Something Rhymes with Purple - Yakamoz

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

This week it's all about spreading some joy as we go through words that bring us pleasure. We touch on some old favourites, words that describe joyous things, like halcyon, spindrift and sussuration, as well as words that satisfy in a different way like unprosperousness, or words that are just fun to say, like sausage. Alongside individual words Susie explains why she finds German to be a joyous language and Gyles describes a recent case of anticipointment as well as waxing lyrical about the humble Rolo chocolate. As always, we get through lots of your brilliant emails and questions, Susie has her trio of words and Gyles treats us to a poem about weight-loss written by one Gyles Brandreth. Susie's Trio: Pilgarlic - a bald-headed man Pinguescence - the process of becoming fat Illywhacker - a small-time confidence trickster A Somethin' Else production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple, in which today we are talking not just about language. We always talk about language and words and our passion for them. But today we've chosen a subject close to my heart. I'm Susie Dent, by the way. And it is about beautiful words and restorative words and words that bring us joy. Because let's face it, we could all do with some of those at the moment. And I'm hoping that my co-host, Giles Brandreth, will have not only words that bring him joy, but also a few thoughts on what makes him happy during these troubled times. Hello, Giles.

Oh, it's good to be with you again, Susie. How's your week been? My week has been okay. I think last week I said to you, just a few ups and downs, really, like anybody, not sleeping very well. I'm very four wallowed, which is a word I tweeted the other day, which means wearied from tossing and turning all night. But apart from that, I am getting on. Thank you. And I think, if anything, my anxiety is turning more to kind of coming out of the lockdown and how we cope with that rather than being in it. How about you?

Don't live for the future. Just endure each day at a time. They keep telling us that. I was hoping that you'd been tossing and turning at night because you were trying to find the answer to the challenge that I left you with last week. I shared with you because I did this quiz with questions devised by John Lloyd. And there are going to be two more quizzes. People love quizzes.

Check out Riverside Studios. Go to their website. Just sort of, you know, Google Riverside Studios. And you'll find that they're doing a series of quizzes. I hosted the first one. Stephen Fry is hosting the next. Then Joe Brand is hosting a quiz. And it's raising money, not just for the Riverside Studios, but for NHS charities as well. You can see us. It's not being on television, but it is broadcast or cast to the world. And one of the questions in the quiz I did

was this one, which I gave to you. What was the original title of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22? And I gave you a selection. Catch-back, gotcha, catch-18, catch me if you can. What do you think? I think I know this one. It was catch-18, but because that one was in use, wasn't it, for something or other, I can't remember now what it was in use for. But his publishers actually said, no, we better change the numbers.

And that's what they did. Well, you're almost there. I mean, you're right. The answer is correct. It was Catch-18. And an excerpt from Joseph Heller's Catch-18 made it into a magazine. But another now long forgotten book appeared at the same time, or in fact earlier, called Mila 18, M-I-L-A 18.

So the publisher thought, we don't want people confusing the two, so let's change the title, and came up with Catch 22, which is catchier anyway. And that's what survived. And that's so true of some of the kind of most important works ever published, that actually there was a kind of fairly random arbitrary decision at some point where I'm not sure that quite works. And then it was changed in a second. So I love that. I might give you a quiz question later. And I'll just give you the word that comes into my head when you say words that are full of joy. I love, and I've been feeling this this past few weeks, the word discombobulated. For me, words that bring joy probably are words that sound fun. Yes. How do we define this? Take us into this world of joyous words. Well, the reason I was thinking about this was I wrote an article for the Iron

newspaper recently about what makes a language beautiful. So I wanted to kind of step outside the corona bubble that many of us feel trapped within and just contemplate the most beautiful, expressive, resonant words in any language. And it was wonderful, actually, because it took me around all sorts of languages. One, some that I'm really not familiar with, there's a lovely Turkish word, yakamoz. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that properly, but it's Y-A-K-A-M-O-Z. And it means sea sparkle. It's the glittering of moonlight on the surface of the ocean, which I absolutely love. I was thinking about words in French, for example, because French has this wonderful dedication to being euphonious and mellifluous and beautiful sounding. And it has magical words like

