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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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Allusionist 209: Serving C-Bomb

May 25, 2025 The Allusionist

Ten years ago, on the fourth ever episode of the show, I investigated why the C-word is considered a worse swear than the others. Since then - well really just in the last three years or so - there has been a huge development: the word has hit the mainstream as a compliment, in the forms of serving it and -y. Linguists Nicole Holliday and Kelly Elizabeth Wright discuss these uses of the word originating in the ballroom culture of New York City in the 1990s, and what it means to turn such a strong swear into praise.

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In episodes, Four Letter Words Tags vocabulary, lexicography, lexicon, society, culture, words, language, arts, history, four letter words, swearing, profanity, obscenity, swears, taboo, slang, cursing, curses, insults, slurs, dictionaries, parts of speech, Nicole Holliday, Kelly Elizabeth Wright, cunt, cunty, serving cunt, African American English, AAE, African American Language, AAL, Puerto Rican English, ballroom, NYC, New York City, queer, gender, reclamation, performance, reclaimed words, new use, semantics, internet, online, TikTok, drag, RuPaul Charles, RuPaul’s Drag Race, slay, rizz, Tom Hanks, Chet Hanks, Colin Hanks, bench-hanks, compliments, body parts, genitals, cultural appropriation, speech acts, sentiment, intensity, Beyonce, Kevin Aviance, Cunty The Feeling, sound symbolism, plosives, coulisse

Allusionist 198: Queer Arab Glossary

August 9, 2024 The Allusionist
Boggle grid spelling out the words "Queer Arab Glossary"

Since 2019, Marwan Kaabour has been collecting Arabic slang words used by and about queer people, first for the online community Takweer, and now the newly published Queer Arab Glossary. "When researching for this book, I discovered so much of the sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic, and historical layers that make up the words," he says. He also discovered quite a lot about frying, white beans and worms (metaphorical ones).

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In episodes Tags lexicography, lexicon, society, culture, words, language, etymology, vocabulary, Marwan Kaabour, Takweer, Queer Arab Glossary, dialect, Arabic, Levantine, Iraqi, Egyptian, Gulf, Sudanese, Maghrebi, Al-Sham, Lebanon, Levant, Southwest Asia, North Africa, SWANA, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Kurdish, queerness, queer, LGBTQIA, gender, masculinity, femininity, gay, trans, lesbian, sex work, genitals, penis, slang, slurs, colonisation, worms, yarn, crocodile, falcon, cow, hyena, food, frying, Hajj, K-pop, Mickey Mouse, Italian, French, English, metaphors, genderfree, detritivore

Allusionist 187. Bonus 2023

December 24, 2023 The Allusionist

It's our annual end of year parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about, including a mythical disappearing island, geese, human dictionaries, the dubious history of the Body Mass Index, Victorian death department stores, and much more.

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In episodes Tags etymology, vocabulary, history, Caetano Galindo, Susie Dent, Lindsay Rose Russell, Aubrey Gordon, Dean Vuletic, Evie King, Cariad Lloyd, Griefcast, Hy-Brasil, myths, legends, islands, Ireland, Victorians, Georgians, death, 19th century, funerals, mourning, grief, grieving, posthumous, dead bodies, bodies, fat, anti-fatness, anti-fat, bias, medical, BMI, Body Mass Index, body positivity, eugenics, families, family, estrangement, Brazilian, brasileiros, Portuguese, wood, brazilwood, trees, dictionaries, walking dictionary, sleeping dictionary, gender, geese, goose, weaving, renaming, denaming, cremation, aquamation, ashes, burial, composting, graves, clothes, shopping, Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, five stages of grief, Jay’s, Regent Street, London, jet, jewelry, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, street names, school names, John La Rose, Richmond, Virginia, Australia, K’Gari, Hobart, Macquarie Street, Tasmania, petitions, Toronto, Rob Ford, Michaelmas, Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca, rebeca, cardigan, turtlenecks, lexicography, Adolphe Quetelet, Quetelet’s Index, Ancel Keys, Francis Galton, drapetomania, hysteria, Eurovision Song Contest, Eurovision, nul points, zero, French, Brazil, Brasil, gossamer, pavage, text, textile, clothing, bonus, bonus episode

