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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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2018 Extra Special QUIZ! - interactive transcript

December 18, 2018 The Allusionist
A91.5 logo Quiz.jpg

APPLE PODCASTS • RSS • SPOTIFY • RADIOPUBLIC• GOOGLE • MP3

Listen along using one of the methods above, or visit theallusionist.org/2018quiz to find out more about this episode.

This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, am putting your linguistic wits to the test with a quiz! Play along at home. Go on, get something to write your answers on and something to write your answers with. Paper and pen or pencil? Classic. Etchasketch? Impractical, but better than scribbling on the wall with your own body fluids. Alternatively, visit theallusionist.org/2018quiz, where there’s an answer sheet right there ready, with little tickable boxes.

Now:
are   
you   
ready  
for  
QUIZ???

Here’s a practice question:

Does biweekly mean:

Answer: both.
Ugh! Biweekly might mean the same as bimonthly, or it might be sixteen times more frequent than that. You see the problem? Americans, you need to get on board with the word ‘fortnightly’, it would really spare a lot of confusion.

OK, now for the questions proper: most are multiple choice, all are about words. And to kick us off, here is my fellow Radiotopian Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder and The West Wing Weekly to deliver your first question.

HRISHIKESH HIRWAY:

The dot on a letter i is called:

The dot on a letter i is called:

A. A tittle

HZ: Next question is from Benjamen Walker, the titular star of Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything.

BENJAMEN WALKER:

The horrific disease ‘botulism’ derives from the Latin word for:

The horrific disease ‘botulism’ derives from the Latin word for:

D. Sausage

Yummy.

HZ: And now for the CLOTHING ROUND, and here’s 99% Invisible producer Avery Trufelman, who just made the excellent series Articles of Interest about the history and meaning of the clothing we wear. First clothing question, Avery, please:

AVERY TRUFELMAN:

CLOTHING ROUND: An aglet is:

An aglet is:

C. The thing on the end of your shoelace

AVERY TRUFELMAN: That’s what it’s called! I never knew.
HZ: Aglet: the diminutive of the Old French word for ‘needle’.

CLOTHING ROUND: The word ‘wardrobe’ derives from the word ‘garderobe’, literally 'to guard your robes'. But in a medieval castle, which other thing might the garderobe have been?

A garderobe also functioned as:

A. The toilet

In a medieval castle, there’d be a little room with a seat with a hole in it, through which excrement would fall from your body down into the moat below. And clothes were also kept in that room, because, we’ll you’ve got to put them somewhere, and there was a school of thought that the ammonia in urine kept fleas away from your clothes.

CLOTHING ROUND: Felt, as in the fabric, derives from an Old Germanic word meaning what?

Felt, as in the fabric, derives from an Old Germanic word meaning:

A. To beat

AVERY TRUFELMAN: I guess you’re kneading it in to make that felty fabric.
HZ: To beat, in felt’s case, wool, and other fibres, including hair. So you might be enacting the 8,500-year-old practice of feltmaking as you trample your dirty bathmat. Well done.
AVERY TRUFELMAN: It’s very interesting. It just can’t be beat! Hahaha.

HZ: Now, here’s The Truth podcast’s Jonathan Mitchell with the TRUTH OR UNTRUTH? round.

JONATHAN MITCHELL:

TRUTH OR UNTRUTH: The idiom ‘To give someone the cold shoulder’ originated in the 1800s, when you would serve an unwelcome guest a cold shoulder of meat because it would be tough and gross.

The idiom ‘To give someone the cold shoulder’ was orginally a snub through the medium of cold meat is an UNTRUTH. A very often repeated untruth.

It’s most likely a mistranslation from Latin in the Vulgate Bible of ‘they turned their backs on you’ - the Latin word ‘umerus’ was used to mean both shoulder and back.

TRUTH OR UNTRUTH: Remember the 90s craze Pogs? The name is a portmanteau of ‘pig’ and ‘dogs’.

The game Pogs being a portmanteau of pig and dogs is an UNTRUTH.

‘Pog’ is in fact an acronym of passion fruit, orange and guava, after a Hawaiian juice containing those fruits and named POG, and under the POG bottle caps there were little cardboard discs printed with images and these would grow up to be Pogs.

TRUTH OR UNTRUTH: ‘Feist’, as in ‘feisty’, means ‘a small dog’.

Small dogs are often feisty, but are they etymologically feisty?

TRUTH!

Around 200 years ago, ‘feist’ meant a small dog. That was an abbreviation of ‘fysting curr’, a 16th century expression which meant ‘stinky dog’, from the earlier verb ‘fysten’ or ‘fisten’, which meant ‘to fart’. So when you say someone is feisty, you’re kind of saying that they’re farty.

HZ: Now, here’s a question from Joe Richman of Radio Diaries.

JOE RICHMAN:

Turkey, as in the bird, was named after the country Turkey. But in Turkey, the country, turkeys - the bird - are named after a different country. Which one?

In Turkey, the word for turkey refers to:

A. India

A turkey in Turkey is called ‘hindi’, meaning ‘Indian’, and a lot of different languages reference India in their terms for turkey - French, Arabic, Russian, Polish, Italian. Why? Urgh, complicated:

The bird we know in English as turkey was originally domesticated by the Aztecs, then later taken across the Atlantic by the Spanish. In England, the birds started being sold from around the mid-16th century, and they were called turkeys then either because they were mistaken for a kind of fowl already being sold there by Turkish traders; or because the Spanish introduced the turkeys to northern Africa, which was at the time under Turkish rule, and from there these turkeys were traded with other European countries.

