Something Rhymes with Purple - The Purple Post Bag

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

The Purple postman has been and Gyles and Susie are eagerly digging into all the letters that we’ve had from the Purple People from all around the world! Come discover why you are reduced to nothing in an annihilation, what prats and bottoms have in common, how avatars have been around long before computers and that Susie and Gyles are no where near their parcme.   We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us 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:  Incompetible: Not within the range of someone’s ability. Malesuete: Having poor habits. Paracme: The point at which one’s prime is past. Gyles' poem this week was 'Misdiagnosis' by 'Mark Graham' Is a Leppard always lonely? You seldom ever see two of them together And certainly never three I wonder whether having spots  is putting partners off  They never look particularly sick Though you sometimes hear them cough A Somethin’ Else & 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. Amex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. If you're new to our podcast, for the last four years,

me, Giles Brandreth, and my friend Susie Dent have been meeting once a week to talk about words and language, particularly where words come from. And well, we've had a lot of fun doing it. And we have built up a purple family, Purple People, because this is a podcast that's won awards and is listened to around the world, which is fantastic. I'm in London, England. Susie Dent, where are you today? I'm in the same place as always. You recognise the fish painting behind me. I'm in my study, my nook in Oxford. Your study, your nook in Oxford. There is a fish painting which I can see because we do this together on Zoom.

A word that none of us were using until quite recently, not in this context. Where does the word zoom come from, as in zoom, zoom, zoom, meaning speed or zooming in on a camera? That obviously predates the facility of zooming people on a computer. Is it very old? It's definitely imitative of sound. So is it an onomatopoeic word? Is that what you'd call that? It is, yeah. Let me just check to see when we first started to use it. So to zoom, as in to move or travel very quickly, especially when making a continuous humming, buzzing or

droning sound, is 1886. Then it was used in aeronautics. And then if a camera or lens to change smoothly from a long shot to a close-up or vice versa without losing focus. 1944. So quite late, really. Well, there you are. You see, that's why people listen to the podcast. They find that Zoom means speed, goes back to the 1880s, and to do with aircraft of the Second World War. That's the verb.

I'm just looking here at the exclamation, Zoom, as you had it. 1856, a little bit earlier. Zoom, a yellow jacket hornet, stung him under the left ear. That's from a novel called Knickerbocker. That's actually describing the noise of the hornet. Zoom. Yes. That's very good.

Very evocative. Yes, and it is all about sound for sure. So people, if you're new to the podcast, you get the idea immediately. Susie Dent knows everything about words and language. What she doesn't know, she has an amazing amount in her head. She is able, by dint of using her computer, to access the Oxford English Dictionary, which has a word repository. What would you call it,

this bank of words you've got? Oh, it's the original meaning of thesaurus, if you remember, was a treasure house. That's how I view the OED. And in fact, it does now have a thesaurus element. I've told you about this, Charles. One of my favourite things now for the Oxford English Dictionary is to click on a word and then see all the synonyms for that word throughout history. So it now has a historical thesaurus element as well as a dictionary element. Honestly, it is the best read in the world. Well, that's what Susie does. She gives you actually what you want when you tune in to Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm here to chip in with a few questions. I know a few things that I throw in when I can, but my principal role is occasionally to tell a name-dropping story.

And I've got good name-dropping to offer you today, Susie. Yes, you said you had a corker before we came on air. Well, I think I do have a corker because yesterday I had lunch with the King and Queen and I had dinner with the Prime Minister. Oh my goodness. That's only if you have a kingdom, of course. That's not bad going. I'll tell you about the King and Queen first because that was very interesting and very enjoyable and I didn't expect the King to be there. You know the Queen Consort. This is Camilla to international listeners, who is married to the new king, King Charles III. Since September of last year, he succeeded his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. And Queen Camilla loves books, then called, I think, the Duchess of Cornwall's Reading Room. Anyway, it's now been reorganised as the Queen's Reading Room. It's a charity and it essentially celebrates books. It just encourages people of all ages to get into books. I mean, you're into books,

aren't you? You've got a book on the go all the time, haven't you, Susie? I do. I always have a book on the go. I've got at least 10 on my bedside table. As you know, I also like to read a poem before bed now, thanks to you. Now, you have to swiftly move on to the Prime Minister before we kick off. What were you doing there? I think I'll leave him for another day. I'll give you the Prime Minister another day, but he was in jolly form. But it's just amazing to meet people. I just love collecting people. And I was excited to spend some time with him because, as you know, I have met every British prime minister since Sir Anthony Eden. You know, he was prime minister in the 1950s.

