Something Rhymes with Purple - Xocolatl

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

It’s a chock-a-block episode today as we dive into the chocolate box to discover how our favourite fillings got their names. We’ll hear the ‘sweet’ story that gave us the Praline, what a hor...se's lower jaw and Ganache have in common and why the strong smelling fungus and the lovely truffle filling are etymological twins. Susie takes us back to university in search for the origin of being ’Toffee nosed’ and Gyles shares an extract from a recent book purchase which adds a purr-fect addition to this ever so sweet episode. We also launch our 200th Episode Challenge where we are asking the Purple People to tell Gyles and Susie about any linguistic gaps that they want filling! Ever experienced a feeling and thought, ‘There must be a word for that?’ Then put it to Susie and Gyles and see if they can find the answer. Susie and Gyles also want to hear your suggestions so it’s time for us all to be etymology detectives! Please email purple@somethinelse.com with the subject line, ‘Is there a word for?’ Please submit entries by the 31st December. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: purple@somethinelse.com 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 by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Bibacity: the quality of ‘drinking much’ Ribroast: give a good talking to Timepleaser: one who complies with the prevailing agreements no matter what they are. Gyles read ‘Magic’ by John K. Harris Writing is a magic kind of caper It really is remarkable to think Here we have a simple piece of paper With spells upon it, printed out in ink To conjure up my voice inside your head I’m speaking to you from inside your brain Or is this your voice that you hear instead? Or maybe, more a mixture of the twain? For when I write down ‘I’ do I mean ‘me’? Or reading, do you think that ‘I’ is ‘you’? From where I sit inside your skull I see that while I’m here you’re there, but I’m there too So while you read this sonnet rhyme by rhyme we’re in at least two places at one time. 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 podcastadsales@sonymusic.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins
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Starting point is 00:01:04 Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. I'm Giles Brandreth, introducing Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language, and it's made possible because of my partner, who is the world's leading lexicographer. Her name is Susie Dent. How are you, Susie? Do you know what, for a minute there, I thought, oh, I wonder who he's talking about. I'm very well, thank you very much. I have recovered my voice, Jaz, because for the first time, I think ever, I entirely lost it. I wasn't just a little bit hoarse, it just went completely. It's very disconcerting. Well, when that happened to me a few years ago, I went to the doctor and I said, I'm doing a big event tonight and I've lost my voice. I said,
Starting point is 00:01:50 I've lost my voice. And he said, well, don't worry. I deal with rock stars who have abused their voices over many years and I get them onto the stage. Are you at the O2? I said, I'm not at the O2. I said, but I'm at quite a large theatre. And he said, don't worry. And he injected me with steroids. Oh. Yeah, into my throat. That must be so painful. Well, I just thought about the money I was going to earn at the end of the day and put up with it.
Starting point is 00:02:20 And curiously, he did get me so that somehow I could speak. But I'm not recommending it. So why did you lose your voice? Just a virus. I just didn't look after myself properly. As in, I was just working too hard and talking too much where I should have rested my voice. Anyway, delighted to have it back. I'm sucking on lozenges in case you feel a little bit of rattling going on my end.
Starting point is 00:02:44 Weena, you suck what you like. I wanted to ask you, do you still have a cat? I do have a cat, Beau. Oh, Beau. There you go. Can you see her? Oh, Beau. Yes. I love Beau. You know, we've still got the neighbour's cat, Nala. Yes. I was dipping into a delightful book by Henry Elliot, which is a book of bookish lists, and it's full of amusing things in it.
Starting point is 00:03:06 He's got a list of the names of the cats of some of our favourite authors. Okay. And it's just delightful. Charles Dickens, he had a cat called Bob, which is nice, not far from Beau. And when Bob died, according to this book, Dickens had his, oh dear, his paw stuffed and mounted on an ivory letter opener. I don't know I would do that. Would you? Definitely not doing that, no. Mark Twain, we have listeners in America, his cat was called Bambino, which is not a bad name for a cat, is it? Edward Lear had a famous cat and wrote poems about it called Foss, F-O-S-S. Now you
Starting point is 00:03:42 should know this, Samuel Johnson, the great Dr. Johnson, one of the pioneers of dictionary making, he had a cat. And when I tell you the name, you will kick yourself because you'll remember it. Hodge. Does that ring a bell? Yes, it does.
