Something Rhymes with Purple - Titamatorta

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Susie and Gyles are going hammer and tongs at the English language today as they deconstruct the world of DIY…   Come learn why the vice isn’t as vicious as it may seem, what the saxons and the saw have in common and why the “saw” also “see’s”.    Gyles and Susie, share their despair at their own DIY abilities and although Gaffa tape is Gyles’ solution to all his DIY needs Susie explains why (at least in the DIY world) Gyles will never be ‘The Gaffa’.    We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [e-mail]   We currently have 20% off at the SRwP official merchandise store, just head to: https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple   Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus club via Apple Subscription, simply follow this link and enjoy a free 7 day trial: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823   Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:   Umbethink: To ruminate or ponder  Eilkrankheit: Hurry sickness Sloomy:  Languorous  Gyles' poem was 'Where the Mind is without' by Rabindranath Tagore   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

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amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience and the Purple People often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Welcome to SRWP. That's short for Something Rhymes With Purple. And today we're going to be talking about DIY, which is short for Do It Yourself. Well, I'm somebody who never does it at all. I was brought up on a poem by, was this Hilaire Belloc? Lord Lundy tried to mend the electric light. It struck him dead and serve him

right. It is the business of the wealthy man to give employment to the artisan. So because I'm comfortably enough off, I can afford to get somebody in to do anything. But even if I couldn't, I would still have to have somebody come in to do something because I can't do anything. I am hopeless at DIY. Now, how about you, Susie Dent? Yes, I'm with you. I mean, I can't do anything. I am hopeless at DIY. Now, how about you, Susie Dent? Yes, I'm with you. I mean, I can manage to do simple things. So I can change a light bulb. I can unscrew and screw things.

I can just about make an easy flat pack piece of furniture. But I mean, it has to be easy. But I'm afraid that's the extent of it. Well, I can do all that. I mean, forgive me, I'm sorry, I don't call that DIY. I mean, anyone can do that, change a light bulb. Well, light bulb, yes, but building a DIY bed, a flatbed bed. Oh, wow. I suppose, no. I was quite proud of myself for that. Well, you should be proud of yourself. I don't think I would get that right. I wouldn't buy such a thing to begin with. It would arrive and I wouldn't know what to do.

In fact, I think I probably got somewhere a flatback bag that we bought years ago when the children were small. We never opened it because we knew we wouldn't be able to do it. So that I, and also I can hammer a nail into the wall, but I'm advised against doing it because I don't know when any of the electric wires go behind the, so, you know, I'm liable to kill myself. I'll tell you what I'm really bad at

really really bad at is painting I just can't get the thickness right and it just you can see every single bristle on the paintbrush and where it has gone all over the wall I'm just I'm terrible at that I just can't I think I'm just too impatient I'm now realizing I'm rather a good DIY person I've forgotten painting you get a. Years ago when I was a teenager, I do things I did rather well, stripping the wallpaper, because remember people used to have wallpaper. I don't think we have wallpaper now. We used to have wallpaper. We'd strip it off with a kind of, well, there we are. I'm so continent. I don't think I've ever been to your loo. So anyway, stripping the wallpaper and then putting up wallpaper. I was very good

at that, putting on the sort of glue on the back and then making the wallpaper sort of vaguely straight. I was quite good at it. And also papering over the cracks, making sure that you couldn't see where the bits of wallpaper met one another. I was quite good at that. I think you are a DIY expert. I loved painting. I love it. I love the smell of it. And I love, oh, we had a roller thing. I'm now remembering the roller thing in a kind of dish. It was one end was deeper than the other. And you put the paint in one end and you rolled it up.

And then you roll. Oh, I loved all that. Oh, there you go. I wasn't very good at doing what you should do, of course, is putting sheets over the furniture when you're doing the painting. So I did all the painting on the walls. And then I came down and admired my work. And my mother would come in and say,

what's all this on the floor, on the carpet, on the furniture? So look, let's have a go. I was going to call you a tool there, which would have been very mean. What I was meant to say was you are not the tool that you make yourself out to be. Ah, explain this to me. I know what a tool is. It's an instrument for,

like a hammer, would be a tool. And I also think there's a rude use of the word tool. Yes. You're telling me tool also means a fool, does it? Yes. Tool means fool. It's actually, it's a bit stronger than fool. You're right, which is why I retracted it. Well, tool as an instrument of manual operation, as Samuel Johnson defined it, been around since the 9th century. I mean, obviously, tools have been used long, long before then, but that was when the word was first recorded. And it's simply a cognate, as we say, so a relative of words from the Vikings and Old Norse, Old Germanic, et cetera.