which is the happiness of seeing someone after a long time apart, which I thought was just perfect for now. And, you know, French can sound romantic even when describing the most prosaic of things, like an umbrella is a parapluie and even a boiler, a chaudière, sounds wonderful to me. And there are lots of languages that offer this. And I suppose I was just thinking, you know, what is it, A, that makes a word beautiful? Is it because there's lots of vowels, perhaps? Is it because there's a kind of sibilant, soothing, seductive sound as they kind of exit the mouth? So I was kind of contemplating that. And then I just realised that as I was looking at all of these words, they genuinely did give

me goosebumps quite often and just filled me with happiness because I was taken somewhere else. And that's why I thought it would be a great subject for today. It is a good subject because also we can divide the sound from the meaning. You say, retrouvaille, this French word, fills you with a kind of warmth. You love the sound of it. I know because you've told me, you reminded me what it means. And I think, oh, my gosh, the joy often is not a joy. You're looking forward to it. I met a girl I was at school with, admittedly, more than 60 years ago. And unfortunately, the intervening half century or more had not been kind to either of us. We met at this restaurant, neither of us recognised the other one. We were sitting

at adjacent tables. And she couldn't believe that this old man looking like a mixture of Steptoe Senior and Wurzel Gummidge was the boy she'd known at school. And I couldn't believe that this person could be the beautiful girl that I'd, well, I'd hankered after when she was 12 and I was 11. Big sigh. There is a word for that. It's antisappointment. It's kind of looking forward to something so much and then it doesn't quite fulfil the expectations. Antisappointment. And now I do understand that. The meaning can get in the way of the beauty of the word. Tell me some of the words that you feel are uplifting words and why. Well, turning to English, I do want to mention

German in a little while, because in the end, totally subjective, obviously, and by its very nature, but also, you know, I'd studied this language for years. German took the prize for me as one of the world's most beautiful languages. But when it comes to English, the one thing I kind of decided is it can be as soft as you want it to be or as rasping as you want it to be. It can be grunting or it can be bedazzling, which is a word from Shakespeare, as we've talked before, because it's familiar to us. And so we can give it whatever we want to, but there are some words that just are beautiful. So susurrus or susuration, that is the whispering of a summer breeze, the rustling of the leaves. There is halcyon, which we've mentioned before, and we mentioned very recently. I love halcyon,

just the sound of it, an old word for the kingfisher. Cruisling, which is snuggling under the covers. Spindrift, I think has been one of my trio before. That's the salty tang of the sea as it's kicked up by the wind. And apricity, which is always top of my list, the warmth of the sun on a chilly day. And you've heard all of these before, Giles, but they're just so gorgeous. And they just fill me with something that I just can't define. And I'm not sure the dictionary could either. You are a person of quality and clearly a bit of a romantic. I think I'm made of different and cheaper metal. Because the words I like, if you're asking me to produce a list of words I like

that make me smile, I'd put in words like sausage and other words you've introduced me to, like bumbershoot, furky-tootle. These are words that make me smile. Would you include them in your list? Oh, I definitely would.

Sausage does sound silly no matter what, doesn't it? And do you remember we had bags of mystery, which is what the Victorians called sausages. What is the origin of sausage, by the way? Sausage goes back to the Latin for salt. So salt gave us so many different things. So at the root of sausage is that salus, meaning salt, which also gave us salsa. It gave us salad, which used to be salted vegetables. I mean, so many different words. So it was salted meat, really, a sausage. But it's just... Saucy. Saucy sausage. I love a saucy sausage. And sassy. Sassy is a riff on saucy, so that's salty as well.

There's a marvellous musical called Salad Days in which one of the leading characters has a variety of uncles. And one of them is the captain of a flying saucer. And he has a song that begins, did you ever see a saucer as saucy as mine? Did you ever see a saucer that was even half as fine? I just love the idea of a flying saucer that's saucy. I love that too. Any sausages? Saucy sausages?