Starting point is 00:03:56 It does ring a bell. We're talking about sweet things that also are comfort things as well, which is why I was thinking of cats. Because what I ought to do is spend more time stroking Nala than I do opening a box of chocolates. They're so moorish. My favourite chocolates are Bendix bittermints. Oh, yes, I love Bendix. And do you remember Elizabeth Shaw mint crisps? Oh, my goodness. My mum absolutely loved those. Well, still does love
Starting point is 00:04:22 those. They're a bit like Bendix, actually. They're not quite so posh i think yeah no well they're still pretty posh bendix aren't so much posh as expensive so if mr bendix is listening it feels like sending us crates of them sponsored by bendix yeah we are wouldn't that be wonderful do you have a favorite flavor of a chocolate i think my favorite chocolate would be at the moment a finger of fudge. Do you remember that? This was a Cadbury's, it is still a Cadbury's chocolate bar. I can hear the advertisement. Isn't it interesting how it stays in your head? Oh, it's one of the most successful ads ever, which is a finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat. A finger of fudge is just enough until it's time to eat. It's full of Cadbury's goodness, but very small and neat. A finger of fudge is just enough to give a kid a treat. There you go. Free ads.
Starting point is 00:05:03 Cadbury's goodness, but very small and neat. A fring of fudge is just enough to give a kid a treat. There you go. Free ads. Before you tell me about the origin of the word fudge, which could be the name of a cat, tell me about the origin of the word chocolate. It started off really with the Aztecs, believe it or not, and also the Mayans. I mean, the Mayans were the first to explore cocoa beans, really, and they used them as a form of currency. They were thought to be that sort of valuable, but they also made them into a spicy drink. And this was used at some of their religious ceremonies. And then if you remember, the Mayan merchants introduced the cocoa bean to the Aztecs and they taught them how to prepare what became known in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, as xocolatl, which means bitter water, believe it or not.
Starting point is 00:05:46 And the Aztec emperor Montezuma would have this bitter water served in cups of pure gold, etc. Anyway, then the recipe, the word, I suppose, escaped and went to Spain with the Spanish warriors. Spanish court loved this foamy beverage that they began to sweeten and call chocolate, or chocolate, chocolate. And then eventually it spread throughout the rest of Europe as well. And if you remember, Samuel Pepys famously talks about going to a coffee house to drink chocolate, as he called it. Very good, he pronounces. So very much a hot chocolate drink really before it became the solid stuff that we like today.
Starting point is 00:06:23 So the solid, the idea of a chocolate, the sweet, the chocolate, as opposed to the chocolate bar, when does the sweet come into being? I think that wasn't until around the late 1800s, 1900s, really, that we began to sort of enjoy it as a solid thing. And, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's never gone out of fashion, really, ever since, has it? Well, it's a chocolate casing often filled with something inside, including fudge.
Starting point is 00:06:49 So tell me about the word fudge. It's such a good word. It is such a good word. So it's an interesting one because I think the origin of this is unknown. And, you know, today we talk about fudging something in terms of sort of manipulating it, but in a way that's quite misleading. The early usage of fudge was actually very different. It meant to turn out as expected, or also to kind of merge seamlessly together. And it's that idea of merging and mixing that
Starting point is 00:07:17 probably gave rise to its use in chocolate or confectionery. But then it came to mean merging not seamlessly, but in quite a clumsy or underhand manner. So sort of cobbling something together. And that led to us saying, oh, fudge, which is probably a euphemism as well for something a bit ruder, and the sort of fudging of facts and that kind of thing. But yeah, originally it was merging together. Because when you mix up the sugar, the butter and the milk, or the cream to make the fudge, that's what you're doing. Is that your favourite filling? Do you look for a fudge filled chocolate?