Anyway, that's enough name dropping for me. Yes, that's enough name dropping for the entire week ahead. I think so. But I mentioned how we want purple people to write to us and they do write to us. So this is going to be one of our episodes that we're going to dedicate to the purple people and questions that they have been asking. And if you want to get in touch ever to tell us what we should be reading or to introduce us to new words or to give us queries about words you think Susie might be able to answer, you just get in touch with us. It's purple at something else dot com. And that's something without a G for a curious reason.

Yes, there is. First of all, I think we have to acknowledge the Purple People Detective Club because it is astonishing how we might send a question out there into the ether or into the minds of the purple people and they come back with solutions. So do you remember in episode 191, we were asked by a purple person about the phrase an egg banjo, which I had never heard of. And it was a bit of a mystery to us. And I remember looking it up in Jonathan Green's brilliant dictionary of slang and the conjecture there was in reference to the frying pan because banjo can be used obviously to describe

anything round as well as the instrument. But we have had so many of the purple people getting in touch with another explanation for why it's called an egg banjo and it seems pretty unanimous. So this was a lovely explanation from Teresa Pine and she said the reason for this strange name for a fried egg sandwich is that it's near impossible to eat one without dropping it down your front. And the act of quickly wiping away the egg on your clothes before it dries is reminiscent of the quick strumming on a banjo, which is played high up on the chest where your other hand is holding the sandwich out to the side, out of the way, hence an egg banjo, which is brilliant and makes perfect sense. Well, voila, you heard it here first.

Do you think that's an urban myth? Do you think that's an invented after the event? Or it certainly rings true. I think it rings absolutely true. And do you remember from the long and distant past what the old dialect word is for spilling something down your front? Being a mucky pup, what is it? Gerbling. Not as in the rodent, but J-I-R-B-L-I-N-G.

So I've gerbled coffee all down my shirt. Oh, that's very good. It's good, isn't it? So that's at the heart of the egg banjo. How does Teresa get this definition of exploration of the egg banjo into the Oxford English Dictionary? Because if you didn't know it, it's because it isn't in there. So how does that now become part of what people know? Well, the egg banjo isn't even in the OED. So I'm in frequent touch with editors there. So I'll hand pass this along. And if there's sufficient evidence, who knows? Well, look, thank you, Teresa.

And indeed, all the other people, purple people who got in touch about egg banjo, Harry and Tracy from Thailand, Andrew, Sean, Simon, Neil, many others. Good. What are the questions that are coming in? Let's hear from John Kitchen, who sent us in a voice note. Hi, guys. This is John in Austin, Texas. I enjoy your show very much. Where does the word cahoots originate? Only ever used in the phrase in cahoots with keep up the great work ah well thank you for that john it's a great i love the word cahoots it's a bit like shenanigans isn't it or scallywag or

scallywaggery so to be in cahoots with someone is you know obviously working in collusion with them first recorded in the early 19th century though, I imagine it had probably been around in spoken English for a little while before then. And it first arose in North America and it simply meant in league or partnership. So there wasn't really a sense of conspiracy about it. Whereas today it is, if you're in cahoots, you are probably plotting and up to no good. We're not completely sure where it comes from, John, but we think it might come either from the French word cahute, C-A-H-U-T-E, meaning a hut or a cabin. So the idea is of plotting together in a sort of small, cosy environment. And if you remember,

conspire, Giles, has got spirare, the Latin spirare, to whisper at its heart. So the idea is that you are whispering very closely together. So it may come from that, or it may simply be an alteration of cohort. And again, that's based on the notion of a group of people working closely together. Something you said there reminded me of, I think it is Harpo Marx or maybe Beppe. Anyway, one of the Marx brothers, when unfortunately caught kissing a showgirl by his wife, said, I wasn't kissing her. I was just whispering into her mouth.

Oh, I'm not sure I like the sound of that. Anyway, that's conspiring. I mean, because you were telling me about it, because I remember that aspire, conspire, these are all words to do with whispering is at their heart, isn't it? Or breathing. It's kind of breathing, actually, really.

