediterranean.

Mediterranean, yeah. How intriguing. Yeah. Lovely. Okay, give us some more of these water words. Okay, well, river's one that I really like because one of the things that I love about English is how we have these strange relatives. And I've told you many

of them. So mortgage and mortuary are linked, not just because paying a mortgage will land you in the mortuary, but because the debt is dead when you pay it off. Simple as that. So it goes back to death. Then you have muscle and mouse. You remember this one? Muscle and mouse. Yes. I do sort of remember it. Okay. Remind me. So for the Romans, when an athlete flexed, and they were all very buff, weren't they? And they were usually naked.

They had exceptional biceps. So when they flexed their biceps, someone, possibly after a drink or two, thought that the biceps looked like little mice scuttling under the skin. And so musculus means little mouse. And that's where we get the muscle from so I love all these hidden connections I was just going to talk about river and a really strange sibling really of river is the word rival because water as we say such a precious commodity what would happen is that people who shared the same river would be competing for the same water source. And so they became rivals with each other. So a rival actually goes

back to the Latin rivus, as does river. That actually means the river bank, really. Amazing. This is why, actually, you're glad you came. Because otherwise, because it's a beautiful day, you might think, why are we going indoors? But to learn that river and rival are related, because people were envious of people, there was competition to have access to the water. Yeah. It's fantastic. It is, isn't it?

It's extraordinary, people who lived on the same riverbank. Then we have a lake, and that goes back to the Latin for the same thing, lacus, L-A-C-U-S. That also gave us a lacuna, which became a laguna in Spanish. And of course, that gave us lagoon. And a lacuna in a text is also a bit of a gap, isn't it? It's a bit of a hole, almost sort of like it's a basin. Yeah.

So you have that too. Shall I keep going? Oh, I love these. Yes, go on. We have a stream that goes back to a very old word, meaning to flow, that actually is shared, even though it looks so dissimilar, with the Greek rhino, meaning a nose, believe it or not. Explain this.

Because things flow from the nose. And the Rhine River, which flows. The Rhine River is related to the rhinoceros. Rhinoceros, yes. Sorry, you've got to make the link more explicit. So the rhinoceros means horned nose. Horned nose. Yes.

The rhino bit means the nose. And I'm pretty sure that I ought to check this in the OED, that that in turn goes back to an old Greek word meaning to flow, that also gave us diarrhea. I'm so sorry about this. Which is spelt D-I-A-R-R-H-O-E-A? Yes. Thank you.

If any children need to know this, you can also say runny, runny, help, oops. Just to get... That's one of the ways then there's also a cataract which is a waterfall and if you take it back again to the greek it meant a waterfall but also coming down a portcullis so something that sort of falls down or drops down and the cataracts on our eyes were said to resemble a portcullis that kind of comes down

and somehow shades our eyes a little bit. Give us another water word, please. Port is quite nice. I find a port, because it's all about a sort of safe harbour, isn't it? So it's a sort of port in a storm. And it's nautical use to refer to the left side of a ship,

the opposite of starboard. It was actually called larboard for quite a long time. But then if you were in a storm and in trouble and shouting larboard, you might get mixed up with starboard. So they changed it. And the port side is simply because that's probably where things are loaded at the port. But I like the idea that it comes from a word for a haven, which is quite nice. And dispel the myth that some people still believe that POSH comes from Port Out Starboard Home.

Yes. As an acronym. That's not the case. No, it's always said that this Port Out Starboard Home was written on tickets, which were purchased then by the more privileged customers aboard a cruise ship who would ensure that they had shade when travelling to a hot country, both on the outward journey and the return journey. But no, we'd never found any tickets with that written upon it.

And actually, we think it probably goes back to a Romany word for somebody who's very smartly dressed. Very good. Oh. It's almost on the spiv side though. Ah, a bit posh. Port and lake are two places on the Isle of Wight, as I seem to remember. You know the five impossible things on the Isle of Wight? Port you cannot drink, lake where you can't swim, needles you cannot thread, ride where you have to walk. What's the fifth one? Fresh water you cannot drink.

Is there another one I've forgotten? Cows you cannot milk. Yeah, well done. I like that. Yeah, that's very good. Not often you hear people going, Cows! as we come onto the stage.