Starting point is 00:07:49 I love really good praline. What is praline and what's the origin of that word? So, well, I haven't asked you what your favourite is actually when you dip into the tin or the box of chocolates. But praline is kind of made by boiling nuts in sugar and then grinding the mixture down really and it can be soft but it can i think be hard as well and you can get a sort of hard it was named after the marshal de plessy praline spelt c-r-a-s-l-i-n it's an eponym it is an eponym he was a sugar industrial really. So he was one of the early people to sort of make money out of this kind of sweet stuff, if you like. And he had a chef called Clément. And Clément apparently, allegedly, created the original French praline because he dropped almonds accidentally into some boiling sugar. So that's one version of the story. Another one tells how the Marshal or Maréchal, who had a certain reputation, asked Clément the
Starting point is 00:08:52 chef to concoct this treat to seduce the ladies. And it's said then Clément then produced these little boxes of caramelized almonds that had his master's name upon them, which is how they became known as praline, with the S in it still. And then that is how we think we got to our sort of modern creation. But definitely it is an eponym, just not quite sure of the root. So the Belgian kind, the ones we know today, a little bit more, slightly different creation, different recipe. I love the way you say the Belgian kind, as though we all knew they came from Belgium. I had no idea they came from Belgium. Well, so the Marchal du Plessis-Prelin, he was in France in the 17th century.
Starting point is 00:09:32 But then the Belgians started experimenting with all kinds of recipes. And the Belgian kind are kind of individual chocolate cells that are filled with soft centres. And for them, really, we have to thank Jean Neuhaus in Brussels in 1912. Now, he had an apothecary. So he had a family chemist business and he used to serve chocolate-coated medicines. Why don't we have these these days? So Mary Poppins styles, being full of sugar to help the medicine go down. These were chocolate-covered medicines and chocolate-coloured
Starting point is 00:10:03 coated creams and that kind of thing. And then they abandoned the medicines and decided to go with pure chocolates with these fantastic soft centers and they also patented together with his wife who was called louise agostini they patented the ballot or a biotin which is b-a-l-l-o-t-i-n and that is the small decorative box, really beautifully ornate, that you still see Belgian chocolates served in today. Well, this is charming. You mentioned caramelisation.
Starting point is 00:10:33 Caramel is a favourite chocolate filling, isn't it? What is the origin of caramel? Is that a person as well? Was there a cara or mel or... Anyway, who was caramel? No, actually, it comes from the late Latin calamelis, which comes from an older Latin word even, meaning honey cane. So the canna is a cane and the melis comes from mel meaning honey.
Starting point is 00:10:55 So sweetness at its heart there. Very good. What is a toffee? I mean, caramel and toffee are pretty similar, aren't they? I think toffee is a little bit chewier than caramel, I would say. And caramel is often quite gooey and runny, isn't it? Whereas toffee is firm. I mean, it softens when you chew it.
Starting point is 00:11:12 But that's made by boiling together sugar and butter, and then you might get some other things thrown in. So that is an alteration of an earlier word, taffy. T-A-F-F-Y. Nothing to do with a taffy that's a name for a Welshman. It was originally taffy, but we're not completely sure where that comes from. I'd love it to have some kind of onomatopoeic beginning,
Starting point is 00:11:32 you know, for sort of the sound of getting something stuck in your teeth, but don't know where taffy comes from. So we don't know where taffy, and therefore toffee comes from. We know toffee comes from taffy, but we don't know where taffy originates. Yeah, we don't know where that originates.
Starting point is 00:11:43 And then if you can't do something for toffee, which is slightly dated, I suppose now, which means, oh, you're totally incompetent at it if you can't do it for toffee. That is first recorded in 1914. So toffee certainly was quite a desirable commodity for soldiers during the First World War. And you can imagine, you know, how wonderful it would be to have something so sweet and luscious. And so that's probably why toffee was uppermost in their mind, because the first record, as they say, that we have of can't do something for toffee is in the mouth of a British, Tommy, a British soldier.
Starting point is 00:12:16 Why are people called toffee-nosed? Okay, so I think that goes back to being tufty-nosed, really. Now, do you remember when I was talking about the origin of toff? Indeed, this is all to do with the hat and the tassel on the hat. Yes. It's the gold tassel on the caps of titled undergrads at Oxford and Cambridge. And social climbers and toadies, really, then became known as tuft hunters. So people who wanted that kind of, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:46 distinction. And the associations there probably influenced toffee-nosed or snobbish. Again, originally military slang. Now, I always assumed that toffee-nosed was because toffees are malleable. Toffee is a malleable substance. And you could sort of make it like a nose that was up in the air, a toffee-shaped nose. But you don't think it's anything to do with that? No, I don't, actually. But it's ingenious.
