Something Rhymes with Purple - Treasure House

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

From the latin word dicere meaning ‘to speak, to tell or to say’. This week Susie and Gyles are looking at the ultimate word bible, the dictionary!  Gyles ponders the difference between a glossary and a dictionary.  And Susie delves into prescriptivism vs descriptivism  We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' And now for three bite sized words from Susie in her trio: Thruffable: Open and transparent (through). Wambliness: An upheaval of the stomach. Boodyankers: An exclamation of surprise or delight (Northumberland). Gyles’s poem comes from his friend and neighbour James K Harris and is called ‘I Don’t’   I don't, of course, mean everything I say.  I mean, sometimes, I don't know what I mean.  Sometimes I have a thought which goes astray.  I start describing blue, it turns out green.  The alphabet is very volatile. Its union is hard to bring to heel. It's easy to fall victim to its guile.  You think you're describing what you feel, but then you find the words describing you. And so one sees oneself in their dark light. One thinks one is describing what is true, then suddenly one sees one isn't right.  In which case, still, it's true that one was wrong.  Well, truth, in some guys, always comes along. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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. Hello and welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. Before we get into today's episode, we thought now would be a great time to talk about our extra special subscription podcast. Each week, Giles and I sign into the Purple Plus Club and explore even more about the origins and evolutions of words. Right now, we're delighting the world of wit and wisdom and exploring actors, scholars and comedians who've made us laugh or who've lit

up the world with their talents we're having a lot of fun and guess what becoming a subscriber means you get all these main episodes absolutely ad free too it's 2.99 a month which is the price of six eggs uh that's a lovely equation we can't wait to see you over there if you fancy it we would love it if you would join us can i say it's the price of six eggs depending on the supermarket you go to. And if you go organic. Exactly. The supermarket I go to, they have these organic ones that are large. And they say they were made on the farm. You open the box and it's full of feathers, which I think have been sprayed on afterwards. I don't believe it for a moment, but it's all virtually £2.99 an egg, never mind for six eggs.

And you're not talking either about Easter eggs. Have you seen the price of Easter eggs? Oh, I just despair of the fact that they're in the shops at about, you know, January the 1st. They are from Boxing Day. They are in the shops from Boxing Day. Oh, that's ridiculous. It is ridiculous.

Now, Susanna, what are we going to talk about today? Today, well, I have chosen my favorite subject. It is one that we have visited before. Sex. Well, no. But when you said it's your favorite subject, I just had to be silly. We know your favorite subject must be words, or is it not words? What's it going to be?

Well, yes, not too dissimilar from sex, because we were talking about dictionaries today. Oh. Yeah, no connection whatsoever, but equally sexy and exciting, I would say. Yes, yes. If not thrilling. Yes, it's going to be dictionaries. Yes. Very good.

Okay, okay, okay. Well, can you begin by telling us what a dictionary is and where that word comes from? Let's begin at the beginning with dictionary. Yes. Well, I've always thought it's really odd that the same family of words that gave us dictionary also gave us dictator. Because as you know, whether or not dictionaries dictate and prescribe things has been a big subject over the centuries. But dictionary itself is from the Latin dicere, meaning to speak, to tell, or to say. In other words, it covers sayings and expressions. And a dictionaryum in medieval Latin was a collection of these sayings, all these words and phrases. So that is where it comes from.

And you know the Devil's Dictionary? We've mentioned it. I do. The Ambrose Biz. Ambrose Biz. Yeah. Which is a brilliant thing. It's quite old now, but it's very funny. It's full of devilish definitions of existing words. So it's quite like for the British purple people amongst our listenership. If you've ever seen Joe Brand in Dictionary Corner on Countdown, you will appreciate Ambrose Beers because essentially he takes a word and then he makes up his own definition for it.

