Visit theallusionist.org/199ideas to listen to this episode and find out more about the topics therein.
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, mould language into a golem and try to order it around but it just shouted, “You’re not the boss of me!” and went next door to live with my neighbours who took it to the water park and the model village and gave it ice cream at breakfast, and I can’t offer it that kind of life, although sometimes I think it feels a bit nauseous and misses me.
This is the 199th episode of the show, and since before this show began, so for nearly a decade, I have been jotting down ideas in two documents - one for short ideas, one for long ideas. There are always more ideas than I have time and ability to make podcasts about, so now the documents are altogether 66 pages long and growing every day. So in this episode, you’re going to hear 199 ideas that I wanted to put into the podcast and haven’t yet. And there are still loads left in the documents.
And if you want to be in the 200th episode, I want you to be in the 200th episode: write a quiz question that has something to do with language - the format can be multiple choice, or of your devising - and submit it in written or voice form via theallusionist.org/quiz. Your deadline is 6 September 2024. Hurry up! I like our annual quiz episodes and if you’re setting the questions, I can actually try to do this one! So go forth and quiz me, and your fellow listeners, theallusionist.org/quiz.
I’m currently mid-tour of the UK, with the new Allusionist live show Souvenirs, about the ancient roots of a sweary tech problem, and the suffix -gate, and a type-based friendship breakup. One happy-seeming customer described it as “the right balance of facts and emotions” which is always what I hope for. The tour runs until mid-September, dates and ticket links are listed at theallusionist.org/events, and if you have an arts venue or festival of some kind that you would like us to perform at then do get in touch. Also this tour has delightful merch that I drew myself, including a tea towel and souvenir magnet, and free bookmarks for anyone who wants one. We don’t perform often, and because these shows are made for stage, most of them never appear on the podcast, but they’re my favourite things to do so I’d love for you to see them. theallusionist.org/events.
On with 199 ideas I haven’t made into podcasts yet!
Things people say to elicit a smile for photos - "Say cheese!" Or “Prune,” that’s what the Olsen Twins say.
The Juliet Club, who answer letters sent to Juliet in Verona. Because she's not going to answer them herself being a) dead b) fictional and c) having terrible luck with letters.
The lost positive of desperate, sperate, which was a legal term for a debt that might be recoverable.
The phrase 'family values'.
The prefix Mc- like McMansion or McGuffin.
The suffix -core.
The suffix -tron.
The Italian suffix -opoli.
Aftermath, which originally meant the sowing of a second crop of grass after the first one had been cut Kensington Gore, the nickname for stage blood.
Boudoir: originally meant the pouting room or sulking room.
Puce meaning flea colour - colour of the fleas or the colour of flea bites?
Magenta, from a battle location in Italy.
Stillicide, a word that meant dripping of drops. In ancient Roman law, and less ancient Scottish law, there were rules about water dripping off your eaves onto someone else's land or building.
Related: stiricide, icicles dropping from a house.
Schwa, as in the unstressed vowel, but the word meant emptiness.
Delete - its Proto-Indo-European word of origin meant slime.
Because the Romans wore things like togas and not breeches like the Gauls and Germans, they had the word 'bracatus' that literally meant 'wearing breeches' but was a geographical term for regions north of the Alps. Where breeches were rife!
Travesty - “dressed in disguise”.
Pageant, a scene from a mystery play.
Why so many pubs are called The Red Lion.
Grizzly bears’ species name is Ursus arctos horribilis - rude!
Gimbal - from the Old French for twins.
The first use of simultaneous translation being the Nuremberg Trials.
Brochure meant a stitched work, because the pages were stitched together.
Pimento is related to pigment, because the berries gave colour to food and drink.
Album: it was a white board with public notices and names written on it in black.
Loads of fencing terms: riposte, a counterattack after fending off a parry from your opponent.
Acumen, that meant sharp.
Foible, the weak point of the sword blade, and forte, the strong point of a sword blade.
Dwell - originally to deceive, lead astray.
Artery used to also mean windpipe, bet that never caused problems in medical situations.
Capsize shares a root word with biceps, the root word being kaput meaning head.
Chapter meant little head.
Migraine - from the Greek hemikrania, meaning half skull.
Beret originated from the Latin term for a large hooded cloak.
Chaperon was from hooded cloak, because of the connotations of protection.
Limousine - named for the original type of covered car's supposed resemblance to a hood worn in the Limousin region.
Faux pas - a false step.
Scavenger - litter collector.