Starting point is 00:13:11 I'm off on a wild goose chase where I want to find some ganache. What's ganache? Oh, ganache. Oh, ganache. That is that really gooey, rich, chocolatey mixture that often tops cakes. And yeah, this has got such a surprising etymology. So bear with me on this because it actually takes its name from a French word for a fool, which in turn takes its name from an even older French word for the lower jaw of a horse.
Starting point is 00:13:38 Good grief. Really odd. Okay. So let's start with the jaw bit. So ganache actually comes from the Greek for jaw, which is gnatos with a silent G, G-N-A-T-H-O-S. And that, by the time it eventually travelled through several European languages, arrived in English to mean a horse's jaw, and it also meant the same in French in the middle of the 17th century. So the idea probably between the jaw and a fool, which, if you remember, was the later meaning of that French word ganache, is probably because if you're a fool, you're a bit slack-jawed, you kind of stand there with your mouth open. It's probably just sort of having a kind of droopy, open gape.
Starting point is 00:14:22 Then a French playwright called Victorien Sardou, he wrote a play in the 1800s. He wrote a play called Les Ganaches, which ridiculed all of those who hold kind of reactionary views, essentially. Again, the idea of people who are just not very clued up. And so again, people who are just not very clued up. And so again, a little bit slack-jawed, if you like. And it was so successful that a Parisian patisserie house began selling chocolate bonbons called ganache, possibly as a tribute to the play, possibly a satirical swipe at politicians at the time. Whatever the inspiration, it is that that then gave us the chocolatey sense of ganache today. But what a strange journey that's had. It's a wonderful journey. I love it. Very strange. Do you like nougat? I do love nougat, actually. Yes, I do. Do you?
Starting point is 00:15:17 You would have nougat without having the chocolate coating. But nougat is spelt, isn't it? N-O-U-G-A-T and i think of it as a north african sweet but i maybe i'm wrong oh like you're thinking marzipan almost so nougat is made from sugar honey and then nuts and egg white and the nuts are key here because it actually came to us by french nougat and then a provencal word meaning nut simple as that good. When I remember in the 1950s, there was a vogue for chocolates being eaten in the theatre. You went to the theatre with a box of chocolates. That was your treat.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Yeah, yeah. But people complained about the noise of unwrapping the chocolates, the sort of plastic paper around your chocolates, and then the noise. And so somebody marketed a quiet chocolate wrapping for taking to the theatre. And it was all soft wrapping, so it didn't make a noise when you unwrapped the chocolate.
Starting point is 00:16:14 Is that amusing? I think I've mentioned this before, but when I lived in Germany for a little bit, I used to go to the cinema on my own quite a lot, and it was in Hamburg for a little while. They had this just the most perfect thing that i've never seen reproduced anywhere else essentially you go and you buy a box of chocolates with no crinkly crackly bits and they contain ice cream so that
Starting point is 00:16:37 a traditional chocolate box but inside each chocolate is a little bit of ice cream it was just the best thing ever it Oh, I love that idea. It was just gorgeous. And they look like traditional chocolates. And speaking of ice cream, if people come to the Fortune Theatre on the 18th of December, we have an interval in our live show. And we, Susie and I, this is a treat for us,
Starting point is 00:16:59 get offered a free ice cream by the management. Did you know that? I had it last time. I just chose the vanilla. You did. And then we went off on one on the origin of vanilla. Oh, yes, we did, of course. If you come, I'm sure this will be mentioned again.
Starting point is 00:17:11 But do come and join us if you'd like to. It's the 18th of December. That's a Sunday just before Christmas, the week before Christmas, the Sunday before Christmas. So we'll have to have a special festive edition. And what are we going to talk about? Well, I suppose Christmas stockings. So maybe things that you wear on your nether regions. Would that be a good idea? have a special festive edition and what are we going to talk about well i suppose christmas stockings so maybe things that you wear on your your nether regions would that be a good idea stockings undergarments undergarments there's there's a whole lexicon undergarments i'm just before we go to uh the break i just want to explain a little bit because it was it's always confused me how a strong smelling fungus called a truffle can have anything to do
Starting point is 00:17:46 with the truffle that's the soft chocolatey sweet. Oh, very good. Please do. Yeah. Well, it's a bit weird, really. So both of them go back to the Latin tuber, you know, as in a tuber, T-U-B-E-R, meaning a hump or swelling, essentially. And that will kind of explain the sort of earthy hump or swelling that you might find that is the kind of the fungus, really, that you'll find in woodlands. And it's the culinary delicacy, really incredibly exotic. And I think the chocolate probably just looks a little bit like it. I think it must be, again, the shape, the sort of the thought of a protuberance of some kind, which is all a bit odd and not very exotic when it comes to chocolate. But anyway, there is a link between the two. So the two words are connected, even though
Starting point is 00:18:28 they're so different. I went to a restaurant once in a hotel in London. I was not paying, I'm glad to say, where the person ordered, wanted to truffle, shavings of truffle on top of their pasta. It was an Italian restaurant. And the bill, wait for it, for the truffle, £300. Oh, no. Isn't that shocking? That's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. If you want nice ice creams, no truffle being served at our live show on the 18th of December,
Starting point is 00:18:57 you can find out all about it and get tickets by going to somethingrhymeswithpurple.com. Oh, you can obviously follow us on social media, Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook, or Something Rhymes With on Instagram. Should we take a quick break now to recover from... Take a really short break. Yeah, I'm going in search of a Bendix bitumen. Oh.