There's nothing particularly interesting to say, except its age obviously betrays just how important it is. And tool that is a weapon, because it was a weapon of war, especially a sword, that was another meaning of tool back in the 11th century. It came to mean in criminal slang, any kind of weapon that was used against somebody else, especially the blade of a knife. And this idea of a weapon has long informed insults, particularly insults to do with the male anatomy. And I'm afraid calling someone a tool is tantamount to calling them a penis. Oh, like you're a dick. Exactly. You're a plonker. It's the same. It's the same idea.

Yes, all of that stuff. So that's the tool. Well, let's actually explore some tools. What about a spanner? Okay. A spanner, putting a spanner in the works, is that what the Americans call a wrench? Is that the same thing as a spanner? Which is which? We basically need the purple people builders to explain exactly what's the difference between a wrench and a spanner.

I'm not sure there is one, but I think I would say that they are interchangeable in British English. Would you not? I think I refer to both a spanner and a wrench. I think Americans call a spanner a wrench, and we call a wrench a spanner. Okay, well, there you go. They are becoming totally interchangeable in that case.

What is the origin of each? Okay, so spanner, again, not particularly... Well, I suppose interesting in that it probably goes back to farming, because to span something was originally to harness all yoke it's a refer particularly to oxen and horses and attaching them to a vehicle and the idea of winding something up or spanning something within the spring of a firearm particularly was called a spanner then and then by the 18th century it came to mean the hand tool that we know it off today which has got the opening or the jaw at one end which fits over

or clasps the nut of a screw and that kind of thing so throwing a spanner in the works which is interfering with the smooth running of something it's also called throwing a monkey wrench into the machinery which shows just how interchangeable those two are. We think that began with P.G. Woodhouse, believe it or not. Really? The monkey wrench line? Well, throwing a spanner. He spent a lot of time in America, so he may have picked up some American lingo. Why is a monkey wrench a wrench as opposed to an ordinary wrench? Well, lots of theories about this, but we don't have a definitive answer. So, some people think that monkey began on the high Cs as an adjective meaning small.

There is a big myth really, and we do think this is a myth, that is that it's an eponym and it was invented by a man called Charles Monkey who adapted his surname to fit the product because his surname was spelled M-O-N-C-K-Y. But the OED does mention that, but it says it's probably a folk etymology from his surname. So the answer is really, we're not completely sure. But one thing I did want to pick up on is, have you ever called someone a spanner? If you could say, oh, you're such a spanner. It's a slightly affectionate insult, really.

No, it's not a phrase that trips lightly off my lips, but I can hear it. Yes. Oh, you spanner. Yeah, I think it's a riff on the tool sense. But if you remember the phrase, you have a face like a bag of spanners, which is really a bit of an insult to be extremely unattractive.

That began with someone you will know, and I'm sure you met, was Les Dawson. I did. I loved Les Dawson. Did he originate that or did he speak of his own face as being like a bag of spanners? Well, he certainly popularised it. I think he might have used it against himself and against other people, to be fair. He was a marvellous man. The first time I sat down with Les Dawson was he was in pantomime up in Manchester. And after the pantomime, I found him in the bar next door to the theatre, just sitting on his own. Oh. Yes. And his face looked lugubrious. I don't, what is the origin of lugubrious as a word? We know what it means, doesn't it?

It means a sort of... Yeah. What does lugubrious mean, actually? From Latin, it means sort of shady, really, doesn't it? It's all about something that is sort of dark. I mean, if something is lugubrious, it's also sort of quite sorrowful, isn't it? Yeah.