Carry on. Well, we have a spring, which is nice. So spring from, you know, something from which all things emerge. That was Old English. And I just like the fact, as you know, that the spring, the season is short for spring of the leaf, which I think is really nice. Just as fall was our word for autumn before the Normans came along, and it stood for fall of the leaf. And I know we like to knock the Americans for using fall, but actually that was ours to begin with.

So fall began as a word used in Britain. Fall of the leaf, spring of the leaf. And the spring of the leaf, and it springs up in the spring. Yeah, it's erupent. So erupent. Yeah, I love that word. Great word. It means bursting forth.

Oh, that's lovely. So spring and fall we have. What about puddle, when you put your foot in a puddle? Oh, puddle's lovely. Have a guess where puddle, when you put your foot in a puddle? Oh, puddle's lovely. Have a guess where puddle might come from. Is it related to piddle? It probably is, actually, because it's a little pool of water. So yes, it probably does.

But it's Germanic again. It just sounds it, doesn't it? And if anyone's got a poodle, that goes back to poodle hund, which is a puddle dog, a splash dog, because they love water, apparently, poodles. It's a great word, poodle, to poodle about. And then, of course, we have the weather manifestations of water, like tsunami, tragically, and that kind of thing.

When the heavens open and the rains come, as when we were at Hampton Court the other day, with me wearing my Tudor Rose jumper, in the middle of the afternoon, the show wasn't until the evening, the heavens opened. And I thought, poor Judi Dench and I are going to have to do excerpts from The Tempest to get through this, or The Life and Times of Mr and Mrs Noah.

But the rains came down. Was there storms? Furious storms, electric storms. Thunder plumped. Thunder what? Thunder plumped. Thunder plumped. Thunder plumped.

I made it as a verb, although there's only the noun in the dictionary. It's an old dialect word meaning to be thoroughly soaked to the skin within seconds. I do remember because of reading the Evelyn Waugh novels, called Arms to Oblivion. That's a different series. Anyway, Evelyn Waugh set in the Second World War. The Thunderbox, one of the characters travelled with him, which I think was a sort of port-a-loo, was it?

Oh, OK. Do you know what a thunderbox is? No, I'm sure that will be in the OED. Do you want me to look? It will definitely be in the OED. It's a very OED word. OK, there's very many strange euphemisms for both the loo and going to the loo. One of my favourite euphemisms for actually visiting the thunderbox is visiting the Spice Island.

That was a Victorian euphemism. Very odd. So as you leave the room, say, please excuse me, I'm just about to visit the Spice Island. Yes. Right, Thunderbox. Just give us Thunderbox. I hope it's in. If not, I'll look it up in the slang dictionary. A portable commode, 1939. in. If not, I'll look it up in the slang dictionary. A portable commode, 1939. The first mention is from Auden and Isherwood's Journey to War. We should wash the dishes and clean the

thunderboxes. Very good. You mentioned tsunami. What is the origin of the word tsunami? Yes, sorry, there's just another great quote from Evelyn Moore, Men at Arms. This is a conversation. If you must know, it's my thunderbox. He dragged out the treasure, a brass-bound oak cube. On the inside of the lid was a plaque bearing the embossed title, Connolly's Chemical Closet. I love that. Sorry, tsunami actually goes back to the Japanese for a harbour wave. So yeah, I think tidal wave is actually a misnomer for a tsunami. That's a harbour wave. For anyone who is not too keen on American English, that gave us blizzard.

They gave us blizzard. Blizzard. Relate that to blizzard, tsunami to blizzard. I'm just talking about weather. I'm just following my very strange brain. There is no linguistic link between tsunami and blizzard. What is the origin of blizzard then? American English, but beyond that we don't know.

It just looks so strange, blizzard. Blizzard. It's interesting, there are some words, I've discovered this from Susie, where we don't know where they come from. One of which is amazingly dog. We don't know the origin of dog. No, because in Old English it was a hound,

always from the German hund. And then suddenly, from nowhere, came the word dog. And we have no idea where or how. But dogs are mentioned in people's surnames, weirdly. So there was a Richard Dogtail. And they're probably actually thinking about it. I don't think the idea of dogging was around in those days. So I think, hopefully, a respectable citizen.