Starting point is 00:19:19 Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, who do you want to be comfortable with?
Starting point is 00:19:46 Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express
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Starting point is 00:20:28 Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple. And Giles, before we go on to our fantastic correspondence, guess what? Do you know what's happening on the 31st of January? Yes, the 1st of February will be the next day. We are turning 200. Good grief. So we have a 200th birthday coming up and we decided, at least I decided and I'm now sharing it with you, that we're doing something really special. Tell me what you think about this. I would love to challenge
Starting point is 00:20:59 the purple people to submit their head scratches as is there a word for X, Y, or Z? Linguistic gaps, essentially. So the purple people love to email us with, you know, why isn't there a word for this, or is there a word for that? And we're going to try and answer them. What do you think? I think it's a brilliant idea. It'll be our 200th episode, which is extraordinary. That's four years or so of Something Rhymes with Purple, a growing community across the world. And we're challenging you to come up with a word that describes, well, for example, is there a word that describes the feeling of simultaneous elation and horror? Excitement, you see. Yay!
Starting point is 00:21:37 It's happening in horror that four years have passed. Yes, there is. Oh, there is already, is there? Yes, there is. Do you want to know what it is? Yes, there is. Oh, there is already, is there? Yes, there is. Do you want to know what it is? Yes, I do. It's the Norwegian gruglede, which means happy dread. It's a kind of strange thing.
Starting point is 00:21:53 Anyway, yes, so there is one for that. But there will be lots and lots of things that we probably don't have words for, and we might need the Purple People's help with it. But I'm really looking forward to this. I think it'd be a really fun episode. Good. Okay. Is it time for our correspondence?
Starting point is 00:22:05 It certainly is. And time for Jenny Frame. Hi, Giles and Susie. Hi, Giles and Susie. After recently discovering your podcast, I've been binging each episode from the beginning. I was wondering if you could tell me where the phrase chock-a-block comes from, as in the streets were chock-a-block. Thank you for that, Jenny. I can give you the answer. Do you know this, Giles? I do. It's when you are, a lot of people who are also desperate for Bendix bitumens are filling the street because they've heard that some are on the, for sale at the end. So it's relevant. That's the chock part.
Starting point is 00:22:40 Oh, block of people queuing for a chock. Exactly. No, I've no idea. I love that. Well, it was one, it is one of hundreds and hundreds of English expressions that come from the high seas because it began with nautical use when chalk a block meant having two blocks run close together. And that's the tackle that we're talking about now. And a chalk here is a wedgel block that is placed against an object to prevent it from moving. So used particularly now with aircraft. So if an aircraft needs to be stopped
Starting point is 00:23:12 from moving forward, a chock will be placed against it, which is why, of course, we have the famous chocks away expression for when those blocks are taken away. So it also explains chock full because things are so, are run so closely together that you just can't move. And the idea of lock as well. And of course the sound helped to chock a block, but yeah, the chock is a wedge really placed against an object born on the high seas. Now in the next one, Giles, I think we have a lovely voice note from Natalie Benjamin. Hello, Susie and Giles. think we have a lovely voice note from Natalie Benjamin hello Susie and Giles I have just listened to your bread episode cobbler and it made me wonder about the word banjo when I was growing up my dad would always call a fried egg sandwich an egg
Starting point is 00:23:58 banjo but I have never heard it used about any other filling I wonder if this is just my dad or sometimes the odd things he says have roots in military slang as he was in the Navy. I wonder if you could shed some light. Best wishes and thanks. Nat from Nottingham. Oh, that's brilliant. An egg banjo. I wasn't completely sure about this, so I had to look it up in the wonderful Johnson Green's Dictionary of Slang, where he explains that banjo essentially was applied as a slang term for anything that was kind of round in object or similarly shaped. So I can only think that here we're talking about a frying pan. So fried eggs, eggs cooked in a
Starting point is 00:24:39 banjo, and so eggs banjo were therefore fried. And it's one of just so many fantastic words, particularly within the Navy, toast, floaters in the snow, sausage and mash, car smash, tinned tomatoes and bacon, or a train smash is a car smash with sausages, and so on and so on. My favourite of all of them, I have to say, Neptune's dandruff. Any idea what that is? Neptune's dandruff. Well, it's something from the sea, clearly, because Neptune is the king of the seas. Yes. Tell me. Sea salt. Oh. It was perfect, isn't it? I love that. That really is clever.