But lugubrious was all about sort of mournful, funereal kind of darkness. Well, here was this very jolly man who was very funny on stage in the pantomime sitting looking lugubrious looking rather unhappy look his face looking like indeed a bag of spanners sitting there and i think his complexion his appearance probably was partly part of the origin of it was the fact that he was smoking non-stop while i was with him and and enjoying a few drinks at the same time i i don't know that he was smoking non-stop while I was with him and enjoying a few drinks at the same time. I don't know that he treated his body entirely as a temple,

but my goodness, he was a funny man and a nice man too. Yes, I can well imagine that actually. Well, he popularised a face like a bag of spanners. Now you mentioned you were quite good with hammering nails into a wall. That's not something that I am particularly good at, I have to say. The hammer comes again from common Germanic word, but again, it's got lots of relatives in other language. And for the Vikings, actually, a hammer was a kind of crag. It was a sort of hard, solid head of a mountain, if you like. And of course, that was transferred probably over to the idea of a

weapon that was used for beating and breaking and driving nails etc and we have lots of different types of hammer there's a claw hammer a jack hammer a sledgehammer i wish i had a hammer there's lots of things i like the fact that a blacksmith was known as the knight of the hammer oh as in knight k-n-i-g-h-t yes knight knight like a prince of hammering yeah it's nice isn't it the claw hammer is called a claw hammer because it looks like a claw. It helps claw something out of, you're pulling something out as well as hammering it in. The jackhammer, what's that? Jack here is used simply as our good old generic first name, which, as we've mentioned so often before, is used in all sorts of different ways, including jack of all trades, a steeplejack, a lumberjack, the jacks that we throw in a card game. It's just a stand-in, really, for anything you want it to be.

So, a jackhammer and a sledgehammer. Well, I mean, is it the size of a sledge? It's a huge thing, a sledgehammer, I suppose. It's because it's big and broad, like a sledge. Nothing to do with a sledge that is a vehicle, actually. And everything to do with an old English word that's related to sleigh, S-L-A-Y, not the Father Christmas sleigh. And it's all about striking, really. And a sledgehammer, as you say, is large and heavy. You break rocks, you drive in fence posts, etc. So taking a

sledgehammer to crack a nut means to use a disproportionately forceful way of achieving a simple objective. It used to be, by the way, using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. Ah, very good. What else have you got in your toolbox, Susie? Well, I cycle quite a lot, at least I used to. I need to get back out. But for that, I need an Allen key quite often to adjust saddle height and that kind of thing.

Is that name nothing to do with Dave Allen? We've had Les Dawson. Is this named after Dave Allen? No. Who gave us the Allen key? The Allen Manufacturing Company. It's as simple as that. Just as the Stanley knife is named after Stanley.

It's Stanley Baxter, of course, the great. These things are celebrating British comedians from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Marvellous. Les Dawson, Stanley Baxter. It's perfect. Obviously not. Stanley Knife, who is it named after?

Simply the Stanley Works, the company that mass produced them. So, yeah, simple eponyms, really. You've got the chisel. I haven't used a chisel for a long time. That's from the Latin for cut. There's the pliers, which is from the French for bending.

And if you remember your ballet, Giles. Plie. We do a plie. Yes, which means your legs and your knees are bent. So that's a strange pairing. It's because of the shape of the pliers. They look, actually look like a ballet dancer's legs. Yeah, they're good.

They look like slightly bandy legs, don't they? There's a saw, S-A-W, which has nothing to do with the verb to see, and everything, in fact, to do with an old English word, sax, S-E-A-X, which was a knife. And that is why the Saxons are so cool, because the sax was their weapon of choice. Goodness.

Saxons used a sax, which was a weapon of choice, and gave us the word saw. Related to. So did the sax, did it have a serrated edge like a saw? I don't think, I mean, it could have done. I need to go back to my museum exhibitions and see, but it's all about cutting really. So ultimately, I think the idea is that you cut something or someone with it.

Gosh. But a seesaw has nothing to do with a saw. It's a different thing altogether, is it? That's what we call reduplicative compound. So I'm just looking this up. You remember the seesaw in dialect. It's called a titamatorta, which I love. Seesaw, the OED says, yes, a reduplicating compound,

symbolic of alternating movement. Fine. So just because it sounds nice. Seesaw. Have I ever told you about when I did woodwork at school, there was this teacher who was very anxious that we shouldn't get too near the circular saw. There was an electric circular saw, you know,

you turned on the electricity and went... And it was very sharp, the edge of the saw. And he actually had, I'm showing you now, he had a finger missing because, as he'd explained to us, yeah, he had a finger missing because as he'd explained to us yeah he had a finger missing because many years before he'd put the finger too close to the and he demonstrated he said then i want you boys must be careful when you turn on the electric saw my little fingers are stumped because many years ago i put my hand too close and he put his hand too close to it

and chopped off the top of one of his other fingers. Oh, my goodness. Wow. That put me off woodwork, I can tell you. Yes. But I was quite good. And now it's all coming back to me. I did something called a tenon and mortise.