Breathing together. So inspire is to breathe inspiration or ideas or creativity into someone. Aspire is to breathe towards it. Expire is to deliver your last breath. And conspire is to breathe closely together by whispering, yeah. And respire, respire is a word, isn't it? Oh, and respire is to take in a sort of deep breath. Respiration is to breathe, essentially.

So it's to kind of breathe again, I suppose. And then suspire, if you remember that, is absolutely beautiful. Suspire is to let out a sigh. I love that one. Beautiful. Well, I love the fact that there are people in Austin, Texas listening to us. Yes, absolutely. And now we have another voice note from Charlie Vose.

Oh, wow. I cannot believe I stumbled across this podcast by chance. I'm hooked already. I have a question for you both. The origins of the word annihilation, I've always found it a peculiar one. Any ideas? Forever Now and avid listener, warmest regards, Charlie. Oh, I love that forever now. That's beautiful. Yes, I love his voice. I love his surname too, Vose. I think that's got potential for a word

that could be used to mean other things, Vose. in a way. Don't you feel? It's a four-letter word waiting to do more than be a surname. Now, annihilation. Can we break, I mean, this is a word that if we break it down, I see at the heart of it, nihil, which is a Latin word meaning nothing, doesn't it? Isn't that what it means? Absolutely right. Yes. So that's what I can contribute. Nihil means nothing. Explain the rest of it to us. Yes. So annihilate itself goes back to the 14th century, Charlie, and it's from the Latin annihilatus, which means reduced to nothing. And that really gives you the essence of it. It was first used as an adjective, meaning destroyed or annulled. And nihil also obviously gave us nihilistic or nihilistic and also nil, zero, because again, you're reduced to nothing. And there's a phrase that lawyers often use, nihil obstat. You're familiar with that phrase and do you know what it means? I don't. I've forgotten. I used to know.

Nihil obstat. So obstat is to stand in the way. So probably nothing stand in the way. So a written statement that your work asserts no doctrinal or moral positions that are incompatible with the teaching of the church. Yeah, so that is, nihil obstac does mean nothing stands in the way. And it's essentially, you know, a book that is completely in tune with the teaching of the church. While we're on annihilation, can I quickly ask you about decimate? People say it was decimated, meaning it was sort of completely destroyed. But does technically decimate mean being strictly divided into 10 pieces? What does decimate mean?

Yes. So, oh gosh, this one really, really gets people going, doesn't it? So decimate, the idea of being decimated originally was with reference to military punishment in Roman times. And it was to, you know, nowadays, if you have a class of schoolchildren and no one is owning up to doing something wrong, then the entire class will be punished. Well, this sort of followed a similar theme, except by lot, randomly, one in every 10 of a body of soldiers would be selected and put to death. So really grim. And the 10 obviously is from the Latin decimus is 10th. It gave us decimal as well. And then from there, it meant more generally to reduce drastically or severely to destroy, ruin or devastate.

And people tend to think, oh, this is such an ugly modernism. It loses the etymology of the word. We're not being faithful to its history. But actually, do you know what? We have been using it to mean to destroy since 1660 at the very latest. So it's a bit like the disinterested and uninterested debate. Actually, we've been having that one for a very long time as well. Likewise, less and fewer and all the biggies. So you can freely use decimate to mean destroyed because, you know, we've got almost 400 years worth of evidence that that is in usage. Great. I'm going to relax about decimate. And now I know more about annihilation.

Oh, I'm so glad. Kelvin Smiley has been in touch. I did know people, I have known people in my time called Smelly, S-M-E-L-L-I-E. And I'm afraid when I was a little boy and there were telephone directories in my head and if I actually did it, I would look up people called Smelly and I'd phone them and say, are you Smelly? I don't think I ever did it, but in my mind, I wanted to do it. That's what you wanted to do. Yeah. Anyway, this is Kelvin Smiley. I hope we're pronouncing it correctly. And what does Kelvin got to ask us?

So he is asking about the phrase mana from heaven, because he would like to bring in, he's from New Zealand, I should say, Kelvin, from Auckland. He'd like to bring our attention to a Maori word, mana, which means authority, often used, he says, in relation to personal status, because the person with mana is very respected. And I think he is wondering if the two are connected. Good. And what is the answer?

