Something Rhymes with Purple - Treacle

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Suffering from a festive cold or a flu? Susie and Gyles have some (questionable) remedies for you! Come delve into the wondrous (and often disgusting) world of potions and lotions on this week’s episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. Involving witchcraft, and Kings and Quacks, as we ‘gild the pill’ with the ‘hair of the dog’, all taken, of course, with a healthy ‘pinch of salt’. We’ll also weave a tarantella through some infamous incidents of poisonous foul-play which piques Gyles’ fascination and leads him to ponder some rather murderous logistics… A Somethin’ Else production. If you want to get in touch with Susie and Gyles it’s [e-mail]. Susie’s Trio: Snit - glowing part of candle wick after it’s blown out Snirtle - a suppressed laugh Roorback - false and damaging report circulated for political effect, usually about a candidate seeking an office. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth. This is Something Rhymes with Purple. I'm not alone because facing me on my screen is my friend Susie Dent, but she's not in the room.

She's in Oxford. How are you feeling, Susie Dent, but she's not in the room. She's in Oxford. How are you feeling Susie Dent today? How am I feeling? I'm, yes, I'm okay actually. I mean, you and I, when it comes to health, are warriors, aren't we? I think we are both self-confessed hypochondriacs. No, I'm actually ill. I think I've got a cold. I've got a very thick head. I've had headaches right through the summer. I think they began when I went on my low-carb diet too quickly. And that's when they began. I haven't shaken them off. I'm feeling quite, hmm, I'm feeling really quite sort of grim. It's not hypochondria. It's real. It's real.

It's real. But anyway, yes. Well, personally, I can speak for myself. I'm quite selective in my worries. And I don't worry about every single thing under the sun. I just worry about a few things. And health, I would say, is definitely the top of my list. But I blame this on my dad, who kept a copy of Peer's Encyclopedia at his fingertips at all times. And when I was about 12, 13, I was obsessed with it. But the medical section.

So I would go to the medical section and I would read through every single ailment and then convince myself that I might have it. But it was a real fascination to the point where I thought I might actually be a doctor until I remembered that I couldn't pop the lens out of a pig's eye in biology and that it was never really going to happen. Hypochondria incidentally goes back to the Greek for black bile, because remember we talked about the medieval humours in medicine that were said to dictate your entire constitution. And if you had too much black bile, then you probably weren't very well, but also you would consider yourself to be not very well, hence the term. So you're not very well. Can I help?

Well, when I was a child, your childhood reading was the Peer's Cyclopedia of all the illnesses. It was Cyclopedia, wasn't it? It wasn't Encyclopedia. You're right, it was Cyclopedia. Cyclopedia. My childhood reading was a little volume called Mims. This is because two of my sisters, or I have three sisters, and two of them were nurses. And Mims was a kind of pharmacopoeia, a book that contained all the details of all the medicines, lotions, potions that were available. And we studied this as to what we should have. And this was the sort of 1950s, 1960s, when there was an advent of things called uppers and downers. And if you were feeling a bit down, you took an upper.

And if you were feeling a bit high, you took a downer. And you took pills to go to sleep and to wake up. Not that we did any of this, but we read all about it. And you took pills to go to sleep and to wake up. Not that we did any of this, but we read all about it. And my mother was somebody who was permanently unwell, always taking to her bed, lived, of course, to be 96. That's the way it goes.

My wife certainly thinks I am a complete hypochondriac. She says, you never seem to have these headaches when you're dancing about enjoying yourself. When you're doing one of your projects that you really like so much, Charles, you never complain then. It's just when you come into the kitchen and I suggest to you that you actually help with them. Yeah, exactly. Help with something. Then suddenly this headache of yours returns. But I am a little bit like that. I do have the snuffles and the sneezes and the wheetles and the what's-its. That's because you're always working and you never stop.