Oh, yeah. When I was putting the two bits of wood together. Oh, this whole world has got amazing words in it, hasn't it? Anyway, give us some more of the words that you're ready to share with us. Well, if you're anything like me and you put shelves and pictures up wonkily, you need a spirit level. And that's nothing to do with ghosts that give you a helping hand

and everything to do with the fact that it's got a little mineral spirit solution inside it. It has to be horizontal, as you know. That's the spirit level. We have the vice. Nothing actually to do with the personal vice, even though you might think they hold you in their grip. The immorality sense of vice goes back to a Latin word that also gave us vicious. But the tool sense goes back to another Latin

word, vitis, which means a vine, because the vine's tendrils are kind of spiralling, just like you might find in a vice good i tell you what i've always found invaluable with i'm doing any diy which is very rarely i solved the problem with something called gaffer tape that's essentially that covers a multitude of sins this is big black tape that seems to stick anything together. And I've got rolls of that around the place. Gaffer tape. Why is it so called? A gaffer is a kind of the person who's in charge of works is called the gaffer.

Is it the same thing, the gaffer tape? I think so. Yes, I think not just you. I think chief electricians on film sets have lots of gaffer sets because they indeed often refer to it as the gaffer. And gaffer itself is an alteration of godfather. So the idea is that there is somebody who's presiding over things. So the person who has the tape is the person in charge, the godfather figure. Gaffer is a contraction of godfather.

Yeah, just like gamma, G-A-M-M-E-R, which you'll find in some British dialects, is an alteration of grandma, gamma. With my hammer, which I do have, I just have a plain hammer. I'm afraid I'm guilty, not just of using it to put in nails, but I also, when there's a screw, I just hammer the screw in too. Oh no. Tell me about, yes, I mean, I'm useless. Tell me about nails and screws. Oh, no. Tell me about... Yes, I mean, I'm useless.

Tell me about nails and screws. Yeah, there's not too much to say about those, unless we get to phrases, which we can do. But nail simply goes back to the German nagel, essentially. And in lots of different languages, Lithuanian, for example, it can mean a fingernail, a toenail, a hoof as well. But essentially, the nail originally referring to what you might find in humans

and most other primates. It goes back to the German nagel. And a screw, I think, is equally uneventful. A mechanical device or implement with a helical ridge or groove. 1404 it goes back to. And in German it is a Schraube.ber yes it's all about the sort of screw revolving and there is an anatomical etymology there in that classical latin

meant a vagina not quite sure i think yes well i guess the the physical idea of screwing someone same same sense really i can tell you about some phrases to do with nails if you would like them you know when we sort of say that someone is going to pay on the nail you know when you just sort of say if money is paid on the nail it's paid without delay some people think it goes back to the sort of iron pillars that you'll find outside certain stock exchanges including liverpool and that money lenders would often ply their trade using those as the kind of money bench. It's a lovely idea. Those nails do actually exist, but we think it instead goes back to the Latin ad unculum, which was used by the roman poet horace try saying that the roman poet horace who used it to mean to

perfection or to the utmost and it was a reference to roman sculptors who would make the finishing touches to their work with a fingernail just to sort of make sure it was absolutely precise and perfect well done you've hit the nail on the head with that one. Thank you. Yeah, that was a bit simpler, isn't it? Much, much simpler. Look, should we take a quick break and then you can tell me about bricks and mortar, concrete, the very materials that we use for creating things, for building things. Okay. Or concrete, as I used to call it when I was little. Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night.

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well, I'm getting myself into trouble here. Explain to me the etymology of the word brick and how it's come to mean a good person being a brick. Well, as you say, somebody who's sort of solid and unwavering is a brick. In other words, they are sort of loyal and steadfast. So it's a fairly simple simile or metaphor, I guess, there. But it's funny because brick itself is only found from the middle of the 15th century, even though obviously they were around before them. middle of the 15th century, even though obviously they were around before them. But we think it was probably introduced by Flemish workmen, because it's a low German word. And Flemings, as they were called, were associated with early brickmaking. So we think it's a loan word from them.

Very good. Low Germans. What about mortar? Because when you're making, putting brick together, you need in between them, you use mortar, is that right? When you're making putting brick together you need in between them you use mortar is that right when you're building a wall with bricks well of course you can do dry brick building i know and i have done that without any mortar but is mortar what goes between the bricks uh yes i would i would love to build the dry stone wall or do something like that one day because i imagine it's really mindful but anyway um it is mindful can i tell you something it's really mindful. But anyway. It is mindful. Can I tell you something? It's not too difficult either. There are lots of little books on building dry brick walls. It calls for patience. You need to get a whole variety of stones and bricks together.