Well, I'll start with manna from heaven. So that begins in the Bible, and it was the sort of spiritual nourishment, especially the Eucharist. And it looks back to food that was given to the Israelites in the wilderness. And from there then came to mean something beneficial that appears or is provided unexpectedly, but just at the right moment. And ultimately it goes back to a botanical term, really, a tamarisk tree, manifera, because I think it comes from that plant and actually is a sort of sweet gum that is there. So that's really, really old ancient history, that one, as I'm sure mana does as well. This is in Polynesian and Melanesian and Maori belief. It's a supernatural power which can be transmitted or inherited.

And that is straight from Maori. And I don't know, Kelvin, whether ultimately if we take them back, back, back, back, back to their very, very first incarnation, whether they are related. I would love to think that they are, because obviously they've both got this infusion of religious belief, whether it's a sort of supernatural power or, you know, Christian power, whatever you subscribe to. It's sort of quite similar ideas. So thank you for drawing our attention to that one, because I'd not heard of mana before. And thank you, Kelvin, too, for topping in your tailing your letter with some Maori terms of phrase. He begins his letter, kia ora korua, which means greetings to two people, and he ends it, kia pai tora, have a good day. Yeah. And I ought to tell you that he wants us to know that he doesn't come

from Wanganui, he says, as many of your New Zealand listeners seem to me. But like most Kiwis, I do have an aunt living there. The home of New Zealand aunts. Next, we have a question from Sally Horriban, who has left us a note. Dear Susie and Giles, I've listened to your podcast for about six months, catching up right from the beginning. To achieve this quickly, I usually listen faster than the usual speed at one and a half times speed. The other day I slowed it down because my husband was listening in the car with me. Whilst changing the speed on the podcast, it occurred to me that the word fast has several meanings i.e refer to

speed to abstain from food for a period and to make something tight like a knot does the word fast come from different places or do all meanings stem from a single word best regards sally isn't that a brilliant question it is and it made me Actually, Sally, I have to tell you something. You've been listening to it at 1.5 speed. In the green room before a recent live show, Giles was musing out loud how he's been really enjoying listening to our own podcasts. And he was very bemused because he knew that we record each episode for 40 minutes or so, but they ended up being only 20 minutes long.

And he couldn't quite work it out until we sussed that actually he was listening to them at at least 1.5 speed. Which explained all. You sound like a chipmunk at speed. And I sound pretty strange too. It's interesting listening to things at speed. But I like to think that we are a slow listener. Oh, well, slow us down then. Then we'll sound very good. Yes. Now I'm speaking more slowly, Susie. Play fast and loose with this one.

Ah, yes. Play fast and loose. That's a good one. Okay. So there are two meanings from fast, at least. One is at high speed and one is to abstain from food. So those are both different words and they both go back to old English. So I'm not really going to talk about fasting as in not eating because that has meant pretty much the same thing since Anglo-Saxon times. But this at high speed is actually linked to the fast as in making something tight like a knot, or hold fast, that Sally mentions there. Because the very first meaning of fast in this sense was firmly fixed in place. So if something is colour fast, it won't run. And again, you know, making a rope fast, etc. So those are absolutely the same thing. And they also gave us the speed sense because the idea is that if something is

holding strongly or vigorously and sort of closely, if you like, then that sort of closely, vigorously, almost immediately gave us the idea of rapid movement. And it seems like a complete oxymoron to have something that is holding fast, in other words, not budging and then running so fast that it moves at high speed. But actually, it was the vigorous sense, the strength of it that was translated into the idea of speed. But quite a strange journey there. And Giles, you mentioned fast and loose. Do you know where that one comes from? No, I'd love to know. And why it's fast and loose and not loose and fast? Well, it was an old fairground gambling game. So it involved the player putting a finger into one of the two figure of eight loops of a twisted or a rope so that when they put their finger or the player, whatever, put their finger in the loop thinking, okay, it's going to tug on my finger when the belt is pulled tight, it just disappeared. And if it was not held or held fast, then the punter lost the money.

And the reason it was easy to be hoodwinked in this case is that the person organising the game, the duper, could easily make sure that the loops always came free by twisting them in a particular way. So it was a magic knot that magically unraveled itself. So that's where we get the expression playing fast and loose. In other words, you think it's going to hold fast, but actually it goes completely loose. And from there, it's the idea of behaving immorally, you might say that as i say the magician was completely bamboozling or hoodwinking the punter i think it's extraordinary how much you know let's take a quick break and then it's more from the purple postbag 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?