It ought to come into the song. We need a saucy sausage. Oh, should we have a competition? No prizes, but just the honour of being featured on Something Rhymes with Purple. Do send us a saucy sausage rhyme or even a tongue twister. Sister Susie sat, you know, frying saucy sausages. Okay. What about, I mentioned bumbashoot, because you told me that word. I can't remember what it means. It's one of my favourites. It means an umbrella.

So it was American slang for an umbrella. So Bumbo is the umbrella bit and the shoot is like a parachute, I guess. And you mentioned Furky Toodle, which was again, Victorian, wonderful slang for flirting and a bit of foreplay is how I describe it. So I have to say to our listeners that Giles suddenly looked up on this Zoom meeting that we're having when I mentioned foreplay there. It was not the mention of foreplay. It was the mention of a bit of foreplay, flirting and a bit of foreplay. Maybe at your school there were rules, you know,

you can't go above the elbow, that sort of thing. What is a bit of foreplay? I'm not sure. as to maybe at your school there were rules, you know, you can't go above the elbow, that sort of thing. What is a bit of foreplay? I'm not sure. I think furky-toodling was a little bit naughty, but not much. So I qualified it a little bit there. Because I think I told you, we've discussed this before, because do you remember me telling you about how I was introduced to the concept of bundling by Fanny Craddock.

I think so, but I've forgotten. You know who I mean by Fanny Craddock. I do. The television chef of my youth and a splendid lady. She was terrifying. I just remember being little and watching her and just being absolutely terrified. She played up to that persona. She was a delightful person and she had a very amusing husband called Johnny. Anyway, Fanny Craddock took an interest in me and my wife when we were very young and before we were married. And she said, I hope you manage a bit of bundling. And we said, what's bundling?

before marriage was a complete impossibility, certainly to somebody of her generation. So you must discover bundling. And bundling basically is when you go to bed, but you have sheets and blankets between you. So one person is, as it were, on one side of the sheet and blanket, and the other person is on the other side of the sheet and blanket.

And you can do whatever you like, but the sheet and blanket is between you. So is that what a bit of foreplay means? Yeah, maybe that's a bit of perky-teedling then. To be honest, I've not actually researched it beyond the fact that I love the sound of the word, but I will if you want me to. It's a lovely word,

and it goes with the much more basic snottinger, another word from the time for a hanky, remember? A snottinger. They are ones that make you smile, and we definitely all need those. In fact, it would be lovely to get suggestions, time for a hanky, remember? A snottinger. They are ones that make you smile and, you know, we definitely all need those. In fact, it'd be lovely to get suggestions which are similar to sausage and furky toodle and things that make our listeners smile, just the sound of them. On the list of nice words that have a kind of, that mean something uplifting and sound good as

well, there's confelicity. Yes, the word that I always tweet at Christmas time. Confelicity is the near opposite to schadenfreude and it is basically delight in someone else's happiness. What is schadenfreude then? Schadenfreude is delight in someone else's pain or suffering. How interesting that we haven't got an English word for that. Is it a German word, schadenfreude? It is. Schadenfreude is. Yeah, that is our English word. We've definitely adopted that one. But conflicity just sounds beautiful. And it's not used very much, just as apristia is not used very much, but they are on my mission. As you know, I have a mission to bring back certain

words and they are on the list. I know you include in your list of uplifting words, things like axismus. Yes, axismus. That is, I just like this one because for some reason it always reminds me of chocolate eclairs or chocolate Rolos. So Rolos are a very British sweet. Can you still get Rolos? I think you can. Do you know Rolos? I lived on Rolos for many years. When I was a child, I had a penny a day, and then it went up to threepence a day, my generous parents, to buy sweets with. And I went through a sort of Spangles period. Oh, Spangles.