But I think that's good. In fact, it's when I stop that I begin to feel... Oh, isn't that always the case? It's when you stop. Every holiday I used to take when I was in my 20s and 30s, I would feel like death for two weeks because I suddenly stopped and everything, exhaustion particularly, caught up with me. And I just hated the fortnight because it just wasn't me. I think you and I are quite similar. If I'm really ill, if I'm really, really ill, my wife does do me a little treat. She brings me Marmite toast. Yes, Marmite toast is the best. Cut into little squares. So Marmite toast with a cup of tea.

Yeah. That does me good. Oh, that sounds good, actually. It gives us a great intro to today's episode, doesn't it? It does. But before we get to that, I just want to ask, what is your pick-me-up? There's no family remedy in your book, Old Wives Tales of Any Kind. No, but medicine is just rife with superstition. Less so today, thankfully, than it has been. But of course, superstition still persists.

And of course, it persists in our language. So you only have to unpack the language, not just of things to do with health, but so many other areas to think, oh, that goes back things to do with health, but so many other areas to think, oh, that goes back to that belief, blah, blah, blah. And do you remember, we've talked about the charlatans and the quacks who used to dispense their medicinal wares and their so-called miraculous cures. So charlatan goes back to an Italian dialect word meaning to babble, because that's what they were considered to do. Quack is short for a quack salver, which was a Dutch originally word meaning somebody who would sell ointments, soothing unguents and that kind of thing. Again, probably did absolutely nothing.

You had the toadies, the toad eaters. The toad eaters were people who were basically the assistant to these quacks and they would swallow a toad thought at the time to be poisonous and then the quack salvo would miraculously cure them with whatever potion they had to hand and then sell it to those gathered in the marketplace. A bit like Mr. Brandreth with his cures, who we've mentioned many a time, Benjamin. Dr. Brandreth, if you don't mind. It was a self-invented title, I think. He turned up in New York. He left England, left Liverpool about 1836,

turned up with one name called Benjamin Holmes, got off the ship the other end as Dr. Benjamin Brandreth. But he made a fortune, as people would say, as a quack. But in fact, he believed in his bills. They were little vegetable bills. And they conquered America. And indeed, he became one of the richest men in America in the 19th century selling these pills. And I still have them. And I do take them occasionally. Do you take them? Well, my might sounds a little bit better if you don't mind me saying. To be honest, it is a little bit better. Yes. So they are pills. What is the

origin of the word pill? Well, I can tell you that tabloid actually began as little pills. They were little compressed tablets of medicine. And the idea was later transferred over to, you know, little compressed bits of news, if you like, and then the physical format of a newspaper. I think pill comes from the French pilule, does it? I'm looking it up now. No, it doesn't actually.

Pilule is a sibling of it but it ultimately goes back to the pilule in Latin meaning a little ball a little ball yes so it says in the past physicians would cover bitter pills thinly with gold to make them easier to swallow this gave rise to the early 17th century phrase to gild the pill or to make an unpleasant or painful necessity more palatable. So it's literally not sugarcoating, but coating with gold. Isn't that interesting? It's wonderful. My mother on top of the fridge, she had literally about a dozen or maybe even 15 little bottles of different pills that she would take, a cocktail of pills. And they were all

different colours. I don't remember any gold ones, but how wonderful. Yeah. You'd think that the gold might do something to them. I don't know, our physicians amongst the purple people will tell us whether you can actually safely swallow gold, but yeah. So that's on a pill. What about a cordial? Is there an interesting etymology for the word cordial? Yes, well remembered because a cordial was so called because it was a tonic for the heart. Cor in Latin was the heart. And if you are cordial, then obviously you are sort of giving a warm and hearty response to something. So that's all related. But those were the first. They were thought to invigorate the heart when it was in

need of a bit of pep. But so many ingredients in ancient lotions and potions will really surprise people, I think. So some of them, I suppose, were just considered to have magical properties. So mistletoe was one of them because mistletoe represents love, fertility and vitality. In the ancient Greeks, they used it as a balm against epilepsy and also an antidote to some poisons, which is quite interesting. You had snowdrops in Homer's Odyssey, the god Hermes gives Odyssey a herb with a black root but milk-like flower, which we think were snowdrops that would give you that sort of essence. And he claims it makes Odysseus immune to the sorceress

