Go to theallusionist.org/200 to listen to the quiz and play along using the answer sheet.
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, am trapped on a cruise ship with language, and only one of us did not commit some elaborate murders.
Here it is, the 200th episode of the Allusionist! To celebrate, here is a playalong quiz where the questions have been set by you, the smart listeners, and if you want to play as you listen, you can keep track of your scores via the score sheet at theallusionist.org/200, if you don’t have to hand the back of an envelope and a pencil you stole from IKEA.
Thanks very much to everyone who supplied questions - I couldn’t include all of them in the end because the quiz would have been long enough to feel like an exam, but I’m planning to include them in a bonus quizlet for the members of the Allusioverse soon enough, because they were all good questions.
And thank you for listening to this show at some point in its 200-episode-plus-some-Tranquillusionists-and-unnumbered-extras lifespan. If you fancy giving me a lil treat for this landmark occasion, recommending the show to somebody would be it - that’s still the best way people find podcasts, by word of mouth or virtual mouth in the form of comments on podcast recommendation threads or request posts, or reviews, or toilet cubicle graffiti might get a couple of new listeners - have any of you found the show thanks to toilet graffiti?
Another wonderful thing you can do to help this show keep on keeping on, because it’s rough out here for independent podcasts, us leaky little sailboats, is donate to the show via theallusionist.org/donate and become a member of the Allusioverse, in return for which you do get extra perks at my live shows, plus behind the scenes information about the making of every episode, and the company of your fellows in the Allusioverse Discord community, we’re watching the new season of Taskmaster together because my brother Andy is in it, why not join us for that? theallusionist.org/donate, and when you listen to this show you can think, “This exists thanks to me! Well done me.” I agree, well done you.
On with the 200th episode quiz.
Question 1 from Saira
The first question is from Saira.
What term (comprised of the name of a drink + a bird) means a person who gains popularity on social media for some positive trait but is later discovered to have a distasteful history and/or to engage in offensive behaviour?
I know this one, I know this one! Tea flamingo. No, wait, I promise I know it: hot Bovril chaffinch. Just joking, I know it, seriously this time, mojito pelican. Just funning around to give you time to think of the answer too; here is my answer real and true: The drink is a milkshake and the bird is a duck and Milkshake Duck.
Answer: milkshake duck.
[triumphant sound]
Milkshake Duck came from a 2016 tweet by the cartoonist who posts as pixelatedboat, the tweet said: “The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist.”
How did we describe this before we had the term Milkshake Duck?
Question 2 from Domas
The next question is from Domas. Domas says:
Duck: was the verb named after the noun, or was the noun named after the verb?
Is this a trick question where they are completely unrelated words? Is me even asking that demonstrative of my trust issues?
Answer: Ducks were named after the thing they do.
Ah! Verb before noun in this case! In Old English, the word for the bird duck was ‘ened’, but there was also a verb d’ucan’, that meant to duck or dive, and people correctly observed that that’s what ducks do, so that’s how ducks became known as ducks.
I don’t think I’d love to be named after something that I do, even if I do it quite a lot, feels a bit reductive if I was rebranded ‘browser tab opener’.
Anyway, I score no points for this question.
Question 3 from Kat and Jo
HZ: The next question is from Kat and Jo:
KAT: How many words have been recorded in Swiss German, excluding ones used by individual families, for the end bit of a loaf of bread? 26, 52, 90, or more than 140?
HZ: Wow, I must be extremely unimaginative because to me 26 sounds like a lot of words for the end bit of a loaf of bread. In my household it’s known as ‘the stump’; it’s ‘knobbies’ to the Roy children in Succession; it’s variously the heel, the nob, the… terminal crust… I’m already out. I’ll assume the Swiss German speakers are 18 times more imaginative than I am and guess 90.
JO: There are more than 140 words for the end of the bread.
HZ: No points for me, but I have fresh curiosity about bread stub culture.
JO: My family says ‘füdli’, which essentially means ‘butt’.
Question 4 from Amy
The next question is from Amy.
Amy says:
“Hi! I love listening to your show while I sew!!)”
Cool! Thank you, Amy! Amy says:
Sewing machines and human bodies have parts that share names, which one of these parts is found only on humans:
1. Throat
2. Spine
3. Foot
4. Arm
Well, I know my sewing machine has certain body parts: it has a foot which is the little metal bit that holds the fabric in place while the needle goes through it, and my sewing machine has an arm which is the top part, but does it have a throat, does it have a spine? What other body parts does a sewing machine have? I’m not a sewing machine anatomist, but I believe the other part it has from these options is a throat, and therefore it does not have a spine.
Answer: spine.
The throat of the sewing machine is the sort of gap between the arm and the base.
Question 5 from Erik
The next question is from Erik. Erik says:
What do the Korean alphabet and the letter 'G' have in common?
Coincidentally I have recently been reading about the history of the Korean writing system, Hangul, and how it was invented by the king in the 15th century. Could that have anything to do with the letter G? Not that that king invented it, I know the letter G is older! But the English writing system came from the Roman one, and older Latin did not use the letter G, so someone must have invented it at some point.