I remember those. I loved those. I went through a Smarties period. I only really, though, liked the black Smarties. I didn't like the paler colours, you know. Black Smarties? Did they exist? Well, they were very dark brown. I didn't like the paler colours, you know. Black Smarties? Did they exist? Well, they were very dark brown. They were brown, yeah. But there was a light brown and these were virtually black. And I loved those. And Rolo. I adored a Rolo. It had a chocolate

outer and a kind of toffee inside. Wonderful. How did we get onto Rolos? Well, because this word, achismos, or achismos, I think you can pronounce it either way probably now, A-double-C-I-S-M-U-S. And it's the insincere refusal of something you really want. It's like, no, no, no, you have it. When you're really hoping that they'll say the same to you, and then you can just nab it. I must be candid with you, Susie Dent. I've reached the age where I would rather have a tube of Rolos than a bit of foreplay. That's the frank truth. You can combine the two. Oh, I'm coming round to your place. Bit of kinky chocolate consumption.

What about a kushla? What does that mean? Yeah, that's beautiful. That is from the Irish for sort of darling or sweetheart. And I like it just, A, it sounds beautiful, but also it means the pulse of my heart. So that is what you are likening your beloved to. And I just think that's really sweet. As you say, I'm a romantic. You once introduced me to this word, contrafibularity. I think I remembered it and

think it's an amusing word because it rhymes with hilarity. If you want a bit of hilarity, go for contra-fibularity. What does it mean? Well, I think we all love it when fictional characters, maybe on our TV screens, maybe in books or whatever, when they kind of invent words that then sort of become part of our currency, part of our slang. The Simpsons famously did it with embiggens, a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man. And someone says, well, I've never heard that word before. And another one says, well, I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word. Well, contrafibularity is kind of in that stable because it was used in Blackadder. You mentioned John Lloyd of QI and his wonderful quiz questions. So

contrafibrillarity is spoken by Blackadder and it really means pulling one's leg. It was used in a scene whereby Robbie Coltrane, the actor, plays Samuel Johnson and arrives at court to announce that he has written a work in which every word in the English language is included. And, you know, Blackadder obviously is going to have a go at this one. And so he makes up lots of words and says, oh, I offer you my sincere contrafamiliarities, because he says it's a common word down our way. You should look at the whole scene.

It's absolutely brilliant and I love it. And it always, always makes me laugh. He says, I'm sorry to call you, cause you such pericombobulation. Oh, that's good. Say it again. He says, I'm sorry to cause you such pericombobulation, which has got enough of discombobulation about it to make you think, oh, maybe that's true.

Maybe that's it. Speaking of beautiful sounding words, I've got some musical words to give you, Susie. And why do you think I call them musical words? These are they. Exceeded, baggage, cabbage, defaced, effaced. Why would I call those musical words? Say them again. Exceeded, baggage, cabbage, defaced and effaced. They're seven letter words. I can think of an eight letter word that has the same properties that also is musical, cabbaged. Why are they musical words? It's a bit of a teaser. I don't know. Musical notes? Yes, they are words that can be played on a musical instrument, i.e. using only the letters of the notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G.

Yeah, nice. Isn't that ingenious? Yeah, I like that one. So for you, beautiful words are ones that actually have quite often some riddle behind them. Yes, exactly. Plays with the mind. Absolutely.

I mean, like I love the word unprosperousness. You know, somebody who's unprosperous, they suffer from unprosperousness. Now, why do you think I love that? It sounds nice. Unprosperousness. Don't know. It's the longest word in which each letter occurs at least twice. Oh, wow. Love that. You're going to love German. When we get to talking about German, you're going to love it because obviously the words are as long as that. Should we take a break and come back to it?

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on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Also from Something Else. Mel Gedroich is quilting. Listen to Mel and good friend Andy Bush as they learn a great new skill and tell some brilliant stories. All whilst having some good wholesome fun. In a nutshell, I took a pair of scissors and I went into my husband's wardrobe. Now this comes from a shirt that I bought him that I know he doesn't like.

So I'm testing him by... This is brilliant. Yeah, by finding out when he discovers that the shirt has got a big patch out of the back of it. Wow. And which area of the shirt is this taken from? Bottom right. Okay. Listen now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all good podcast apps. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple, where we are talking about the words that bring us joy and pleasure and smiles are plenty. And Giles, we're talking about different languages. If you had to choose a language other than English, do you know which would be your choice when it comes to beautiful sounds? French. Yeah. A lot of people will say that one, I think.