and her sort of deadly poisons. And there was yarrow and honey and milkweed and willow. None of those so surprising, I suppose. But you would also find really strange things, really odd things. So animal dung was quite prevalent in various so-called remedies, particularly the dung apparently of donkeys and gazelles. Flies were all celebrated for their ability to ward off anything particularly bad. They would make paste from mice, which was a bit gross. You know, when you're croaky, you might be said to have a frog in your throat. Is it because of the croaking

that you have a frog in your throat? Is the noise that the frog makes? Well, yes, exactly. That is all it is. But there is a belief attached to it that actually holding a live frog in a child's mouth particularly could cure afflictions of the mouth. And that is well documented, not as the etymology of a frog in your throat. But that was another really strange thing that people used to do.

It's a very, very odd things, I have to say. These medicines that involve herbs, these vegetable medicines, Is that what homeopathy is about? Is a homeopath somebody who believes in these remedies that are non-chemical, that use simply natural herbs? Am I right? So, yes, complementary medicine will often use, so herbalists, for example, will use lots of wonderful tinctures and things extracted from herbs.

And, of course, herbs are proven, many of them, to have medicinal properties. A homeopath, that means sort of treating with the same, the homeo is the same. And the idea is that you will treat an affliction with the tiniest, most dilute essence of that particular cause or poison or whatever it is. And that actually that will then, I think, provoke your immune system to react to it. But it's so, so dilute and sceptics will say it's so diluted, there's absolutely no trace to the original ingredient. But, you know, homeopaths would argue against that. My parents were very interested in homeopathy. When I was very young, I remember telling my great aunt, who was a lovely lady, she lived in Accrington, that I was thinking of becoming a homeopath. And she misunderstood.

And she said to me, well, there's nothing wrong with that nowadays, darling. It's fine. A lot of people are, just as long as you're really sure. And she thought I was coming out to her. Bless her heart. Isn't that sweet? That's brilliant. So what are the ones that you take?

What are the ones that you believe in? Mistletoe? Snowdrops? Yes, I wouldn't say that I believe in any of those particularly. Me personally, I mean, this is not recommending this to anybody else at all, but I take curcumin. You will find it as the active compound in turmeric. So, you know, turmeric you will find in curries. It's the sort of food colouring and flavouring. It's bright, bright yellow. Curcumin is the kind of active compound in that. And that's said to reduce inflammation and that kind of thing. But that's about it.

Otherwise, I think I just take general vitamins. How about you? Oh, I've been taking turmeric tea recently and it's really tasty. Well, I've stopped taking the vitamins since I read in the paper last week that most of these vitamins that we take, it's all psychological. Well, except vitamin D. There's lots of interesting research into vitamin D now with COVID. There is. And indeed, the government is either promising or threatening, depending on your view of civil liberties, to send us all vitamin D so that we should all be taking it. Or to add it to things, because we already do that, don't we, with bread and that kind of thing. They already add certain vitamins, cereals and that kind of thing. But I mean, this is as nothing, Giles, to what we used to do in the past. And as I mentioned that there are words that are related to kind of old and

strange cures. Do you remember me telling you about the tarantula said by Samuel Johnson to, you look like you're quaffing a pint of white wine there. What is that? I'm- That's your medicinal remedy. What our listeners don't know is that we can see each other and I have got a rather nice, this glass- Is that a wine glass? It is a wine glass.

It's a 19th century Hungarian wine glass that my darling wife got for me in a second hand shop i'm more interested in what's in it though what is in it is water san peregrino i've become a san peregrino holic yes i'm sparkling water all the way it's a gently sparkling water we're not paid to say this this is genuinely i, I'm offering San Pellegrino this free publicity. Well, shall I say, I look like I'm holding up a urine sample. This is mine. Yes, you're right. It is bright orange. Absolutely. The horse subsequently died. As it happens, this is my dissolvable multilitamine in here.