Although Joe also makes up her word to be fair. But Ambrose Bece defined a dictionary as a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, he said, is a most useful word. And it's so funny, but it's very, very untrue because that is the absolute opposite of what we do. We don't capture language. We don't try and enchain it as Samuel Johnson realized was impossible. We simply describe it. And I think we are always, again, as Samuel Johnson said, chasing the sun. We will never catch up with language in a way that we can capture it. And that's right and proper. I used to keep The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce as a bedside book because he went right through the

alphabet. I loved his definition of admiration. Admiration, noun, our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. I've got a great idea, actually. Well, I like to think it's great. Why don't we dedicate a whole episode for nonsensical dictionaries, but wonderful ones? So we could talk about the meaning of lith, which is brilliant. So basically, works of fiction which purport to be about real language would be lovely, if that makes sense. There's not a very good definition of it, but you know what I mean. It would be really lovely to look more closely at things like the Devil's Dictionary and the meaning of lith. My wife often points to Ambrose Bierce's definition of conversation, which she says,

Giles, you must listen more. And his definition of conversation is this conversation noun, a fair for the display of minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being to interest upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor. Very true. Oh, that's actually quite profound, isn't it? It is. Oh, it is. That is brilliant. But if we do do an episode on that, can we also include the Blackadder Dictionary? Because Blackadder's own version of dictionaries, once he realises he's inadvertently burned Samuel Johnson's dictionary, his own definitions are incredible. So anyway,

I'd love to do an episode on those. But for now, we're talking about the real dictionaries, dictionaries in the real world and their history, because they do actually go back quite a long way. And the word itself in the dictionary, what is the first date given for the word dictionary in your dictionary? Because you worked at the Oxford English Dictionary, which is still regarded as the great dictionary. I suppose Americans would say that Webster, the dictionary founded by Noah Webster, would be their great dictionary. But in the dictionary, what's the first use of dictionary cited? In English, in the 16th in the early 16th century is when we get to hear about it. And actually, I think we're never going to be able to cover

everything in this first episode. So in the second episode, we're going to look at the OED, which is, as you say, the mother of all dictionaries. It's beautiful. But yes, so the first dictionaries in English, and bear in mind there were lots and lots of dictionaries from ancient times, glossaries as well, Arabic dictionaries as well. But the first dictionaries in the English language were in fact, or they did in fact involve other languages as well. So they were glossaries of French, Spanish, or Latin. They were like bilingual dictionaries essentially. So they would give the original, and then they would give their definitions in English. Forgive me, what's the difference between a glossary and a dictionary?

So, a glossary is, we tend to think of a glossary as something quite short. I mean, lexicographers still talk about glossing a word, which means to give a meaning for it, in other words. And a gloss also can be a word inserted between the lines or in the margin as an explanation for a difficult word, for example. But a glossary with the same idea was a kind of collection of explanations of particularly difficult words, or I say difficult, ones that were considered opaque or from dialect or were just a little bit abstruse. So it's a kind of partial dictionary rather than in the full sense of the word.

And actually that glossary and the glosses go back to a Greek word, which essentially is all about words and it's all about language. It means a word that needs explanation. Very good. What was the first proper dictionary in the sense that went from A to Z, as we would think of it now, listing the words and defining them? That was before Dr. Johnson, wasn't it? Yeah, not hugely before, though. So, you might think of it as being quite late in the game compared with other languages. So 1604, we have what is pretty much regarded as the first alphabetical dictionary in English. And indeed, it was called a table alphabetical. And it was written by an English school teacher called Robert Cordray. There's only one copy left that you will find in the Bodleian Library here in Oxford. And it had its faults inevitably because it was the first one.

In fact, some people considered it to be unreliable, undefinitive. And Philip Stanhope, who was the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, 150 years after Cordray published his book, was calling it a disgrace to our nation. And that was not because of Cordray himself, but he considered it to be inferior compared with European competitors who were coming out with proper dictionaries. He noticed the fact that we were quite behind. He noticed the fact that we were quite behind. And that's where Samuel Johnson's dictionary comes in because it was considered to be the first definitive dictionary of the English language, which is what he called it. And that was published in 1755. And is this Lord Chesterfield you just referred to, is he the same person that Samuel Johnson vainly asked if he would support him writing this dictionary,

because creating the dictionary, I mean, Samuel Johnson is a fascinating figure anyway. And we've talked about him a lot, haven't we? We have, because he's one of the giants. And the joy of Samuel Johnson is if you are ever in England, come from around the world, please go to Litchfield, where he was born, where his house is now open as a museum. He came down from Litchfield with his friend, the great actor David Garrick, and he settled in London in a house that you can still see in Goff Square, just off Fleet Street, where some of his library is still on show. Huge, fascinating figure about whom you can read, of course, because he, Boswell, James Boswell, his friend and companion for a while, when they went on travels

together, wrote his biography. So he decides to write a dictionary. He appeals to Lord Chesterfield for money. Lord Chesterfield turns him down. And then later, I think when he publishes the dictionary, Lord Chesterfield then comes along and says, oh, yes, well, I'd like to support this. And famously, Dr. Johnston scorns him and says, you know, when I needed you, you weren't there. Now I don't need you. I don't want you.