Starting point is 00:25:28 Yeah, it is. Oh, I'm yell. All from the Navy. So thank you so much for that, because it reminded me of all those slang terms that I love from the military. But anyway, shall I give you my trio? I hope you've got a terrific trio for us this week.
Starting point is 00:25:40 Have you? Well, I think one of these is at least, in fact, maybe all of them are going to be familiar or at least decodable by the purple people. I'll start with bibacity. You will know this one, George, if you're bibacious. Bibacious? Well, no, I know vivacity. Bibacity. It's something to do with drinking? Bibulous? Yes. Yeah. And I mentioned in our last episode that I was enjoying riffling through Samuel Johnson's dictionary. And here it is mentioned simply as the quality of drinking much, which I think covers
Starting point is 00:26:11 a multitude of sins, which I quite like. He also reminded me of rib roasting. And to rib roast is to give someone a good talking to. Oh, that's very good. Which is quite good. And this one is quite nice as well. I mean, you know, there's so many insults in any dictionary, but particularly Johnson's. A time pleaser. And a time pleaser is someone who complies with the prevailing notions, the notions of the time, no matter what they are. In other words, they're a bit sequacious, which if you remember means slavishly following other people's beliefs without really interrogating them too much. means slavishly following other people's beliefs without really interrogating them too much.
Starting point is 00:26:45 Your vocabulary is extraordinary. You are extraordinary, Susie Dent. I love your words. I'm not, but I would love to hear one of your poems. Well, I've got a new poem. A friend and neighbour of mine called James K. Harris dropped a little book off on me the other day. 14 by 14 is what it's called.
Starting point is 00:27:03 And it's 14 sonnets. Because as you know, a traditional sonnet has 14 lines. And I opened the book, and the first sonnet is about the magic of writing. So if you are out there, if you are a poet, in fact, if you're a budding poet, you think you've got a poem we should be reading, do get in touch with us. It's something at, no, it's not. It's purple at somethingelse.com, something without a G. So this is a poem called Magic. It's a sonnet by John K. Harris.
Starting point is 00:27:33 Writing is a magic kind of caper. It really is remarkable to think, here we have a simple piece of paper with spells upon it, printed out in ink. To conjure up my voice inside your head, I'm speaking to you from inside your brain. Or is this your voice that you hear instead? Or maybe more a mixture of the twain? For when I write down I, do I mean me? Or reading, do you think that I is you? From where I sit inside your skull, I see that while I'm here, you're there, but I'm there too. So while you read this sonnet rhyme by rhyme, we're in at least two places
Starting point is 00:28:13 at one time. Oh, that's gorgeous. It's clever too, isn't it? Yeah. Very, very clever. We were talking just the other day in one of our bonus episodes, actually, about that use of I. Does it mean me or does it mean all of us? Which is exactly what that's talking about. I love that. Thank you. We hope you loved it too. Please keep following us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please, if you did enjoy today, please recommend us to friends and family. Something Rhymes with Purple is a Something Else in Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Harriet Wells with additional production from Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale,
Starting point is 00:28:47 Teddy Riley and well, I'd like to give him a good rib roast if only I could find it. Oh no, that sounds very rude. No, but we know what it means so it's alright. He'd be so lucky. Hey, gully.

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