Oh, you have a dissolvable one. what is in that glass it's a huge glass it's a beaker everybody what looks like we but it's not and it does color your we famously because it's got vitamin i'm a veggie as are you so thank you for sharing these details so he's got he's got lots of b vitamins in it which occasionally if you're vegetarian you can be slightly deficient in so there you go oh should i be having more vitamins no i doubt it look at you you're fighting fit despite despite what you believe yeah i am you are do you like treacle not much but tell me more is it a remedy well it was originally well no going right back to the beginning a treacle actually was a theriacon which in greece and in ancient Greece, meant the bite or the venom of a snake, of a poisonous snake.

And obviously people would then dispense an antidote in whatever form they wanted. All sorts of strange ingredients went into the antidote, but because it tasted so bitter, it was probably full of horrible bitter plants. If you remember the word sardonic goes back to plant of sardinia, which was said to produce really bitter, scornful laughter and a kind of rictus expression and then death. So anyway, obviously it didn't have the plant of sardinia in it, but horrible things. And so sugar or something sweet was given. And the something sweet, the theriacon, was kind of moved over to that, to what made the medicine more palatable. And

because it was sweet and syrupy, eventually that became treacle and has nothing to do with the original antidote that first inspired it. So that's treacle. Now, can I get onto the tarantula? Do you remember me telling you that the tarantula in Samuel Johnson's dictionary is defined as an insect whose bite is cured only by music? And the music in particular would be accompanying a dance, a hysterical kind of dance, a sort of whirling manic dance that was called the tarantella because it was said to cure the sting of the tarantula. All of them so-called because they come from Taranto in Italy. So again, it was the tarantella that was believed to be the ultimate remedy for the tarantula's bite as a kind of exorcism until they kind of fell down exhausted. So very strange

thing. And another very strange remedy, which I'm sure we've mentioned before, is hair of the dog. So hair of the dog that bit you is in full, is having a tipple the morning after a very heavy night in order to alleviate the effects of alcohol. And the idea is a bit like homeopathy. So you have a little bit of what has made you kind of ill and it will apparently make you feel better. But the hair of the dog that bit you, this was an actual remedy or believed remedy in that, again, I mean, I think Samuel Pep peeps refers to this people who were bitten by a dog obviously might be worried as you know whether it was rabid dog or whatever what might befall them so they would chase after the offending animal pluck a hair from its coat

and make a poultice out of that hair and lay it over the bite and that was believed to cure the bite and so later on it was transferred to the alcohol in a sort of similar sense. Take a little bit, apply it to the wound and all will be well. Very strange. Gosh, might have killed you. Well, certainly if you're running after a rabid dog, it might well have done.

Any more cures to do with animals? Well, I mean, the Theriaki that I mentioned, some of the Roman recipes that you will find for cures included things like opium and the flesh of a viper. So people would not only run after dogs, but they'd run after snakes as well. And one recipe in a really old herbal begins, take of myrrh, saffron, agaric, ginger, cinnamon, frankincense, treacle, and goes on to list 41 more ingredients, all of them incredibly rare. So these were not remedies that you could quickly whip up at home. They were things that you would have to go to great lengths to get. But the perils of poison, I suppose, are just embedded

in our language. A potion actually meant a draft of poisoned liquid. The word potion means that, does it? Yeah. And then toxic projectiles, toxic goes back to the toxon or the bow of an archer. They were dipped in poison in order to kill the enemy. So toxophily, the use of the bow and arrow is actually linked to toxic poison, all due to what those ancient projectiles were dipped into. So all of these go back absolute centuries. Give me more on poisons, now we've got into it. Well, there was an amazing story you probably will have heard of. So back in 1654, Louis XIV was crowned King of France. His system of absolute rule was to last, I guess, right up until the French Revolution. He was a reformer,