Fantastic. So that's why he's famous. I mean, Dr. Johnston is famous because of that. I mean, he got a degree, I think. He got an award in honorary MA, wasn't he, from Oxford for creating the dictionary. Yes, and I think we dedicate a whole episode, I think, of the pod many moons ago to Samuel Johnson because he was so influential. the reason why he is so interesting in quite a poignant way is that he set out to try to freeze language because he evidence of the grades of Shakespeare, of Milton, for evidence of how a word was used and should be used. He didn't know everything by his own admission. So, some of his definitions he will

say, pretty much, I don't know what this is, but he'll give it a go. But he realised in the course of writing his dictionary, which took quite a long time, and the French were way ahead of us, he realized that he couldn't, in fact, freeze language, that he couldn't hope to capture it, that we are, as I said at the beginning, always chasing the sun, which I think is a beautiful metaphor. And so, he actually opened his hand, his palm to English in a way which he hadn't done before. And to modern lexicographers, that is so interesting because, of course, we have the whole debate over prescriptivism versus descriptivism. Oh, please, sorry, you've got to explain the difference between those two. I've not heard this phrase before. Prescriptivism and descriptivism.

What does that mean? Yeah, so prescriptive is from the Latin prescriptum, which means ordained, really, or to direct. So, the idea of a prescriptive dictionary is that it tells you how you should use a word. It will tell you not to use it in a certain way. If, for example, the lexicographer's writing the entry for literally used in a non-literal way, I literally died laughing. I literally laughed my head off. Had they been prescriptive, they would have said this is a modern slang shift in usage of which we do not approve or whatever, or they might say only to be used in certain contexts. Modern dictionaries do not do that, and certainly not English dictionaries. I think arguably, Giles, any attempt to govern language or lay down any kind of linguistic law

is doomed to fail because it's not a tangible beast that you can tame. It will go wherever we want it to go. So yeah, I mean, the French do have an Académie Française, and they famously tried to stand the tide of anglicisms coming in, but there is still a steady stream, it has to be said. Indeed, I can't wait to go to Le Snack Bar. At the weekend. One of my favorite bedside books is a very old Penguin edition from the 1960s of Roger's Thesaurus. Who was Roger and what is a thesaurus? Well, a thesaurus is one of my favorite etymologies of all time, really, because thesaurus goes back to a Greek word meaning treasure house,

which is lovely when you think about it. And I too grew up with Roger's thesaurus, which is probably the most famous thesaurus ever made in 1805 by a British physician, and he was also a lexicographer and a theologian, actually, Peter Mark Roger. And the reason it's so different to modern thesauri, which are mostly on screen these days, aren't they? We don't really have them as much in physical form, is that it's composed of different themes, different classes, many divisions. And they're all conceptualized as this kind of tree that has many different branches. So he links all of the words semantically. And it's lovely because they're like this sort of vast set of colors on a spectrum. It is entirely subjective. And from that point of view, it is not so descriptive, but it is still a lovely, lovely thing. Very good. And for years, when I was a little boy, I thought it was something to do with dinosaurs, because it is the same idea, isn't it? Yeah, the thesaurus. Yeah, so dinosaur,

it's not actually the same. It's the same link. So, dinosaurs in the Greek meaning terrible lizard, and a sauros means a lizard. But there are no end of cartoons on social media of dinosaurs who have swallowed a thesaurus and just spout synonyms, which is lovely. So, that's a lizard, whereas thesauros in Greek was, as I say, a storehouse or a treasure. Well, we're going to talk more about your dictionary. I say it's yours because you actually worked there, the OED, and indeed, I visited it many times in Oxford in a separate episode. So, that's that for now. Let's take a quick break and come back and have some correspondence. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in?

Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Whether it's the weekend, the beginning of summer, or the end of the school year, Celebration Cookies. Celebrate good times. This is Something Rises Purple with Giles Brandreth and Susanna Dent. We've reached the point where we're going to discuss correspondence.