Pluck - noun, organ meat extracted from carcasses to prep them for market.
Toady - a charlatan’s assistant who would eat a toad so the charlatan could then administer a miracle cure.
Kingfishers used to be called ‘halcyon’. And the halcyon days were a fortnight, seven days either side of the shortest day of the year, when the seas were still so as not to distirb the egg-filled nest on the beach of a mythical kingfisher, transformed from the goddess Alcyone.
Jade: from colic, the stone was thought to cure it. Etymologically unrelated to the other meaning of jade, a worn-out horse.
Crestfallen - possibly to do with diseased horses. Crestrisen was the victorious flipside.
Pecuniary came from cattle - livestock were measure of wealth in ancient world.
Maverick: an eponym! From Samuel Maverick who, among other deeds during his life, bought a lot of land but refused to brand his cattle, he said because he didn't want to hurt the cows, other people's explanation was that he would be able to pretend all unbranded cows belonged to him. The size of his herd suggests the latter wasn't actually his plan, but his treatment of humans - he was an enslaver - means we shouldn't get all, "aw how compassionate!" over him not wanting to hurt cows.
Samuel Maverick's grandson Maury coined the word 'gobbledygook'.
Twist: the flat part of a hinge.
Candletwist: a wick.
Rival - ‘one who shares the same stream’.
Slogan was a battle cry
Scruple was a small sharp pebble.
Rosemary was dew of the sea.
Retina - a net-like tunic.
Popsicle - almost an eponym, Eppsicles, from Frank Epperson who had accidentally invented them when he was 11 and had left a drink with a stirring stick in it outside overnight in the cold. When he was an adult, in 1923 he went about trademarking his Eppsicles - the second half 'sicle' like icicle - but his kids called them ‘pop’s sicles’ so he went with that. Portmanteau! The other explanation is that it was frozen pop.
Extravagant - a type of papal decree; also meant rambling.
Harlot - originally a vagabond or tramp, then jester or actor; not a female sex worker till 14th or 15th century.
Treadmill - invented and named in 1822 for use in prisons as a punishment.
Bespoke - from bespeak, something arranged in advance.
Attercop was a medieval word for spider, meant 'poison head'. The 'cop' part is related to the cob in cobweb.
Concrete: the sense of solid, tangible, non-abstract led to the substance of same name.
Loom: used to mean any tool, and was also a euphemism for penis.
Menu: from small, minute, because a menu was a minute list of things.
Tyre is from ‘attire’, as in the tyre is the dressing of the wheel.
In 2018 the Hawaiian studies professor Kaleikoa Kaʻeo appeared in court on protest charges, and the judge issued an arrest warrant for contempt of court on the grounds that he had not answered when the judge had asked him to confirm his presence at the court appearance. He was present and had answered, but he did so in Hawaiian language. As is his right, Hawaiian being an official language - but that judge didn't speak it. Bad stuff on the judge's part, and the arrest warrant was soon dropped.
Also Hawaiian: I wanted to investigate the song Mele Kalikimaka, the title being English phrase "Merry Christmas" rendered in Hawaiian phonology rather than originating from the Hawaiian language.
Escape - leave your pursuer holding your cape.
Patio - from a pact or making a treaty.
An episode about syndromes named after cities.
Ludo, which has many other names like Parcheesi, is in Finland called Kimble, after Richard Kimble of The Fugitive notoriety.
History of courtroom oaths, how words are legally binding.
Lawsuits arising because of a misplaced comma - it’s surprising how many of these there are.
The person at the DMV who assesses vanity license plate applications and rejects them if they breach the guidelines around being offensive, vulgar, misleading or blasphemous - that person must really have to stay up to date with the latest slangs, slurs and acronyms.
Cowboy being a diss to Black cowboys - white cowboys being called cowhands.
Sabotage - French shoes thrown into machines.
Knot names, like the Josephine knot and carrick bend.
Oprah Winfrey's first name being because people so often mispronounced her given name Orpah.
The comedian Joe Lycett legally changing his name to Hugo Boss to make a point.
Kevinismus or Kevinism - German associations with certain names perceived to be modern and coming to Germany from American or British culture. Kevin is actually an Old Irish name, and the 6th century saint Saint Kevin was the patron saint of blackbirds.
Karens. What can perfectly innocent Karens do to free their name of this association?
Noon used to mean 3pm. And midnight.
17th century women in England making letters out of pastry to practice reading and writing.
“Raining cats and dogs”: in Brazil, the idiom is “It’s raining Swiss knives” - makes more sense actually than cats and dogs, hard rain is more knifelike than doglike.