So you've got them of all different shapes and sizes before you start. And then if you continue to build it from the base up and make sure that you're building it evenly with a straight line, it's relatively easy to do i have done it and it is deeply satisfying so i did it without mortar but winston churchill the british wartime prime minister and also prime minister the 1950s he found recreation and solace and good mindfulness by building brick walls using, I assume, bricks and mortar. Amazing. So what's the origin of mortar?

What to think of? Simply the Latin mortarium, which was a receptacle for pounding things. So it had this sort of cup-shaped cavity, and much as you would use a pestle and mortar for today, you'd use it in making medicines, grinding up particular kinds of food, etc. So all it's pounded with a pestle. So that's mortar. And the gun mortar got its name because its dumpy shape reminded people of the mortar with which you pound your ingredients. And the

mortar we use for bonding bricks probably got its name from the same kind because the ingredients there too are ground up very good i mean there's lots of phrases i suppose that come from this world i mean i'm thinking about you know we can't make bricks without straw well in fact probably you can make bricks without straw well why do people say you can't make bricks without straw i have never heard that ever what oh it's a well-known for goodness sake susie can't make bricks without straw. It's one of the best known phrases in the language. Everybody listening across the world to Something Rhymes with Purple is saying, I can't believe it, that's Susie Dent.

She said she'd never heard the phrase before. You can't make bricks without straw. It's a very well known. Look it up in your Oxford English dictionary and see what it tells you. The reason you know it and not me is that the last reference was in 1883. When I was a boy, I heard it regularly. I've never heard it. Explain what it is, because people of my vintage listening,

and we are lucky to have people of all ages who listen to the podcast, make us feel comfortable by letting us know about the origin of this phrase. Well, apparently it's a reference to the Bible and Exodus, although the OED says that the current application of the saying isn't justified by the narrative because the Israelites were not required to make bricks without straw, which was an indispensable binding material for sun-dried bricks. I didn't realise that.

Instead, in the story, they have to gather the straw for themselves instead of having it given to them. But the phrase now commonly means we have to produce results without the means considered necessary. Is that right? Yes. So you say somebody is asking you to do something, you've not got the resources.

You say you can't make bricks without straw, mate. Okay, I've never heard it. Okay, that's really interesting. Or you might, if you want to be rude to them, you'll say you're built like a brick shithouse. Yes, I know that. Now, that's one interesting. Or you might, if you want to be rude to them, you'll say you're built like a brick shithouse. Yes, I know that. Now, that's one I don't really know, but it's not very flattering, is it?

No, and it means having a really solid physique if you're a man, so being very robust and powerful. And if you're a woman, having a very sort of curvaceous figure. Are you sure? Oh, I don't know that that's right. I don't think it does mean having a curvaceous figure.

I don't think so. I think it means you're just big. I think't think it does mean having a curvaceous figure. I don't think so. I think it means you're just big. I think it's meaning you're big and you're solid. That's what it means. And maybe you have a face like a bag of spanners. But I don't think there's any sexist, curvaceous element in that particular phrase. Maybe I'm wrong.

Okay. I have to say, I don't use it. So it'll be interesting to see what the purple people think. But it was 1950s it first came in, well, 1949, from US slang. And lots of different structures were used before then, apparently. So there was just simply a brick house. I think shithouse came about a little bit later. And of course, in football, you also have shithousery, which is sort of, I suppose, fairly similar similar it's an attempt to gain an advantage by unfair means yeah and the origin of the phrase of brick shithouse is when people had their lavatories separate from the main building in a kind of separate block is that the idea i guess

so yes it's a dunny outside as i said it was a brick outhouse and a brick house before then anyway let's not linger on that one because it's not very nice. We've been at this subject, hammer and tongs. Ah, hammer and tongs. Now, is that a musical expression? No, it's to do with a blacksmith, actually, and a blacksmith showering blows on the iron that was taken with the tongs from the forge fire. So it's about hammering metal into shape with the blacksmith's tools. And why have they come together? I suppose it's actually literally what you, if you went to a blacksmith's and they were working away with the hammer and the tongs, the noise that it would make. Yeah.