but he was also, one would say, a warmonger. I mean, lots of different views of his reputation, but his reign was also marked by a murder and witchcraft scandal that rocked the aristocracy, and it led to the execution of 36 people. And it goes back to a woman called Madame de Brunvilliers, who was accused of having conspired with her poison, her father and brothers in order to inherit their estate. Her death was awful. She was forced to drink 16 pints of water. This is part of the kind of water cure. And then she was burned at the stake. Absolutely horrible, horrible. But the reason I mentioned it is the case struck absolute terror in the population and they began to see instances of poisoning in even, you know, the most innocent of occurrences. And the king himself feared for his life and he began to mistrust all of those around him. And fortune tellers, alchemists, they were all arrested and suspected of selling, you know, not just medicinal potions,

but also poisons as well, and confessions extracted under tortures. I mean, awful. But this is how much the idea of poisoning kind of captured the imagination. And Louis XIV wasn't the only king either, because King Mithridates VI, or Mithridates, I guess. That's a lot, lot long ago. Long, long, long ago. So he was king of Pontus.

So this is 65 BC, we're talking about, around then. But he said to have protected himself against poison by taking larger and larger amounts every day until he was able to tolerate them because he was so convinced that he was going to be poisoned. And it is said that he would take each bit of this poison with a tiny pinch of salt in order to make it more palatable and in order for him to be able to swallow the poison. And that is why today, you know, from that story, whether or not it's true,

but it was recorded by various historians, including Pliny the Elder, who we often mention, that story inspired the expression to take something with a pinch of salt. In other words, to take it, you kind of know that it's not really particularly true, but that pinch of salt is somehow making it a little bit more palatable. In other words, it's so absurd that you have to take something with it in order to swallow it. If you were going to murder somebody, would poison be your method of choice, Susie? murder somebody. Would poison be your method of choice, Susie? I have never considered this. No, I don't think it would be because it's so easily traceable, isn't it? Are there poisons that leave no trace? No, but the point is you can perhaps infiltrate the poison into the medicine

because people innocently take their medicine not knowing really what they're taking. I know, but then there would be a post-mortem. Yes, there would be, but they wouldn't necessarily be traceable back to you. You'd slipped into the house. You'd slipped the tablets into their pill pot. Nobody knows that it was you. Oh. Is this, what would be yours?

Because you're a murder mystery writer. Well, I'm a murder mystery writer and I love murder mysteries. And Agatha Christie, who of course is the, literally the queen of crime, she had herself been, is it a toxologist? Is that what they call people who specialise in poisons? Toxicologist, I think.

Toxicologist. Well, I think she'd been a part-time toxicologist in the sense that she had learnt the chemist's art when she was young. She loved poisons. And I think most of her murders, if you do a tabulation of murders in Agatha Christie, poison is the favoured one. And apparently, poison is the means of murder most favoured by women outside of crime passionnel, passion crimes.

Poison is what they turn to. I did ask P.D. James, who I knew, the great novelist, Phyllis James, how she would commit the perfect murder. I knew the great novelist, Phyllis James, how she would commit the perfect murder. And her answer was basically to take whoever you were going, wanting to murder, on a walk, you know, on Boxing Day, a beachy head, a walk along beachy head. And then when no one's looking, just push them over the edge. Because it's, you know, unless somebody's actually saw it happening, you could say, well, I'm afraid they stepped too far. They always were stepping too far and they just stepped over the edge because it's you know unless somebody's actually saw it happening you could say well i'm afraid they they stepped too far they always were stepping too far and they just stepped over the edge terrible accident and what if someone saw you then it would all be over if somebody saw you of course it would all be over yeah if somebody saw you but so long as nobody

saw you palpitations even thinking about this yeah so. So there we are. So let's, while we ponder, in fact, this will be listeners across the world. While we've been talking about potions and lotions and poison, you can take a break. We'll take a break. And you can think who you would most like to murder and how you would most like to murder them. Oh, good grief.