Why the word 'fine' has so many meanings: penalty, adequate, exquisite, thin, attractive...
Difference between irony, sarcasm, satire - let’s clear this up once and for all!
How language enacts copaganda - the term 'peace officers', ughhh.
Why is the letter H pronounced H?
The Sarah Party, the annual gathering of Sarahs. Have any of you ever been?? Is there one for Helens?
What is it like to have a name doppelganger? I don't think I have one, but my husband does, and it's sweet to see the Martin Austwicks interact online sometimes.
What is it like to be named after someone and then realise, “Wow, my namesake is a terrible person”?
The fake swears they dub into the edits of films on planes - "I've had enough of these motherloving snakes on this Monday to Friday plane" and "yippie kiy yay, melon farmer," that kind of thing.
Dinosaur names.
Comedians who perform in multiple languages - how do you adapt the material, because not everything translates directly, and some things don’t translate at all?
Why is K supposedly the funniest letter?
The euphemisms obituary writers use so they don't have to state outright that the late subject was horrible.
How do place names affect the place - like Cape of Good Hope vs Disappointment Lake?
How did the word amateur evolve from ‘lover’ to ‘unprofessional’/’low standard’? What shift happened in ideas of professionalism to make amateur its opposite or inferior?
The word 'apartheid' meaning 'apart-hood' and chosen by its practitioners because it sounded more passive than a term like 'segregation'.
So this is a story that I did employ someone a few years ago to investigate: allegedly, in Chicago in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Naval Investigation Service learned that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as "friends of Dorothy". But the NIS didn't realise this was a slang term referring to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz; they thought there was a real Dorothy, the linchpin friend of a huge coterie of gay men, and so they tried to track her down, in the hopes that she could shop the gay men to them. Huge if true, but my linguistic investigator was not able to confirm that any of it was real.
[Well done, we just reached 100!]
Martha's Vineyard sign language.
Black American Sign Language.
The Yolgnu people in Northern Australia, who have an endangered sign language of more than 1800 signs, that is a primary language used by Deaf people but also it is used by non-Deaf people in situations where speaking aloud is culturally forbidden, such as during periods of mourning, or in the presence of sacred objects or during ceremonies and dances, and when hunting - and also in the presence of 'poison kin', certain family relationships are taboo.
And Indigenous Australians not using people's names after their deaths, instead using substitute names or descriptions.
Posthumous honorary names in Asian cultures.
Pandanus language - an avoidance language used while gathering pandanus nuts, during which certain words are not to be used, lest they inhibit the growth of the nuts. So the pandanus language replaces those words instead. But it can only be spoken in the realm of the nuts lest it inhibit their growth.
Fathom - I've had so many requests to cover this word, I don't know why I've never done it. Fathom was a measurement based on the length of the outstretched arms.
In 2023, a judge in Canada ruled that a thumbs up emoji was as legally binding as a signature on a contractual negotiation over the sale of 86 tonnes of flax.
Thought-stoppers.
The Italian insult "Che pizza!" meaning "what a pizza!" to mean something is boring.
Why X became a symbol for maps, signatures (easy to write?), maths, as a substitute letter in Latinx and womxn between the M and the N...
Pedigree' the foot of a crane as in the bird.
The French system for naming pedigree dogs; each year they have to start with a specific letter of the alphabet, although K, Q, W, X, Y and Z aren't in the mix because there aren't enough French names beginning with those letters. Next year, 2025, they start again at A. This system began in 1926 so people could tell how old a dog was.
Getting away from the term 'master bedroom' - 'primary bedroom' is coming in more, I think?
Also masterpiece, master degree etc, how's all that going?
Hardware moving away from master/slave and male/female terms - good!
Amazing terms for unmarried women: spinsters. Thornback, a spinster over 26. Ape leaders!
Catherinettes in France. Sheng nu in Chinese - leftover ladies, the male equivalent was bare branches. Are these supposed to be disses? Because I love them.
The word ‘pregnant’ was banned from promotion for the 1956 film A Kiss Before Dying. Which does feature a pregnancy as the inciting incident of the story.
Grawlixes.
Charcuterie means cold cooked or cured meats, why is it now a food collage? Some of which you can't even eat? Nobody is eating that whole raw artichoke! And why do grapefruit, marshmallows and salami exist on the same spread? I know I should accept linguistic evolution, but this is out of hand.
The fly agaric mushroom is maybe getting its name changed?