And why do so many languages refer to India in their turkey names? Couple of possible reasons:
One, that to much of Europe, Turkey, India, they’re all over to the east, aren’t they, who can tell the difference?
The other, that India was one common name for the New World, often attributed to Christopher Columbus believing he had landed in India when he arrived in Caribbean. Other countries cited in different languages’ words for turkeys include: Netherlands! France! Greece! Ethiopia! Peru! Peru at least is on a similar longitude to where the birds originally came from.

Basically, nobody is seeming that smart in their geographical turkey names.

HZ: Another creature-related question now from Nate DiMeo from The Memory Palace.

NATE DIMEO:

Around 700 years ago, if you said ‘urchin’, you would have been talking about which animal?

Around 700 years ago, if you said ‘urchin’, you would have been talking about:

B. A hedgehog

So called because they spend time in hedges and have snouts a bit like hogs, hedgehogs have only been hedgehogs since the mid-15th century. Their prior name, urchins, or rather yrichons, from Old French - and if you trace the word back to its root, it derives from the Proto-Indo-European *ghers-, which meant ‘to bristle’, a thing which hedgehogs do. And that’s also a thing which we humans do when we’re frightened, our hairs stand on end, so incidentally, the word ‘horror’ also comes from the same root word as ‘urchin’, it developed into a Latin verb ‘horrere’, to bristle with fear. Hedgehogs and horror. Old acquaintances.

HZ: EPONYMS ROUND now, and here is eponym fan Roman Mars of 99% Invisible with questions about things named after people.

ROMAN MARS:

EPONYMS ROUND: George Washington Gale Ferris Jr created the first official Ferris wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. But there were precursors several hundred years before, called ‘pleasure wheels’. They were turned by:

Pleasure wheels were turned by:

C. Strongmen

There are written accounts of riding on pleasure wheels turned by strongmen from as far back as the early 1600s.

EPONYMS ROUND: Zeppelin airships were named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. In 1971, his granddaughter issued legal threats to Led Zeppelin, meaning the band had to play a concert in Copenhagen under a different name. Was it:

For one night only, Led Zeppelin had to play as:

B. The Nobs

After their European promoter Claude Nobs.

EPONYMS ROUND: The first stetson hat was made by John B. Stetson out of which creature’s skin?

To wear whilst panning for gold in Colorado, John B. Stetson made the first Stetson hat from the skin of:

B. A beaver

ROMAN MARS: The most I’ve ever done:
Full burpee with a pushup: 100 at a time.
Cardio burpees: I’ve never tested the limit. That’s where you don’t do a pushup, you just go up and down. But I’ve done 36 in one minute.

HZ: No points for this question for any of you, listeners; but well done Roman, that does sound like a lot of burpees.

ROMAN MARS: It is a horrible exercise. It is the worst combination of exercise, in that it is very hard and very boring.

HZ: Here is the final question of the quiz and here are Jen Poyant and Manoush Zomorodi of Zigzag.

ZIGZAG:

In the Bible, the word ‘foot’ is a euphemism for:

In the Bible, the word ‘foot’ is a euphemism for:

C. A penis

And that’s the quiz! Tot up your scores.

If you scored 0: better luck next time
If you scored 1-13: not bad
If you scored 14: congratulations!

Let me know how you did, at twitter.com/allusionistshow and facebook.com/allusionistshow. You can see all these questions at theallusionist.org/2018quiz. [It’s ok, transcript-readers: you already saw them!]

To round off 2018, let’s have one more randomly selected word from the dictionary...

hesternal, adj: of yesterday.

Try using it in an email today.

This fundraiser special episode was written and produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Music and noises were provided by Martin Austwick. Thanks to my fellow Topes who appeared, they are good sports and very generous-hearted, and I am very proud and lucky to be in the Radiotopia collective with them. Thanks also to the people of PRX, who work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep Radiotopia going.

The Allusionist will return on 23 January 2019, but in the meantime, catch up on all the episodes - this show is full of useful little facts and tidbits to throw into strugglesome conversations that you might be stuck having during the festive period; I am happy to provide this service. All the episodes and transcripts and additional material and the full dictionary entries for the word of the day and a lexicon of every word that’s been discussed on the show and information about events I’m doing and links to Allusional social media: everything is at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.

In Radiotopia, call to action, episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, Avery Trufelman, Articles of Interest, Roman Mars, 99% Invisible, 99PI, Nate DiMeo, The Memory Palace, Benjamen Walker, Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything, Hrishikesh Hirway, Song Exploder, The West Wing Weekly, Jen Poyant, Manoush Zomorodi, ZigZag, Jonathan Mitchell, The Truth, Radio Diaries, Joe Richman, podcast, podcasts, podcasters, quiz, questions, eponyms, history, etymology, phrases, idioms, animals, hedgehogs, turkey, urchins, botulism, sausage, Latin, i, tittle, diacritics, Bible, euphemisms, foot, aglet, clothing, shoes, shoelaces, fashion, garb, garments, apparel, clothing terminology, terminology, diseases, medieval, castles, toilets, WC, garderobe, wardrobe, clothes, bathroom, ammonia, hygiene, faeces, waste disposal, evacuations, bodily functions, mistranslation, Vulgate Bible, dogs, feist, feisty, fart, meat, cold shoulder, expressions, Pogs, juice, Hawaii, passion fruit orange and guava, POG, turkeys, Turkey, poultry, names, imports, Aztecs, India, trade, Peru, geography, New World, Christopher Columbus, horror, burpees, exercises, exercise, physical exertion, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr, Ferris wheels, pleasure wheels, inventions, strongmen, World’s Fair, zeppelins, Led Zeppelin, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, bands, music, name changes, lawsuits, fur, fabric, felt, cloth, Stetson, hats, John B. Stetson, genitalia, genitals, penis, Radiotopian guest appearance
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