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Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. X-Tree, X-Tree, your favorite anime is getting a new season. Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. And I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. Every week, you can listen in while we break down the latest pop culture news and dish on what new releases we can't get enough of.

We're covering the latest in film, video games, music, manga, and obviously, anime. Get the latest on The Anime Effect. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Welcome back, and hopefully you haven't followed Giles's instruction and thought of how you're going to murder or perform the perfect murder. But if you have, what can we say, Giles? Well, please get in touch because I would like to know what your idea of the perfect murder is. How would you commit the perfect murder? It's purple at somethingelse.com. We haven't done an episode all about murder, have we? We've done crime, the language of crime.

But I think we should. I mean, look, of course, murder is horrific. We know that. But there must be a reason. In fact, I asked P.G. James why it was that murder mysteries are the most successful forms of fiction in the world. The world's best-selling author still is Agatha Christie. And they're all about murder. Why is it? And B.D. James said to me, because it is the ultimate act. It is the ultimate. We can go no further. And in a sense, by being interested in murder, we can almost contain it. We think by solving a murder mystery, we can take control of death. Over death. That's very interesting because, you know, if you think back to the Middle Ages when

death was commonplace and people would die within a family in full view of everybody else, it was not as feared as it is these days. It was not as unusual and sanitised as it is now. So maybe that is, you know, we have euphemised death to win an inch of its life, which is a horrible metaphor, but it gives us a chance to indulge our fear of death. But as you say, to kind of compartmentalise it and be sort of slightly thrilled by it from afar. It's a very strange thing, isn't it?

There are lots of episodes to look forward to. Our murder special and coming next week, our sex special. Oh, I'm afraid Giles won with that one. He's going to be talking for 45 minutes and i'm just going to be far from it far from it we'll be talking dirty together so if you've got any thoughts about murder or indeed lotions and potions as well as poison uh please get in touch it's purple at something else.com something without the g people

do get in touch we have had lots of letters, haven't we, this week? What have people been writing to us about? Well, Derek Elliott-Jones has emailed us to say that we were speaking recently about terminology for finishing work, possibly finishing early on a Friday, which I think I referred to as sometimes called Poets' Day in the building trade, which is piss off early, it's Friday, or something similar. And I wondered if you'd ever come across the following, tattle time, or often just tatties. Here in the North East of Scotland, tatties are potatoes. And this particular usage is when you're finished or something is done. It's time to go in for supper. And so it's tatty time. That's really

nice. Oh, here you go. He's mentioned Poets' Day. Initialism, another word for Friday, often heard in oil and gas offices where I've worked. It stands for piss off early tomorrow Saturday. Cheers for being brill, says Derek. I like Poets' Day. I think that's a really good one to remember. That's very neat. I think we're going to put that into the currency. Yes.

It's thanks to you that I've heard about spilling the tea and I'm now using it everywhere. You are, I've noticed. I pop up on this programme called This Morning with Phil and Holly and Eamon and Ruth and I'm trying to sort of get down there with the kids and so I'm talking about spilling the tea. They hadn't heard the expression and they thought I was sort of spilling the tea all over my computer. You were gerbling. Yeah, exactly. What was that word? That's what it's called, gerbil. Gerbil is to spill liquid because of unsteady hands. Gerbil. Gerbil is to spill liquid because of unsteady hands. Oh dear. Oh, to gerbil.

It's not spelt like the animal, by the way. It's J-I-R-B-L-E, as in I've just gerbled coffee all down my shirt. Oh goodness, to gerbil. Is that an old word or a new word? Yes, very old dialect word. I love it. To gerbil. Excellent. Look what I've got in front of me, speaking of gerbling. Oh, you've got your lovely purple mug. I've got my Something Rhymes with Purple mug. And we must tell people at the end of the show, we will,

how they can get hold of one of these. And inside it, you can read the word from where I'm standing. I'm not going to gerble my tea all over the computer. It says gonguzel, which is one of my favourite words. And because I've been doing this Canals series on Channel 4... Oh, that's perfect. You've met lots of gonguzlas, I'm sure. I've met gonguzlas because it's basically, though we can adapt it, it begins as a word for people really who are on boats, on canals.