Allusionist 183. Timucua

October 9, 2023 The Allusionist
A boggle set spelling out the word Timucua

When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, there were fewer than 100. Soon, with all the people who spoke it dead, the Timucua language died out, too, preserved only in a few Spanish-Timucua religious texts.

In the 21st century, linguistic anthropologist Aaron Broadwell and historian Alejandra Dubcovsky have been decoding and translating these texts to understand the Timucua language and the people who were writing it down.

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In episodes Tags language, lexicography, lexicon, vocabulary, history, translation, revival, survival, Aaron Broadwell, Alejandra Dubcovsky, Timucua, isolates, Florida, Georgia, USA, colonisation, missionaries, Franciscan, Indigenous Americans, Spanish, Christianity, conversion, genocide, Roman alphabet, writing systems, Catholic, Catholicism, catechism, communion, Genesis, Bible, Adam and Eve, Eve, gender, euphemisms, conquistadors, Timucua Rebellion, letters, writing, nival, lost language, Survival

Allusionist 166. Fiona part 2

December 5, 2022 The Allusionist

“I don't think that anyone should come away from this conversation not wanting to use the name Fiona. I think this is a beautiful and rich history. It might not be quite the history that you imagined, but I think it's a beautiful history," says writer and performer Harry Josie Giles. She and PhD researcher Moll Heaton-Callaway investigate this complicated name with fascinating history, in this second of a pair of episodes about the name Fiona.

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In audio Tags history, Harry Josie Giles, Moll Heaton-Callaway, Fiona Macleod, William Sharp, Elizabeth Sharp, Wilfion, Scotland, Scottish, Gaelic, Celtic Revival, Celtic, Highlands, Lowlands, WB Yeats, poetry, novels, letters, correspondence, handwriting, LGBTQIA+, pseudonyms, alter egos, trans, gender, gender fluidity, authors, literature, writers, writing, cultural appropriation, names, naming, census, boats, arts, lexicon, vocabulary, words, language, fiona, linguistics, education, society & culture, etymology, Fiona, Willfion, Celticism, Flora, Ffion, Fionnuala, Finn, white, publishing, colonisation, colonial, authenticity, James Macpherson, Tales of Ossian, translation, myths, Irish, Sharon Krossa, Caledonian Antisyzygy, Wikipedia, hyperbaton

Allusionist 165. Fiona part 1

November 22, 2022 The Allusionist

A lot of people assume that Fiona is a very old Scottish name, but the first known Scottish Fiona is from the 1890s: Fiona Macleod, the enormously popular novelist of Scotland's Celtic Revival movement. But when she suddenly stopped writing in 1905...and there turned out to be far more surprises about Fiona Macleod than the novelty of her name. Writer and performer Harry Josie Giles and PhD researcher Moll Callaway-Heaton consider the first Scottish Fiona.

This is part one of a pair of episodes about the name Fiona; part two will explore the etymology of the name and similar ones in various languages, and examine the first appearance of Fiona in literature, which comes with its own cocktail of complication.