Or perhaps Italian. Not that I understand Italian, but I like the sound of it. But I do speak a bit of French because I went to the French Lycée in London when I was a child. The reason I went to the French Lycée is that I was born in a British forces hospital in Germany because my parents were involved in the army after the Second World War, and we were in the British zone in Germany. So when I came over to this country for the first time, I spoke a bit of German. They couldn't find a German school in London, so they sent me to a French school, thinking, well, it's the same sort of thing, isn't it? It's foreign. And did you have, when you spoke German, did you find that people would just

kind of either scoff or turn their noses up? Because that's a reaction that I've had to. People think of it as a guttural language. They don't think of it as a beautiful sounding language. But you are devoted to German. Tell us why. I thought about it. The catalyst for the article that I mentioned was really hearing Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, explain the mathematical model of the coronavirus with expert clarity, I have to say. Now, she's a doctor of quantum chemistry, so maybe that's not so surprising. I think she's an admirable woman personally in so many different ways. But I listened to it in the German, which is what I happened to find when i was looking at the news but she used words like überblicken which is to have an overview of something she talked about spielraum which is german for maneuver and you know there were all sorts of kind of long linguistic pylons in there as you

would expect from german there was model betrachtungen which you know, there were all sorts of kind of long linguistic pylons in there, as you would expect from German. There was Modellbetrachtungen, which, you know, if you were watching a war movie or a propaganda movie, would be pronounced as Modellbetrachtungen. You know, and there is a way, of course, in which you can express that just as with English, you can spit something out. But Modellbetrachtungen is absolutely fine. I just I just love the musicality of it. Trachtungen is absolutely fine. I just love the musicality of it. And I know Swiss German particularly has got this kind of sing song up and downs to it, which I love. And for me, maybe obviously it's tied to so many different memories of my living in Germany, etc. But I just think it has the most expressive sounds of any language that I know. I absolutely love it.

Well done. You are the Marlene Dichtrich of the English language. The who? The Marlene Dichtrich. Have you heard of her? She was a famous, became a film star, but in the 1920s and 1930s, she was a kind of cabaret singer. She came into my mind because she's an example of making the German language sound beautiful and sexy,

whereas the contemporary of hers was Adolf Hitler, who had the ability to make the German language sound revolting because he didn't spit it out in his oratory. Yeah, no, it's a really good point. But I would really love to hear what other people would choose as not just their most beautiful words, but also the most beautiful language, because I'm well aware of the fact that, you know, I just, I skirted around so many and just failed to mention lots of others that I just don't know. There was this really interesting

guy in the 19th century called Charles Nodier, and he was a scholar of sound symbolism. And he was convinced that essentially it wasn't just migration and ancestry that determined the sounds of a language, but it was climate and environment as well. So he said that the languages of the Mediterranean were harmonious and he described them as being limpid because he thought that they grew up in a backdrop of clear skies and swaying palm trees and buzzing chakadas, etc. And for us in the climate of the north, we have a much rorer landscape of crumbling rocks and cracking pines, he said, and crashing cataracts. And that gives us quite a raw vocabulary, which I just think is fascinating that we can be determined by, you know, the landscape, the trees, the rocks around us. Well, one of the joys of the Something Rhymes with Purple podcast is we do have listeners

literally all over the globe. So if you have the language of the country in which you're listening is not English and want to share some words from that language or tell us what your favourite language is, what language you think is the most euphonious, the most beautiful, the most soothing, do get in touch with us. You can tweet or email us at purple at somethingelse.com. That's something without a G, somethingelse.com. And people have been emailing us. In fact, speaking of the German language, no sex, please. It's not the number six. It's the German word for six is sex, isn't it? S-E-C-H-S. And here is an email from James. Dear Susie and Giles, I've always had an uncomfortable feeling about the number six. I wonder if it has anything to do with it sounding like sex. What I find interesting is sex is