Who are watching activity on a canal, yeah. That is to gonguzla. And we've extended it and people have extended it to mean sort of gazing happily at things, at liquid. Yeah, stretches of water or cups of tea. Yeah, it's just to stare into space, really. And at the bottom, if ever I finished my tea, which I don't very often,

you can see the definition of the word gonguzel. Do you ever have flisms in your tea? What are flisms? Flisms are, again, that's an old word for kind of floating particles. So I use it for if you've dunked a few too many biscuits and they've all dissolved into your tea, then you have lots of flisms floating around. How do we spell f-l-i-z-z-o-m-s

flisms flisms you see i'm learning word after word to gerbil is to spill yeah they all sound a bit rude coffee drinks flisms and flisms they do flisms wait if you want rude words only a week to go on november the first says elena collar i woke up and gave my partner a pinch and a punch followed by white rabbits he'd never heard the white rabbits part before where do both these phrases come from and elena says also you're my walking companions each day through the country lanes of malorca she says amazing podcast thank you well thank you elena and well i would kind of do my best but you know as we were saying with the potions and lotions it's quite difficult to get to the bottom of all of these superstitions i'll start with white rabbit

and the easy answer is no one knows why a white rabbit is considered to be lucky but we know that even mr roosevelt president of United States, said to a friend that he said rabbits on the first of every month. That was reported in a newspaper article in 1935. And it said, what is more, he would not think of omitting the utterance on any account. So it was a real verbal talisman to ward off evil. Forgive me for interrupting, but does your famous Oxford English dictionary not tell us? I'm thinking of Lewis Carroll, and perhaps the most famous white rabbit in literature is the one that appears at the beginning of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. And I imagine Lewis Carroll, because he took these characters that he created,

they were inspired by real things, like the Mad Hatter is, as it were, the idea of a Mad Hatter already existed, and he put it into the book. And White Rabbit probably already existed as a phrase then, and he made the White Rabbit a character. So it's been around for a long time, White Rabbit. It hasn't a rabbit's foot. Poor rabbit has also been used, hasn't it,

as a kind of amulet of some kind or a lucky charm. But looking into this, rabbits haven't always been thought of as lucky because apparently fishermen would not say the word rabbit at sea for fear of what might befall them. And in the southwest, to see a white rabbit in your village when a person was very ill was a really bad sign that the end was upon them. So it's very strange, wrapped up in so many superstitions. I can only think of the rabbit's foot. And you're right, it is obviously a theme that's been picked up throughout literature, but where it began, we don't know. Pinch and a punch. Okay, so there's a theory attached to this. Again, it is almost impossible to verify this, but the theory is that when people believed very deeply in witches, they thought that salt

would make a witch weak. So it would deprive a witch, a bad witch of her power. So the pinch part was said to be a pinching of the salt and the punch part would be then to banish the witch, you know, to punch her away. That's one of several theories. I can't give you the definitive one because I don't think anyone knows it, but it's been a fascinating thing to look into. Thank you very much indeed. And if you're hearing this the moment it goes out, you'll be listening to it on the 1st of December 2020. So pinch and the punch for the first of the month and white rabbits to you too. But bear in mind, we like to think that these episodes are timeless and there's a back catalogue of 85, 86 earlier ones.

Not so many. So feel free to listen. People, sometimes they binge and they have binges on things. What's the origin of the word binge, by the way? Binge is, now I have a feeling that binge might be related to bilge. Yes, it's a nautical term. It meant to soak a wooden vessel. So that was the idea. So much as you might soak your body these days, originally it was to soak a wooden vessel. So it really meant to wash or soak something, either at sea or on land. And apparently it was taken up by boozy students at Oxford University to mean to soak your innards with alcohol. So you began with an alcoholic binge,

but now you have binge viewing. And we hope in the case of Something Rhymes with Purple, binge listening. You have box setting. Don't know if that's a verb yet. Gosh. Ginny has been in touch. G-I-N-I.