Now, I want to ask you before we go into correspondence, people talk about co-respondent shoes and a correspondent in a divorce case. Oh, yeah, it's true. These are words that have one R as opposed to correspondence, which has two. Could you, for me, this is my letter to you. Dear Susanna, I love something right at the purple. Can you tell me about correspondent and correspondent? What is the difference? And were they ever connected? So it's a very good one. So correspond is from the Latin

cor, C-O-R meaning together, and then respondere meaning to respond. So if something corresponds, it has a close similarity. If you communicate by exchanging letters, if you have correspondence, you are responding together. You're sort of writing, responding, writing, responding. A co-respondent is somebody who responds alongside you. I mean, they're very, very similar. So they are people, I think, cited in divorce cases. I'm not sure I've heard about correspondence shoes. What are they? Well, they are shoes, I think, which have two colors in them.

Oh, well, there you go. I think of them as being sort of robes that might have been worn in the 20s or 30s. Yeah. Where there's a cream-colored toe cap and a brown leather for the rest of the... This is interesting. I've just looked it up for you. Oh, good. Thank you. I didn't know this. 1930s co-respondent shoes. And Oxford Dictionary say it's from the idea that the ostentatious shoes were typical of those worn by a co-respondent in a divorce case. Oh, so there you go. That's lovely.

The kind of person who wears co-respondent shoes is likely to be a louche person who runs off with your wife. Possibly. But also, it's quite interesting that it's possible that brogue, as in he's got a very distinct Irish brogue, is actually named after the shoe, i.e. the people who wore brogues were more likely to have that kind of accent. So shoes and language. In fact, we're doing an episode very soon on shoes,

so we can bring that into it. Wonderful. Before you write in to say it's going to be a load of cobblers, let's see. Cobblers, awls, balls. There you go. That's it. More rhyming slang. And in Australia, you've told us, they have their own version of Cockney rhyming slang. They do. Cobra shower flowers. We have so many listeners in Australia. We should spend more time on Australian English because the first letter today comes from Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia.

And our correspondent, Marilyn, writes to us to say, I am reading Susie's An Emotional Dictionary and loving it. Thank you. Isn't that great? That is lovely. Your books are published in Australia. What was the idea of An Emotional Dictionary? Remind us. Oh, I wrote it largely during lockdown actually. And it was really about the naming of our emotions and how research shows if we can name them, we can have power over them. And it was trying to come up with as many words from the past by reading historical dictionaries for particular emotions that we could do with as well as drawing some in from other languages. Well, clearly it's working down under. Well done. So Marilyn writes,

my dad was a dictionary reader and lover of words. He happily passed that love on to me. One of the words we used was motionary, M-O-I, no, M-O-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y. That second when the car or one's feet changed from being stationary into motion. Oh, my goodness. I've always used it, but I've never been sure if it was a word my dad made up. Am I slightly betwaddled? Loving these lost words. Thanks, Susie and Giles. Kind regards, Marilyn. Oh, betwaddled, betwaddled. Very nice use of that,

Marilyn. Thank you for that. Yes, you're not alone. It is in the dictionary, and believe it or not, it is in from the 17th century. So the very first record we have is from 1612. It's defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as having or causing motion. And that first record is from a book where it says, we are swayed as are the motionary engines of a clock. So it's talking about the ticking mechanism of a clock and how it is constantly in motion. So motion read does exist. Even if it didn't exist, and I think it has more or less faded out of view, it is lovely and quite expressive. So I'm very glad that you've kept it going in your family, Marilyn. From Australia, we go to the United States of America. We go to San Francisco, California. Shari has been in touch with this question. I'm an American, and I often hear the phrase, fallen pregnant on British shows or read it in

novels. Where does this phrase come from? That's intriguing, isn't it? My wife finds that expression offensive. Yeah. As though there's something, as though there's something falling. You're either pregnant or you're not pregnant. That's her view, but it is a well-known expression. What's the origin of it? Well, actually, the earliest incarnation really was to fall with child, and that was from the 15th century. So to fall with child, also to fall with bairn, 15th century. So to fall with child, also to fall with bairn, bairn being a Scots word for a child, was to become pregnant. And then to fall pregnant, you first find around the 1800s, 1810s. So it really was quite rare in North America, certainly before the late 20th century. And some people, like Michelle, your wife, Giles,

probably understandably see a bit of a religious judgment in there that if you fall pregnant, either it's a result of falling into sin or the woman did it all on her own with no intervention from a man, and so the man is sort of left out of the equation for good or bad. But actually, is sort of left out of the equation for good or bad. But actually, if you think about it in broader terms, it's probably simply about a transition from one state to another because we talk about falling in love, don't we? And we don't see that as a bad thing, and there's certainly no religious or moral condemnations there. So I think that's more likely that it is in fact neutral, certainly now, but that doesn't help the associations that we make. So I would say avoid, personally.