occasionally used as a prefix to represent six. In other words, like sextuplets or sextillion. I'd like to know if six and sex are related. Thank you and stay safe. James. It's a really good question. The answer is they're not linked, but they are homonyms, linked, but they are homonyms really, I guess. So sex for gender or the genitals is kind of original meaning. That goes back to around the kind of 1300s, but ultimately it goes back to the Latin, possibly. We're not sure about this, but possibly the verb secare, which means to cut, that you'll find in things like secateurs. And possibly, do you remember I said that the idea may be behind, well, some people thought that women had a male body originally, but that the genitals were kind of cut off. So we're kind of like amputated versions of men.

Well, possibly that's behind this, the cutting etymology of sex. We're not completely sure. But anyway, that's one root. And then the six version of sex, that is entirely different. It has the same root as six itself, which, as you say, is sex in German. And we use that as well in limited ways in history. And we still use it, as James says, in sex tuplets. But also a sex angle originally was a hexagon. So we use it ourselves in various forms, but we tend to stick to six so we don't get things confused. But etymologically speaking, they are different. So six, as in the number, is Latin in origin? Yes. So that goes back to Latin. And also they did have sexes as well. So I think they had

different parents right from the very start, albeit travelling through the same languages. Another letter here from Robin Garcia. It's Robin with a Y, Garcia with a C. Hey, Susie and Giles, I've listened to your podcast from pretty much the start. And although right now it is not keeping me company on my commutes, it's still nice to have familiar voices that aren't my family while stuck at home. I was wondering where the phrase stir crazy comes from, as I'd not heard it before a couple of weeks ago. And now I'm hearing it a lot, stir crazy.

I can take you so far and then no further, because we know that in the early 1900s, stir was slang amongst criminals for the prison. So if you were in the stir, you were in a prison. But we don't quite know why. But stir crazy means going as doolally as you might be if you were confined to a prison cell. Can I ask you what the origin of doolally is since you brought it up? Can I ask you what the origin of Doolali is since you brought it up? Yes, that goes back to a sanatorium in Doolali in India,

where soldiers during the British Empire would wait before ships would take them back to Blighty. And ships only said, I think, between certain times of the year. So quite often they would be stuck there with, you know, the really hot weather with very little to do. And they were said to have Diolali fever. And eventually Diolali became Dulali. I ought to explain to listeners that Susie has no knowledge of what I'm going to ask her before. She just has all this in her extraordinary king-sized head. You mentioned... Only when it comes to words, that's about it.

You mentioned Blighty there. Just remind us what the origin of Blighty is. Well, same era and same origin. So that goes back to Hindi or Urdu for that place over there, Bilyati. And Bilyati originally referred to actually to British people and it was used by native speakers for any foreigner. So somebody who didn't quite belong to them. And the soldiers, the British soldiers picked that somebody who didn't quite belong to them. And the soldiers, the British soldiers picked that up. They knew it meant a foreigner. And so the foreign land for them, the land that was so far away that they yearned for, Britain became known as Blighty. A moment ago, I mentioned your king-sized head. I should perhaps have said

queen-sized head. But the reason I said king-sized head was because I had been looking at a lovely letter from Ruth King. I call it a letter. It was actually an email. And she says, Ruth King comes from Seven Oaks in Kent. I'm just curious to know whether there is a word to describe words which sound the same, but are spelt differently. There, there, same but are spelt differently? There, there, T-H-E-I-R, T-H-E-R-E. Here, here, H-E-A-R, H-E-R-E. Two and two, you know, one O and two O's and two T-W-O, et cetera. And likewise, is there a word for words which are spelt the same but sound different? Minute, minute, lead, lead, tear, tear. Have binge listened to your your podcast i've got just five episodes to listen to bereft you keep me going when i'm gardening thank you well done you ruth gardening okay let's till the soil of this okay so um the first one there there, etc. are homophones. So homo meaning the same and phone meaning sound.