Would you remember William Salisbury? I'm so sorry. I thought I was on 8th Avenue. Honestly. Dogging. Flood. I mentioned Noah's flood. Yes. That's obviously a very old word.

It is old English again. It's just related to flow. The flow. Flood. Yes, yes. Give me some more. So, hurricane was given to flow. The flow, the flood. Yes, yes, yes. Give me some more. So hurricane was given to us by Christopher Columbus, but it's from the beautiful language of the Arawak people, peaceful, really peaceful people who didn't long survive the coming of the Spanish, sadly.

But the Arawak name for the god of the storm was Huracán, and that gave us the hurricane. They strike at the oddest times this this terrible weather but any any more weather words to give us uh well no i think it's actually going to be time for our interval oh we're gonna have a break we're gonna have a break bumble knows it's hard to start conversations hey no too basic hi 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.

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Is it time to play our game? It is time to play our game. Explain what we normally do and how we vary it when we have these live shows. Yes. So in the normal Purple podcast, as I mentioned at the top of the show, I come up with three words that I've discovered in a historical dictionary that I love, a word that I usually can't believe has ever faded away, or sometimes they are just a little bit random,

but I like them anyway because that's the way my brain works. And normally in the normal show, I will give you the definition, then we move on to your poem. But only in the live shows, we have fun by asking people for their own silly definitions. So shall I give you a few?

And you have to choose the winner, remember. And do we have one or three? We've got three. One winner. Is it size four? Three words. It's large. Yay.

It's a large one. A large something rhymes with purple T-shirt. This rivals the blankety blank checkbook and pen in terms of quality of price. Okay. Super-vacaneous. Super-vacaneous. Vacaneous. Okay. So. What definitions have you got?

AJ from Warminster says, it is a large gaseous cloud from a cow. I love that. And that's the vacca there, the Latin for the cow. So that shows good linguistic knowledge because that is behind vaccination, if you remember, as well. So that's brilliant. David Parrott from Romsey says that supervocaneous means the brain state

of any Love Island contestant. that supervocaneous means the brain state of any Love Island contestant. You know, I've just written an article for the Sunday Times, not this week, but the week after, on Love Island lingo. And some of it is actually quite clever, although there is one contestant who single-handedly is renaming it Bruv Island, because he says bruv the whole time. Any Love Island watchers here?

Yes. You kind of have to watch it if you're a linguist, because that's my excuse anyway, because there are so many signature phrases in there. Anyway. On Celebrity Gogglebox, we will be watching Little Else. Oh, okay. Well, that's cool.

We can talk about the language. And Nigel from Salisbury says that supervocaneous means you have a Hoover in every room. They're all very clever. Okay. Did you get those three? Do you want me to read these? I got those three, yes. So the real answer, which I have to now look up, means over the top, weirdly.

So if something is OTT, like supervocaneous itself, that's what it means. Supervocaneous OTT. Over the top. It's what it means, supervocaneous. Over the top. It's over the top, but extreme. The next one, spissid. Spissid. Spissid. These are so good today, I have to say.

You're right, it's salisbury. Glenn Fleischman from Seattle. How do you spell spissid? Spissid, it's a bit like piss. S-P-I-S-S-I-D. Very good. Spissid. Glenn Fleischman from Seattle says Spissid, it's a bit like pit. S-P-I-S-S-I-D. Very good. Spissid.

Glenn Fleischman from Seattle says that a Spissid is the offspring of a love affair between a spider and a squid. Oh. That's great. I'm very pleased he got a round of applause because people literally travel across the world. You think we are joking. We have a big audience in in canada and to have come and in the united states as well to come to seattle is wonderful thank you and he came with his son we met them during the interval fantastic thank you um so this is another excellent one spiced says clear spinny from paul the little drops of urine left on the toilet seat

asked a man who's had a few too many drinks. That is not going to win because we deny it ever happened. Wasn't just, it was the cat. And this is Nadia again. Nadia says that Spissid is the formal name given to the cat to call it over. Oh, that's a really clever word. Gum. Yeah.