So you're having an argument. They were going at it like hammer and tongs. Yeah, absolutely right. When does that date back to? How old is that as an expression? Hammer and tongs. Sorry, I say hammer and thongs because that is, if you look at the databases that I look at,

you know, of current language, et cetera, you can see how these expressions are moving on. And quite often we do get them wrong. And I've talked about my favourites before, like a bowl in a china shop, for example, instead of like a bowl. And do you remember what they're called, these slips of the ear? Remind me. they're called egg corns oh yes we've done a whole episode on

egg corns haven't we yes so 1708 i have just discovered is the first reference to hammer and tongs and it's just defined as with might and main that's good isn't it give us just one more before we go to the correspondence nuts and bolts yeah that's just quite isn't it? Give us just one more before we go to the correspondence. Nuts and bolts. Yeah, that's just quite simple, really. It's just essential bits of a project that aren't particularly exciting, but they are the fundamentals. Well, as you can tell, if you've been listening to this, Susie Dent and I are not experts in DIY. Should we move on to the correspondence before we embarrass ourselves even more?

Oh, there's so much. We are so lucky to have people from across the world. Our global podcast, they get in touch they communicate with us via purple at something else.com and something else is spelt as one word but without a g who has been in touch this week suzy well the first one that we have is from paul h and it's paul handslip actually i think we can hear him now. Hi, Susie and Giles. I just wondered if you knew what it is that's done to beef to corn it, as in corned beef, and also why no other meat seems to be corned. Love what you do. Keep doing it.

Best regards, Paulo from Louth, Lincolnshire. Well, Paul, thank you for that very interesting question. I have a dim recollection that corned beef was something that was, oh no, I'm confusing it with baked beans. I think I'm going to tell you that corned beef was originated by Napoleon as a way of feeding his soldiers. But I think it was baked beans that he put in cans. Oh, no, that was Bobrill. Are you sure yes and he named it after rill which was the sort of magical essence that sort of permeated the underworld of the novel that was written by edmund bull you lit in is that right oh edward bull will it in yeah and the land of rill anyway so it was this sort of supposed to be this kind of magical force and the bow the bot the bo, B-O-S, came from beef. So it

was a magical force of beef. So it was that, nothing to do with baked beans. Well, that you think is what Napoleon invented? I don't know if it's Napoleon. I think Napoleon called for more beef rations, couldn't get them. So this one very enterprising Scotsman decided that he was going to create this essence of beef that would have the same effect. And he borrowed the name. But he was helping Napoleon. He was helping the enemy if he was a Scotsman. This doesn't ring true.

We've got to investigate this further. He was a businessman. Well, no, I think let's come back to that. I think that would be wonderful to know more about the origins of Bovril. And I would like anybody who does think they know any other food stuff, because I am convinced that there is a connection between napoleon and baked beans and napoleon's chef a famous chef who traveled with napoleon pioneered the baked bean but that's nothing to do with corned beef which is where

we began answer paul's question if you. Why is corned beef so called? Corned beef is so called because it is preserved and cured with salt. What has that got to do with corn, you might ask? Well, it's simply a riff on corn being grains, and we're talking about grains of salt or granulated salt. So, corned simply was transferred in the 17th century to a meat that was preserved in some way. So nothing directly to do with the corn that we associate with the grain today, but everything to do with the idea of something granulated. It's interesting, it hasn't sort of moved into other, you don't get corned lamb, do you? Or corned sardines or corn anything else?

No, I think you probably used to though. Let me just check because I'm sure corned was, I think it was specifically meat actually. Yeah, of meat preserved or cured with salt. And actually past the 1850s, almost always beef. Fine. Interesting. So in the early days it might have been, you know, corned other meats. Yeah.

Corned whale meat, anything. Oh, meat. Oh, look, somebody else has been in touch. It's Ali Darum. Hello. The other day, my kids were using the word jinx as a reaction to when they said the same thing at the same time. My wife and I remember doing this when we were a lot younger, and I vaguely recall some playground rules about whoever said it first being able to tell the other person not to speak for a certain

time. I'm wondering how widespread this is, if there is any consistency regarding these rules, and most importantly, where the word originates from. Thanks for any help you're able to give. I love the show and would like to get to a live show one day. From Ali Darin plus Sarah, Rory and Jake. Well, do Ali, please bring the whole family. We want to meet you, Sarah, Rory and Jake. Well, do, Ali, please bring the whole family. We want to meet you, Sarah, Rory and Jake. You can find out from our website all about the live shows that are coming soon. We're going to have a residency in London at the Fortune Theatre. We're going to Oxford as well.