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In audio Tags history, Harry Josie Giles, Moll Heaton-Callaway, Fiona Macleod, William Sharp, Elizabeth Sharp, Wilfion, Scotland, Scottish, Gaelic, Celtic Revival, Celtic, Highlands, Lowlands, WB Yeats, poetry, novels, letters, correspondence, handwriting, LGBTQIA+, pseudonyms, alter egos, trans, gender, gender fluidity, Elena Ferrante, authors, publishing, literature, writers, writing, cultural appropriation, names, naming, census, records, boats, celsitude, arts, lexicon, vocabulary, words, language, fiona

Allusionist 157. Queerbaiting

June 25, 2022 The Allusionist

The term 'queerbaiting' has evolved from meaning entrapment to marketing ploy to drawing "queer audiences into a piece of media that has no intention of actually meaningfully exploring queerness" says Leigh Pfeffer, host and producer of the podcast History Is Gay. Leigh tracks where the word's various incarnations came from, and why it should not be confused with 'queer coding'

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In episodes Tags history, Leigh Pfeffer, History Is Gay, pinkwashing, rainbow washing, representation, entertainment, queer, LGBTQIA+, Hays code, queerbaiting, queer coding, race baiting, Disney villains, gender, Lavender Scare, Red Scare, fandom, online, slash, Star Trek, Kirk, Spock, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, theurgy, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, culture, words, language

Allusionist 147. Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 2

December 7, 2021 The Allusionist

"It's really good if we can get the changes through here - that can be an inspiration for other other countries or other places in the world," says Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, chair of Samtökin ’78, the national queer organization of Iceland. In 2019, Iceland passed the Gender Autonomy Act, which added an option for people to register their official gender as X; with it, the country's strictly binary-gendered naming laws were suddenly transformed. Other changes, like a new genderfree pronoun, are catching on; but overhauling a whole grammatically gendered language is no easy undertaking.

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In episodes, Survival Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, Iceland, Icelandic, neologisms, new words, coinages, Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, Samtökin ’78, queer, LGBTQIA+, gender, gender neutral, genderfree, neuter, masculine, feminine, last names, first names, surnames, patronymic, matronymic, homosexual, gay, lesbian, trans, grammatical gender, bigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, deltiologist, hán, -bur

Allusionist 145. Parents

November 7, 2021 The Allusionist

When you're trans and pregnant, some of the vocabulary of pregnancy, birth and parenting might not fit you. In face, some of it might not even work for people of ANY gender. Trans parents Freddy McConnell and CJ talk about gender-additive language, inclusive for women and other genders, and about how in English law, the word 'mother' becomes semantically very complicated indeed.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, history, Freddy McConnell, CJ, pregnancy, parents, parenthood, gestation, prenatal, birth, children, child, babies, mother, father, mum, dad, bodies, medical, male, female, nonbinary, trans, cis, LGBTQIA, gender, sex, health, NHS, healthcare, fertility, Britain, England, UK, law, legal, government, parliament, High Court, birth certificate, period products, milk, chest-feeding, breast-feeding, surrogacy, surrogates, adoption, semantics, misogyny, seahorses, comedo

Allusionist 137. Dude

June 10, 2021 The Allusionist
A137 Dude logo.jpeg

Exclamation; sign of agreement OR disapproval; gendered, but circumstantially gender-neutral; term of endearment: 'dude' can do it all! But its connotations of a laid-back, cool, masculine person are only a few decades old; before that, it meant...an uptight city-dwelling tourist?? Dude, seriously!

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, Callie Wright, Queersplaining, dude, Yankee Doodle, macaronis, history, slang, terms of endearment, insults, USA, David Bowie, songs, lyrics, movies, films, Easy Rider, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, gender neutral, non binary, gender, guys, Pacheco, zoot suit, Mexican Americans, African Americans, AAVE, surfing, saros
Older Posts →
Allusionist Patreon
Featured
Allusionist 209: Serving C-Bomb
Allusionist 209: Serving C-Bomb
feed bullshit
Allusionist 208: Ffff
Allusionist 208: Ffff
WhatsApp Image 2025-04-27 at 23.06.37.jpeg
several bits of news! (nothing bad)
queer playlist
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
A Christmas Carollusionist
A Christmas Carollusionist
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Festivelusionists
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 202: Singlish Singlish
Allusionist 202: Singlish Singlish
Allusionist 201: Singlish
Allusionist 201: Singlish
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.