Yes. Okay, so that is a lovely one and I'll give you the real meaning as well. It just means thick. Thick? So, yes. Not as in stupid, as in you would use a spurtle to stir your spiced porridge it doesn't sound very pleasant um now this one i this word i'd never heard of before but i came across it in a very old dictionary and it's splugundy splugundy jacqueline from bishopstone says that it is the state of my partner's bathroom after a night out.

Splagundi, that's very good. Okay, Alex from Ringwood is quite close to truth here. A cheap French wine notorious for inducing vomiting. And Roger Curtis from Salisbury says that Splagundi are generously aged undercrackers. All of these are just a little bit on the ick side. But there you go. What is the real meaning of that one? So this is a real meaning, which I had never heard of.

It's a sparkling red wine from Australia. And apparently in Australia, they do like sparkling red wines because we don't normally have a taste for this. And they used to call it sparkling Burgundy, which is fine. But then an EU trade law came in to say they couldn't use the Burgundy bit. So they came up with this unofficial name of Splurgundy, which is quite clever. Well, it's difficult to choose, isn't it? I really tried to go with what the audience reaction was. And I think it's a close-run thing between the Seattle entry. Yes.

And remind us of the second entry for the first word, which was super... Supervocaneous, the brain state of any Love Island contestant. Should we ask for hands? Oh, hands. Okay. So, if you like that one, superanius, the Love Island contestant's state of brain state, could you please put your hands up?

Okay, quite a lot. And if you like Glenn Fleischman's definition of spissid, the offspring of a love affair between a spider and a squid, could you put your hands up? Oh, it's that one, Giles. Very good. The T-shirt... They were all excellent. The T-shirt hands up? Oh, it's that one, Giles. Very good. The t-shirt.

They were all excellent. The t-shirt goes back to Seattle. It's fantastic. Yeah, I love that. Yay, well done. And where do they claim their t-shirt? Ticket office. Ticket office. Thank you so much. Andrew was looking down. the ticket office. Excellent. Well done. Okay, do you have a poem? Well, I always end the program, the podcast, with a poem. And today I thought, because I knew I'd been mentoring Edward Heath, I remembered how when I was last here at the beautiful cathedral, I visited the grave of Edward Heath. And there's a wonderful,

just simple stone in the nave, just to the side of the nave. And it's marvelous. And I find visiting gravestones fascinating. I particularly love being, if you're at Westminster Abbey, go to Poets' Corner. There's so many interesting people there. And I thought I would find an epitaph to share with you. And I came across so many. Some of these apparently are real. What's the origin of the word epitaph? What does an epitaph mean? Epi is upon.

So an epidemic is something that falls upon the people. And epitaph is something upon the tomb. Well, these apparently are real. This is an epitaph in something upon the tomb. Well, these apparently are real. This is an epitaph in Innersburg, Vermont. Here lies the body of our Anna, done to death by a banana. It wasn't the fruit that laid her low,

but the skin of the thing that made her go. I'll just give you a couple more. These apparently are genuine. I thought, for a minute, I thought you were saying this is on their teeth, too. That doesn't sound right. This is from Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone, Arizona. Here lies, well, life was tough in Tombstone, Arizona.

Here lies, well, life was tough in Tombstone, Arizona. Here lies Les Moore. Four slugs from a 4-4. No Les, no Moore. And I will read you one that I know to be genuine. It was written by the poet John Dryden. It was, I'm not sure how he got on with his wife. Anyway, this is the epitaph he wrote for her. Here lies my wife.

Here let her lie. Now she's addressed. So am I. That's it for this podcast it's our time being in salisbury with really some of the most wonderful people we've ever yes thank you so much we were genuinely saying what an amazing audience you were and hopefully everyone at home has felt that vibe as well and thank you for listening to us continue to listen to us thank you for following us on social media and please do email your questions. We have a new email, don't we?

Purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com Yeah, that's it. Purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com And we do check them ourselves, so if you want to get in touch or to discuss any personal issues. Giles makes a very good agony uncle, actually.

We do. We do a joint counselling session on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings. So if you want to come to us for any advice, we have made some happy people very unhappy in our time. Okay. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production.

It was produced by Naya Dio alongside Sam Hodges and Andrew Quick from Tilted for the live shows. And additional production came from Hannah Hughton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, Teddy Riley. And he's not spitted, is he? He's gullying. He's gullying. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.