I'm sick to my hind teeth of Brexit, But where on earth did that expression come from? Not Brexit, but being sick to your hind teeth. Sick to the back teeth. Sick to the hind teeth. for a very long time. I'm going to start with fed up actually, because that's quite interesting. That dates from the early 19th century when it was a kind of insult towards kind of languid aristocrats who were compared to animals that had been kind of fattened up and plumped for market and had very little vigour or energy left. So to be fed up originally meant to be literally full of food and to be slightly oversated. And then if you were fed up in different ways, metaphorically speaking, you might be filled with gloom or melancholy or just irritation, frustration, etc. So that's fed up. The back teeth is just simply an extension of so many different versions of the same thing. So we had hind teeth, which you mentioned you had fed up to the eyeballs.

That was another early one. So it simply means, you know, to a sort of high up part of your body, there's no more to it than that. And I suppose your back teeth means that, you know, it goes all the way back in your mouth. But I don't think much thought was put into it. I think it's just a figurative expression of being really, really fed up. Well, I'm fed up with this

week's questions. No, I'm not. Please do keep them coming. Communicate with us, purple at somethingelse.com. And if you tweet us, we will try to pass on the tweets as well so that they're all together and we can do our best to answer any queries. I say we, as Susie does all that hard work. I just try to interject now and then you are as the spectator review lovely spectator review said this week you are the blazing showman to my lexicon so there you go that's what you do good well I'm ready to blaze while you lexy now look tell me why have you got three wonderful words that we weren't familiar with but ought to be familiar with your trio Susie's trio of the week.

Well, you know, when you sort of think, oh, why don't we have a word for this? Sometimes we have a word for things that you probably will never need, but it's nice to know that there is one for it. You know, the glowing part of a candle wick after it's been blown out and it just glows for a little bit. That I've discovered is called a snit. The snit? The snit, which I quite like.

Lovely. And close to that in the dictionary, for a suppressed laugh, is a snurtle. A snurtle? A snurtle. It's a bit like a snigger, but it's even more suppressed than a snigger. It's when you stop the laugh. As it begins, you stop it. Yes, and it usually stops in your nose.

That's a snurtle. Yes, that's a snurtle. I like it. And one that I think just stands, speaks for itself really in our current political times here and overseas, a roarback. That's R-O-O-R-B-A-C-K. You might know this one, Giles, actually, because it's from politics. It's a false and more or less damaging report circulated for political effect, usually about a candidate seeking an office. A rawback. A rawback. And is that quite an old word?

It's not too old, actually. And it's definitely been harnessed by modern politicians. It's kind of mid-1800s, 1850. Well, it's quite old. Well, I guess so. Older than us. Snit, snurtle and rawback. Well, that's a terrific trio. I've got a poem to share with you. And it's one written by one of our listeners. Wow. Which is rather wonderful.

Mark Graham, who's become an almost the lockdown laureate. He writes poems about the whole lockdown experience. And he's written one called Stepping Out. We can go for a walk and eat in the street. But tennis and golf are a tad too elite. Swimming's been banned. You apparently sicken on contact with chlorine, unless you're a chicken. You can meet with one other and even share seats,

though it's best to avoid older men bearing sweets. So there's really no reason for feeling depressed. Just put on your mask and hope for the best well done mark graham thank you very good yes well done thank you for that i think that's it isn't it i think that might be the the end of our current little foray into words potions and lotions if you would like to write in and we do love it when you do please can you contact us email us at purple at something else dot com something rhymes with purple is a something else production produced by laurence passage

with additional production from harriet well steve ackerman ella mcleod j beale and no sumpf he gully