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So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. And on our 200th episode recently, we did a special program where we asked the Purple People to submit scenarios which they wanted to know the word for. One of our requests came from Sally Sonics, who asked if there was a word for the residual warmth left over from someone who had previously occupied the seat before you. It might be on a train or a bus. You know, you sit down and it's still got that human warmth. Anyway, we put this out to the people actually you and i debated whether or not we like it because that for me

i find very unpleasant but you quite like it i found it quite consoling yes all even on a loose seat no no not on a loose seat oh please no i'm not actually i'm not sure i should ever sit on a loose seat i'm i'm a great hoverer i'm really good it's also it's good for your quads or some part of your anatomy i think it is good for your quads i'm sure that i read somewhere that actually it's more difficult to evacuate the bladder fully when you're hovering but i was always taught by my mother to hover as well and uh yeah i'm sure i read somewhere that it has everything has its own risks why Why do we get onto that? Anyway.

Yes, never want to un-elucidate that residual warmth. Well, we threw the issue out to the purple people, and Steve Bradshaw came back with a un-welk warm. It's quite good. It's an un-welk. Oh, it's an un-welk warm. You know, you say, oh, dear, I don't really like that. Yeah, I still don't think we've quite sussed it,

but thank you to everybody, and thank you steve for for that one right now we go on to a question from addy who's asking why is quarry as in prey and quarry as in limestone the same word and how do they interconnect which is really interesting and i think the sort of easy answer I suppose to this one is that they don't actually come from the same root really so they look the same they sound the same but they go back to very different ancestors so I'll start with a quarry that yields stone and that actually goes back to the latin quadrum meaning a square so if you think of a quadrangle or you think of a quadrant etc all to do with that square shape and this is based probably on the idea that a quarry is a place where stones are squared or at least cut into regular shapes in order to make them ready for

use in building. So that's that one. The other quarry, as in the lion's quarry, you know, a pursued animal, that comes from the old French cuiré. And that has the Latin cor at its heart. So C-O-R, which if you remember, Giles is behind cordial, accord, record as well, because when we record something originally, when we recorded something, we learnt it by heart because the heart was thought to be the seat of intelligence before the brain took over so core is heart and you can understand that because in in deer hunting particularly in the middle ages the query was the there were the deer's entrails essentially not so much the heart

but these entrails were placed on the hide and given as a reward to the hounds. Actually, can the entrails include the heart? Well, I suppose so. Entrails simply means what's inside, doesn't it? Yes, I'm going to look this up because I always thought entrails originally were intestines. Hook up entrails. But maybe when you're hunting, which I've never done. So this is the core you speak of.

It's the same word as the modern French word cœur. Exactly. C-O-E-U-R. Yes. So it says in here in the OED that the entrails are the internal organs, the viscera of a personal animal, especially the intestines. But presumably then if it's the internal organs, it can very much include the heart or the liver, etc. So that's why it goes back to the Latin heart. So yeah, they were placed on the quarry, on the caught animal. And, you know, then it, anyway, that was given as a reward to the hounds, I think, is the idea.

Have I mentioned to you before the story of the Victorian explorer and writer who formed a club in late Victorian times, where they met and they worked their way through the animal kingdom, eating animals from A to Z, literally from antelope through to zebra. And they would meet each week and they'd have a different dish. And this man was obsessed in collecting, eating different things. And he visited a monastery in northern France, where I think they had, in a monstrance on display, a portion of the heart of a French king who had become a saint. And he was being shown around this by the monks, and they said, this is the holy relic. It's part of the heart of St. Louis,

our former king and now our saint. And he looked at it and he got closer to it and saying, oh, I've never eaten a king's or saint's human heart before and popped it into his mouth and ate it. Yeah. It's an extraordinary story. If a purple person knows this story and can give us the details of when this was, who this was, because I've got a faint recollection of it and I think it's true, but I have not been able to research the facts and dates and figures. So if anybody has got the answer, it's purple at somethingelse.com. Brilliant. Thank you.