Wherever you are, please, if you can, come. We'd love to meet you. Now, drinks. Tell us more susie well it really came into its modern kind of sense in america in the early part of the 20th century but it's always been linked this word with the occult and that goes back much further so the ancient greek word yunx which was spelt i-u-n-x was the name given to a type of woodpecker known as a rhino. And that bird was closely associated with magic and all sorts of spell casting, if you like. And by the 17th century, jinx was still

being used to refer to a spell. And it wasn't until the 19th century that it really got into gear in its modern sense, really, with the comedic character Jinx Hoodoo, who was in a 19th century play called Little Puck. And the cast list, if you look at the New York Daily Tribune, described Jinx Hoodoo as a curse to everybody. And it said that his name has been synonymous with bad luck ever since. And the idea of crossing little fingers, if you say exactly the same thing as another person and saying jinx goes back to a children's game still played today because i remember this whereas if you are not the first to say jinx you have to stay silent until somebody breaks the spell gosh so are we hearing that jinx is in a way an eponym well no popularized by the character of jinx who do but

probably goes back to the idea of the rhino, the bird. Fine. Good. That's where it begins. And then it became famous because of the character Jinx. Yes. Wonderful. Well, that's the joy of language. I mean, if you've got queries, you just get in touch with us and Susie will do her very best to come up with the right answers. You just communicate with us, purple at somethingelse.com. Well, have you got three fabulous words that you've dug out that you want to share with us this week? I have. The first one is a little bit fanciful, but it just reminds me of my love of German, really. And it's umberthink, um, U-M, berthink. And it means to ruminate or to ponder. And it's

based on the German use of um, U-M, to mean all around. So to umber think is to sort of think all around a subject, to ruminate or ponder it. I think it just looks lovely on the page. So that's my first one. The second one is a direct German borrowing. Eilkrankheit. Okay, so this is spelled E-I-L and then krkite is K-R-A-N-K-H-E-I-T. And its literal translation really is hurry sickness. And it's essentially what you and I, Giles, and probably many of the purple people seem to spend our lives doing, which is just rushing, rushing, rushing all the time to get to the next appointment, to get to the next thing. And it becomes this sort of sickness because we don't quite know how to operate without that sort of

sense of urgency, but it's being kind of whipped up into a vortex of sort of panic and pressure. That's isle conchite, hurry sickness. And my final one is an antidote to all of that, or at least how you might feel after months of isle conchitekite. And that's Sloomy. I may have mentioned this one before. I just love it though. Sloomy, S-L-O-O-M-Y, just means sort of languorous and pleasantly sort of listless, really, and just finally letting it all go. Well, I have a calming poem for us, I think, this week. As you know, I am an ambassador for the Royal Commonwealth Society. So I was following the Commonwealth Games with interest. I don't know if you followed them. I have. But it's a marvellous concept, actually, the Commonwealth Games, because there we have

the Commonwealth, 56 countries around the world, not all of them with a British connection in their heritage, some that have just come newly to the Commonwealth. And I, with my daughter, Afra, am sort of traveling around the Commonwealth, collecting poems from different parts of the Commonwealth. And I met up with the Indian High Commissioner, who's called Gayatri Isar Kumar. And I asked her if she had a favorite piece of poetry that I could share with you, and she came up with some lines from Rabindranath Tagore. And I think this, well, just listen. It's really almost a prayer. Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high.

Where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where words come out of the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action into that heaven of freedom that my country awake interesting isn't it i love that so there we are so that's the aspirations of the high commissioner for india in the words of rabindranath to go expand our horizons always. I love that. Well, thank you, Giles. And thank you to all the Purple people who have just followed us faithfully,

many from day one. And we really, really appreciate it. And we particularly appreciate you getting in touch. Please do, as Giles said, it's something at something... It's purple at somethingelse.com. Or you can find us on social media at something rhymes on twitter and facebook or at something rhymes with on instagram and for more purple if you would like please consider the purple plus club where you can listen ad free and there are some special bonus episodes on words and language we really enjoy those two something rhymes with purple is a something else and sony music entertainment production it was produced by lawrence bassett

and harriet wells with additional production from chris skinner jen mystery jay beal and oh what we're going to call him today charles no tool he but sometimes he does put us better in the works it's