Boy Scouts America is renaming in Feb 2025 as Scouting America.
In Canada, Embers is the name as of 2023 of members of the Girl Guides in the 7-8 age bracket, instead of Brownies.
All eponym-named birds are getting new names in the USA.
Does the word lazy actually mean anything? Is anyone really lazy?
What were volcanoes called before the relatively modern word volcano? Which was from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
The letter charts that are part of the eye test - are there writing systems that don't use those because they don't work?
Origins of the term brainwashing.
Furlongs, the length of a furrow, and a unit of measurement that for a while was much more important than a mile, in fact a mile was redefined to match the length of eight furlongs.
Doulas who seek a different term to doula because of its roots.
La Leche League updating their guide to chestfeeding so it's more gender-inclusive.
Gender inclusive language in menstruation apps.
The naming system for IKEA products, developed in 1948 by IKEA's founder Ingvar Kamprad, who was dyslexic, and the names helped him remember all the products. There are different kinds of words for different categories of products, for instance, bathroom items are named after Swedish lakes and rivers, beds and wardrobes get Norwegian place names, and there are long-running rumours that IKEA denies that rugs and other floor coverings are named after Danish place names as a diss to Denmark. Joke's on that diss - I've got a couple of IKEA rugs and they're amazing, thanks Denmark.
And a couple of years ago, IKEA's Norwegian operation compiled 800 product names into a list for baby name options, to help if you want to name your baby after an Ikea product.
Swedish terms for jealousy - "wears black stockings"?
Medieval book-protecting curses.
Patient meaning someone in hospital.
Cusp - astrology origins.
Type, as in the letters, meant a blow.
Stereotype and cliche were both printing terms, referring to being able to reproduce the same image again and again.
Other printing terms: upper case and lower case, referring to the shallow trays in which printers kept their pieces of type - capital letters on the top, hence upper case.
In 2021, during Women's History Month, the book Feminist Cross Stitch was pulled from sale by the craft chain store Michaels and pulped, because 10% of the patterns in it contained the F-swear. The book had been out since 2019, so Michaels had had a bit of time to notice that. And weirdly, after saying they didn't sell any sweary products and trashing the physical copies, Michaels did start selling it on their website. WHICH IS IT, Michaels - you do or you don't sell swears? Anyway after some outcry, they agreed that if it happened again, they wouldn't pulp books but put a language advisory sticker on the cover.
Winterfylleth - an old term for what we now call October, it meant the start of winter.
Names of the months - a lot of you have asked, I promise I will! I promise. I will.
Janus words.
In a lawsuit, the difference between using ‘and’ and ‘or’.
Shibboleth. Which is a word that I always have to look up, so maybe if I make a podcast about it I'll remember it. Worked for me when I named an episode Lacuna, which before that had been another meaning I couldn't retain.
Sinéad Burke getting a term for little person into the Irish dictionary.
Ether.
Electron.
Amber.
Miasma, which meant toxic vapours - people thought breathing in bad air caused illness, before they discovered viruses.
Malaria also meant bad air.
Miranda rights - that's a bad eponym, why aren't we just calling them arrest rights instead of naming them after a harmful person?
Interview with the letters thorn þ and eth ð, asking them what it has been like since they aren't in the English language any more.
Apostrophe the punctuation mark and apostrophe the rhetorical device.
Terms like Boston Marriage.
Heroin was a trademark.
The word 'tabloid' originated in the 1880s as a trademarked word for a small tablet of medicine, but soon it came to be used to mean a small compressed dose of something, such as news in shorter, more easily digested form, in the smaller-format newspapers.
The French for octopus, which has caused some stir in Quebec. '
Places called New (oldthing) - New Zealand, New York, Newfoundland - have more imagination, colonisers!
Also terms for places that indicate a certain centric view of the world - Antipodes, Middle East etc.
The history of the term Caucasian - it's not good!
Bloomers, the garment, are named after the women's rights advocate Amelia Jenks Bloomer, who wasn't the first to wear them, but did help popularise them in the 1850s as a more practical, healthier, less restrictive, more freeing garment for women. Of course men HATED that, so bloomers were the subject of abuse and ridicule in the streets and in the press. After a few years, the eponymous Bloomer had stopped wearing bloomers, to blend in more and, she said, expend her energies on something else. The last name Bloomer probably came from 13th century ironworkers.
The Turing test.
Johann Fust, Gutenberg’s dodgy partner in the printing press: he was accused of witchcraft because of the letters looking identical - printing was pretty new in Europe, remember, and new technologies must be witchcraft.