Right, on to the next one. This is from Daisy Smith. Hello, Giles and Susie. My name is Daisy and I am currently studying English literature at university. I'm doing a Shakespeare module and my tutor raised the question about the difference between love and doting in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I raised the connection between the potions that the characters are given which cause them to dote upon one another. And it's possible relation to the word antidote. The term antidote obviously denotes a form of medicine, which counteracts a poison. But is there any connection between the dote as in to be romantically invested in someone and the dote, the medicine? I love the podcast and

I hope you're both doing well. I look forward to hearing from you, Daisy. Thank you so much for that, Daisy. And it's a really good question and it's not one that I have ever considered before. So it sent me squirrelling to the dictionary. Can I go squirrelling? That's what I'm going to do anyway. And the answer is we're not completely sure, but they do again seem to have different roots. So the doting on someone looks to go back to a Dutch word, doten, which means to be silly. So, you know, when people are thought to be moonstruck, you know, infatuated, they behave in a sort of besotted and slightly foolish fashion. Indeed, the way Titania falls in love with Bottom with the ass his head on.

Oh, yes, absolutely. Doting on an ass. Doting on an ass, Bully Bottom. Did you know the bully in there is an example, I've told you this before, of how bully was used as an endearment because it goes back to the Dutch meaning a lover. So Bully Bottom was actually an affectionate way of introducing somebody. Oh, my lover, my Bully Bottom.

Oh, I like that. Yeah. Anyway, so that's that one. To dote on someone is to be so infatuated that you might end up being a little bit foolish. Whereas an antidote, the dote there, we do know that goes back to a Greek word meaning to give. So it's something given in opposition to something else, in this case, venom. So the antidote and doting on someone, although they seem to be very much related, don't look to be from the evidence. And as far as antidote is concerned, it also gives me a chance to sneak in one of my favourite etymologies that

I've talked about before on the pod, and that is treacle. Treacle going back to a Greek word, theriacon, meaning a wild animal. And then it was somehow it shifted to the anti-venom that was given after you had been stung or bitten by a wild animal. And then eventually to the sugary syrup that helped that medicine go down. Isn't our language amazing? Language is amazing. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of my favourite plays, and it contains five words that I often think of almost every day that originated by Shakespeare.

One of my favourite lines, just five words, what fools these mortals be. Oh, yes. Is that Puck? Absolutely. Brilliant. I know a bank where the world time grows, where foxgloves and the nodding violet grows.

I learnt that one at school. It's just beautiful. Yeah. Okay, we've got time for one quick one, one more. Yes, we have one more. And this is from Carolyn Collins. Dearest Purple Leaders, good day. Often there are words that I assume are new

or originate from our modern world. And then I find a reference to them in an older piece of literature and realise the term is much older than I thought. This happened to me recently while reading Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. I was quite surprised to find the word avatar used by a character to refer to a ghost-like apparition, I believe. Since the word avatar is used so commonly in the world of video games and movies, I had falsely assumed its origins came from our modern digital world. Do you know the origin of the word? Well, thanks for such a great question, Carolyn.

What's the answer? Well, first of all, just before I answer this one, have you ever created an avatar of yourself? These are things that you can do online. There are apps that enable you to do this. Explain to me how it works. Yes. Well, I think you can get avatars in lots and lots of different forms, but you can, for example, on your phone now create what is called an emoji, which is an emoji that you can customise to look like you. And in a way, that's a sort of avatar.

It's a likeness of yourself online. And very often they actually do look very similar to the person. Mine doesn't at all. I'll send you my version so you can check it out. But as Carolyn says, it actually, well, she read it in Joseph Conrad because it actually goes back a very long way. In Hinduism, an avatar was a manifestation of a deity or a released soul that took up a bodily form on earth. So it was thought to be this divine teacher, if you like, that had experienced the other world and came back to teach the mortals. And from there, it came to mean the embodiment or manifestation of an idea as well as a person. And it therefore seemed probably quite logical in more recent times to talk about, you know,

a manifestation online. And the first example of that is from 2008 as a graphical representation of a personal character, particularly in a computer generated environment. But sorry, that was when it was added to the OED. But the first record we have of that is from 1986. the OED, but the first record we have of that is from 1986. As to where it comes from, it's Sanskrit. I mentioned it was in Hindu mythology. And avatara means descent because it was somebody who descended from the heavens to the earth in an incarnate form. Gosh. Well, thank you, Carolyn. And I'm impressed that Carolyn is reading Conrad because Conrad once was hugely popular. You know, 100, 120 years ago, he was reckoned to be as good as Thomas Hardy and as well read, as widely read as Thomas Hardy.

And he was Polish by birth. And so English was his second language that he wrote in English. It's years since I've got several Thomas Hardy novels on the shelves. But have you ever read one? Joseph Conrad, I have. I would say he was darker than Thomas Hardy. The Secret Agent is quite dark, isn't it? Well, I think Thomas Hardy's dark enough. Okay. And then what's the one that was aboard the ship?