And the other one is homograph. So a word that has the same spelling as another word, but a different sound and usually a different meaning like lead to go in front of and lead, the metal, that kind of thing. So homophones and homographs. And then there are homonyms for words that are the same, but actually mean very different things and come from different roots. So yeah, so there are three categories there. So I was getting myself confused. Pardon my French. I totally love your show, says Elle Phillips. I'm dying to know where the phrase pardon my French comes from. When someone swears, a French colleague told me that is her favourite saying in English. That's amusing. Pardon my French. Elle asks that.

Yeah, it's interesting, this one, because a little bit like our antipathy towards the Dutch, where we have double Dutch and Dutch courage, etc., which is usually implying that the Dutch are either mean or weak and cowardly, etc. We have a sort of similar relationship with the French, but it's kind of gone up and down over the times. And it usually goes back to some period of wartime where they were our enemy. And so we blame things on the French. The French, for example, were thought of as being quite rude, quite often, quite risque, which is a French word. And so, pardon my French, implied that the French bit was kind of rude and naughty language.

So that was kind of more, less animosity and more kind of teasing, I would say. That's why we talk about French knickers. That's why we talk about a French kiss. It's that kind of the naughty side of things, I guess. So it's just an example of us blaming the other nation. Not to mention the French letter. Now look, it's time for your three letters. Susie's Trier. What have you got up your sleeve for us today? My three words. Okay. So apologies if I've mentioned these before. They just come to my head and I should really check them, but it's because they're in my head for a reason. This one is another one. We're talking about words that bring us joy and it just makes

me laugh. This one is a pill garlic. Pill garlic is P-I-L-G-A-R-L-I-C. And it's a word for somebody who's bald or who has shaved their head. And I was thinking in lockdown, we're all having to resort to cutting our own hair. And I know some men are just saying to hell with it. I'm just going to shave it all off. So they have become like a peeled clove of garlic, a pill garlic. Just makes me laugh. Giles, this one was for you because although I cannot see this at all from my angle and looking at you on zoom but you mentioned in a tweet that you've put on half a stone during the lockdown you don't look like you have but should you need it pinguessence is the process of growing fat pinguessence

why is that anything with penguins uh no well uh I don't think it has got anything to do it's all to do with being penguinweed rather than pengweed. Pingweed is just on the fatty side. And my third one is, it was just really because there's a lot online at the moment about horrible scammers who are taking advantage of the current situation and sending fraudulent phishing emails to people and trying to extort money out of them. and trying to extort money out of them. And it made me think of an Australian word, slang, for a small-time confidence trickster called an illywhacker. Just says it like it is, you are such an illywhacker. So if you do get a small-time confidence trickster trying to extort money out of you, stop and just send that back instead. That's a trio of terrific words. Thank you very much indeed. You do mention that I have put on, and I have, half a stone, and it's terrible. And if people follow me on Twitter, at GilesB1, or indeed at Giles Brandreth on Instagram, you will know that every day during lockdown, I'm going into the basement and digging out one of my old jumpers from the ones I used to wear on television in the 1970s and 1980s, somewhat notorious. And for good reason, you may think if you see them

on Twitter or Instagram. And I did do a poem because of having put on all this weight. And it's a good poem. I'm going to, my quotation this week, my 22nd poem to end this week is one that I wrote myself. And it's called How to Lose Two Pounds a Week. And this is a diet in poetic form, and it really works. To lose two pounds a week, to regain a figure, slim and sleek, the rules are simple, if not nice. No bread, potato, and no rice. And when it comes to pasta, basta. Carbs are out and booze is too. It's tough, but do it. And the news is you, while inwardly resentful, bitter, outwardly a liether, fitter, trimmer, slimmer, nippy, zippy, yippy.

That's brilliant. So that's our lot for this week, isn't it? It is. Yes, please don't forget to give us a nice review or recommend us to a friend if you've enjoyed listening to us today and if you have a question you'd like us to answer any comments on the show at all and you'd just like to get in touch you can email us at purple at something else dot com that's something without the g else dot com something rhymes with purple is the something else production produced by lawrence bassett with additional production dot com.