Why don't we have more English words for describing smells? Thai has a lot of smell vocab.
Coining science terms in Zulu for concepts like immune system and dinosaur.
Cynosure, meaning a dog's tail and having been an older name for the constellation that now goes by Ursa Minor.
Salty: 16th century term used about lecherous female dogs, and from there people.
Balloon.
Average originated from an Arabic word that meant damage to a ship or its cargo, and the mathematical meaning came about from the ship's owners and insurers sharing the cost of the damage.
Chord, the musical kind, from catgut.
The granula/granola trademark wars.
Grape nuts - from glucose being from Greek for wine must.
Gluten, from glue, because it's sticky.
Vamp: the piano vamping is related to the vamp that is the front part of a shoe, vamp being a corruption of the French "avant pied", in front of the foot. The vamp of a shoe might often have been repaired or replaced, thus the term 'revamp', and from this idea of patching things up, vamp lent itself to the sense of improvising something, hence piano. This is all unrelated to the other sense of vamp, a hottie, which is a shortening of 'vampire' that has unclear etymology but probably nothing to do with shoes.
The word aspirin was trademarked by a German chemist in 1899, it came from the plant spiraea, also known as meadowsweet.
Elixir: originally powder for drying wounds; for a long time an alchemy term.
Vindication came from taking vengeance.
Etymology of dungeon.
A 14th century slang term for pubic hair was neþir berd.
Petition: when it entered the English language in the 14th century, it meant a prayer, but in the Latin whence it came, it meant an attack.
Weregild, the price for someone's life. Note the were-, like werewolf, which we talked about in an early episode, it meant 'man' - 'man wolf'.
Croupier - from horse rumps.
Nurse - from nutricia (wet nurse to dry nurse to heathcare nurse).
Germane - having the same parents.
Acne - probably a misreading of acme, a point.
Habit - went from the clothing to repeated behaviour.
Dessert was from French for clearing the table.
Grenade - from pomegranate, which meant an apple with many seeds.
Blurb was originally a mocking term.
Valid - having force in law.
Positive and negative - positive was a 14th century legal term meaning legislated, from Latin positivus meaning settled by agreement, and the opposite was ‘natural’, meaning by birth or according to nature. And the earliest form of negative, adjectival from around 1400, meant a denial.
Taint: from Middle English ‘to prove guilty, convict’.
Whelm is a real word! It was to cover or turn, and overwhelm meant to turn over or capsize.
Ditto: Italian used the word to avoid repetition of month names in a series of dates.
Tutu - probably reduplication of culcul, ie bumbum.
Another garment from bum: culottes.
Those were 199 ideas I haven’t made into podcasts. Until this one.
I’ve been on a couple of podcasts the last few days: the Bugle, talking about the latest poison news and the burglar who stopped mid-crime to read a book; and the Gargle, talking about news in special eggs, Gargle host Alice Fraser has a book available to preorder on Unbound, it’s about the joys of romance novels and is called A Passion For Passion. I also didn’t get to tell you about it in a more timely fashion but AJ Jacobs who appeared on this show a few episodes ago had me as a guest on his own podcast The Puzzler, and in each of three episodes he set a different bespoke puzzle for me, which was a great honour as well as furnishing me with a bold new spelling of my name. I also welcome the puzzles you will set for the Allusionist 200th episode quiztacular, so do that at theallusionist.org/quiz.
And if you’d like to help fund more episodes of the Allusionist, then you can do so by becoming a member of the Allusioverse at theallusionist.org/donate. You’ll be getting some puzzletastic bonuses soon, as well as merch perks at the live shows, you get livestreams with relaxing readings from my dictionaries, behind the scenes information about this show including tour diaries, and membership of the Discord community that is so delightful, and we’re watching the new season of Taskmaster together because my brother is in it and I love to see him struggle to solve problems. I stil think fondly of the time in 2006 when he couldn’t open a box of chocolates because he didn’t realise it was taped closed, so he just tried to claw through the lid. Anyway, theallusionist.org/donate.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
scute, noun, zoology: a thickened horny or bony plate on a turtle's shell or on the back of a crocodile, stegosaurus, etc.
Try using ‘scute’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. The music is by Martin Austwick of PaleBirdMusic.com. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you want to advertise on this show, and hear me come up with an original ad for your product every time - podcast advertising is very effective, because of what podcasters like me do - contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads.
And as ever you can hear or read every episode, get more information about the topics therein, and see the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, all at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