Very good. Okay, so avoid falling pregnant. But there, you are being prescriptive rather than descriptive. I am. But I am kind of off-duty. I'm not rising addiction at the moment. I'm with you. And largely, as you know, I am incredibly liberal.

But I just think if you're worried about it, and given that, you know, some people do find it offensive, it's probably best to not use it. Well, words we won't find offensive, but intriguing, are your trio. What three interesting words have you come up with this week? Well, I'm going to start with an exclamation of surprise or delight, which just took my fancy. It's from English dialect. I think this is from Northumberland again, actually. I think we had one last week from Northumberland. And I think you might like this. It's Boody Yankers. Boody Yankers? Boody Yankers. So, B-O-O-D-Y-A-N-K-E-R-S, Boody Yankers. I just like it because we've talked

about exclamations before when we've covered the history of profanity. And I mean, there's many more to be had, actually. So, that's one. I quite like the word thruffable. And to be thruffable is to be open and transparent to everybody. And the thruff is a bit of a regional riff on through. So people can see through you in a good way because you are being entirely open. So I like that one. This one is mentioned in Samuel Johnson's dictionary, and I really love it. Wambliness. So when your stomach wambles, W-A-M-B-L-E-S, it is in a state of disarray, if stomach can be in disarray. It's an upheaval, shall we say. So wambliness is really an upheaval of the stomach. It is a grumbling in the grooselands, as they used

to say, and not particularly pleasant. And you might get it when you are crapulent, which if you remember crapulent, centuries old means feeling ill from the surfeit of food and drink. Well, moderation in all things. Avoid wambliness. Be moderate. Wambliness is just a brilliant, brilliant word. How about your poem for us today? My poem. I've got one written by a friend, a neighbor of mine. He published a little book of poems, and he dropped it through the letterbox. And they're rather delightful. He's called James K. Harris.

And the poem I picked, because we were talking about dictionaries, I wanted one that, well, really involved wordplay. And this poem is simply called I Don't. I don't, of course, mean everything I say. I mean, sometimes I don't know what I mean. Sometimes I have a thought which goes astray. I start describing blue, it turns out green. The alphabet is very volatile. Its union is hard to bring to heel. It's easy to fall victim to its guile. You think you're describing what you feel, but then you find the words describing you.

And so one sees oneself in their dark light. One thinks one is describing what is true, then suddenly one sees one isn't right. In which case, still, it's true that one was wrong. Well, truth, in some guise, always comes along. Aww. Quite a genius, wasn't it? Truth wore out. It is very is very clever well thank you for that and thank you to all the Purple people

for your company today we never take it for granted just a reminder as we said at the top of the Purple Plus Club should you wish

to listen ad free wishen I quite like that should you wishen to listen ad free and we have on there as many of you will know,

some bonus episodes on words and language. Something Wives with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Dio. It was additional production from Charlie Morrell, Jennifer Mystery, Matthias Torres-Sole, Olly Wilson. And lovely to see him. Although he's in a T-shirt. He's a bit nippy today.

It's a gully. Do you know who he T-shirt. It's a bit nippy today. It's Gully. Do you know who he looks like? He looks like the young George Bernard Shaw. Oh, I thought you were going to say George Best. Well, no, because he's got a very full beard. We must put more pictures of Gully on social media so people enjoy his appearance. We have to ask him first.

If you could picture the full beard that George Bernard Shaw, I think now a neglected great writer, Irish origins, but conquered the world with so many plays. Have we done an episode of anything exploring him? I think we have, yeah, maybe. We should do a GBS. He was so influential. We should.

But anyway, Gally would say not bloody likely for sure, because he's a bit camera shy, but we love him.