Well, a lot of them were aboard a ship because he was a master mariner. He was, wasn't he? Yeah. The Mirror of the Sea, The Arrows of Gold, I don't know, The Rescue. Okay. Famous ones,

The Secret Agent, Nostromo. Nostromo, that's it. That's what I think. Is that the one? Yes. Yeah. But thank you so much, everybody,

for sending all of those brilliant questions in. I was saying to Giles just before we started recording that these are my favourite episodes because I absolutely love being sent off in all directions and often scurrying

in the pages of the dictionary. So thank you so much. And now I think it's time for my trio, if you can bear it, Giles. Bear it? I wait for this. It's my favourite moment where you give us three words that we may not be familiar with, but ought to be. Go for it. So we have heard of the word incompatible and we have heard of somebody who is incompetent but if you sort of put those two together you can you get a very old word incompatible incompatible and it means not within the range of someone's ability in other words it can be used to describe somebody who is not particularly competent and what they think they can do in other words it's it's way

above what they're able to do i just other words, it's way above what they're able to do. I just quite like the fact that we brought two things together and produced a new one and have been doing that for centuries. You and I might recognise this one, Giles, if you won't mind me saying this. This is the paracme, or paracme, P-A-R-A-C-M-E. So you'll know the acme of something is the highest point, isn't it? Yeah. If you're past it. Thank you.

This is why it's applying to us. Charming. It's the point at which one's... I feel I'm reaching my acne. Oh, okay, good. Well, it's the point at which one's prime is past. I will only apply that one to myself in that case. Do you honestly feel your prime is past?

No, I don't actually. No, I think you're on the upward slope. I feel so myself. I mean, when I was a teenager, acne bedeviled me. And now I'm in my 70s. I'm looking forward to achieving the acne of my life in 10, 15, 20 years time. Good grief. The zenith awaits.

I like that. Brilliant. Okay, so that's that one. And then there's a sort of halfway point, isn't there, between going around and causing havoc and being just sort of mildly annoying and cutting your toenails in public and that kind of thing in terms of poor behavior. And there's a French word, mal-souette, but it came over into English. That's M-A-L-E-S-U-E-T-E, mouth sweat. And it means having poor habits.

In other words, ones that you really don't want around the house. So those are my trio. And just to say, if anyone is struggling with any of the spelling, and I would totally understand if you are with these three, you can find the words written out in the programme description blurb of each episode. And you will also find there the title and the author of Giles's poem, which it's time for. It is time for, and my poem this week comes from a correspondent. We've been celebrating the purple people today, and I get a poem sent to me every day by a poet, I've never met him, called Mark Graham. And they're short poems, so I'm

usually able to put them onto Twitter. So if you follow me on Twitter, it's at GilesB1, that's G-Y-L-E-S-B and then the number one, because my full name has been stolen by somebody else. Anyway, you'll find these poems by Mark Graham. And he sent me a collection of his poems about wild animals. It's called Words from the Wild.

And it's a collection of poems illustrated by children from different South African schools that are supported by the Amakala Foundation. And the illustrations are completely charming. So if you can find this book, Words from the Wild, you'll really enjoy the young people's illustrations. And I hope you'll enjoy the amusing poems by Mark Graham. This one is simply called Misdiagnosis, and it's about a leopard, or leopards in general. Is a leopard always lonely? You seldom ever see two of them together, and certainly never three. I wonder whether having spots is putting partners off. They never look particularly sick,

though you sometimes hear them cough. That's it. It's quite sweet, isn't it? Short and sweet and very pithy. Fantastic. Well, thank you to everybody who not only sent us the most brilliant emails, which you can continue to do, by the way, via purple at somethingelse.com,

but to everybody who has been listening and to all of those who have come to our live shows, because we've absolutely loved meeting you. Please keep following us wherever you get your podcasts. And please do keep recommending us to friends and family if you think that they would enjoy us too. Something Rhymes with Purple. Is there something else in Sony Music Entertainment production

produced by Harriet Wells with additional production from Chris Skinner, Olly Wilson, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale and... Well, I think he might be a bit mild-sweat. What do you think? Oh, good grief, I don't know. Is he acne or acme? Anyway, he's gully.