What has always stood out to me is how the lower case g I was taught to write, an O with a tail, is so different to the one that appears in most typefaces, that is two closed rings joined at a slight distance, like a mangled pair of spectacles. Also g often substituted for the now lost letter yogh [ȝ], which lost a lot of ground after the Norman invasion because it wasn’t a thing in Norman French, and then the arrival of the printing press in Britain sent yogh to live on a farm upstate with thorn and eth. But I digress. Erik, please: the answer is:
Unlike most other alphabets or letters, we know who invented them and when. King Sejong in the mid 15th century for Korean and Spurius Carvilius Ruga in the 3rd century BCE for 'G'.
Aaah. So I nudged at the answer, I’m going to give myself half a point. And my puzzlement over the G that is made of two rings and looks like mangled spectacles, because while Old Latin spoke the letter G aloud, it was represented in script by the letter C, which had derived from the Greek letter gamma, and a written C could represent not only the G sound but also C, and K, so: confusing. Thus, well done Spurius Carvilius Ruga for seeing a problem and providing a solution, which was adding an extra stroke to a letter C to show it was pronounced the G way - and by doing so, he could spell his own name more accurately.
Question 6 from Ashra
Question 6 is from Ashra, who says:
What animal has the Latin name ‘Monodon Monoceros’?
‘Monoceros’ means ‘single horn’ - like ‘rhinosceros’, which means nose horn. So if I’m thinking of animals with one horn, my mind immediately goes to unicorns and narwhals. Unicorns don’t need a genus name like monodon - which means single tooth - so my answer is narwhal.
Ashra’s answer is… also narwhal! Great.
The probable etymology of the word ‘narwhal’ is that it was from the Old Norse for corpse-whale, because a narwhal’s skin is grey and mottled. Oh, come ON! If I encounter a creature with a horn or tusk that is up to three metres long, I’m noticing that first and the skin a distant second. Although I suppose they might only have seen female narwhals, which don’t have the long visible tusk, in which case the corpse whale is a more gender-inclusive name than monodon monoceros.
Question 7 from Wildman
The next question is from Wildman, who says:
How many of your listeners have a “Death Pledge”?
I don’t know all the listeners well enough, Wildman, to know what kinds of pacts or contract killings they might have committed to, but I do suspect that you might be referring to the word ‘mortgage’, because I know the ‘mort’ there refers to death, like in French [mort].
Wildman says:
I am not a person with a dark sense of the world : ) 😬. The question could be ‘literally’ restated: “How many of your listeners have a ‘mortgage””! The word mortgage comes from the Old French word “morgage”, which directly translates to “dead pledge” (or “death pledge”). (The prefix of the word, “mort”, means dead (or death), while the suffix, ‘gag’”, means pledge.).”
Yes, the ‘-gage’ came from the same word as ‘wage’.
While the death referenced here theoretically refers to the death of the contract if either timely payment is not received or it is paid in full, I an sure many who have been on the wrong side of a bad ‘mortgage’ , would see death in a different context 😳
However, Wildman, I can’t answer your actual question, which was how many of my listeners have a death pledge/mortgage, because I have no way of verifying that information. I don’t have one though, because when you’re a self-employed podcaster, no bank lets you have a mortgage. [weh-wah sound] Can I have half a point though, for getting that you were talking about ‘mortgage’? [ting! sound] Thank you.
Question 8 from Jei
Question eight is from Jei. Jei sys:
English typically uses the subject-verb-object word format. But can you name a language using verb-subject-object?
Verb subject object! I’ve learned some that have been subject object verb, like Latin, but starting with the verb, hmm. Am I right in remembering that is a feature of Tagalog? I learned a little bit of Hawaiian on Duolingo that did that, although I don’t think Hawaiian always does. Tell me more, Jei.
Jei’s answer is:
Arabic, Classic Maya, Egyptian, Filipino, Hawaiian, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Tongan.
I'm from the Philippines and my Irish friend pointed it out to me so I thought it was interesting!
I agree with you! Thank you very much, Jei.
Question 9 from Neville
Question nine.
NEVILLE: This is Neville Fogarty -
HZ: Neville Fogarty, as I live and breathe!
NEVILLE: - who devotees might remember as a participant at Lollapuzzoola in Allusionist 62: In Crypt, Decrypt.
What branch of mathematics takes its name from the Latin word for pebble?
HZ: The real question you’re asking, Neville, is whether I can remember any branches of mathematics. The answer to the etymological facade of your question is not algebra, because that is from Arabic for something other than pebble, and it’s not geometry because that’s Greek for something other than pebble, and it’s not statistics because that’s from Latin for something other than pebble, so aargh what other mathematics branches are there - is it calculus, the pebble connection being like calcium and calcification and calx and chalk? Is it??
NEVILLE: The branch of mathematics that takes its name from the Latin word for pebble is calculus. Congratulations, Helen, on 200 marvelous episodes of The Allusionist.
HZ: Thank you Neville! And please give my regards to your crossword puzzle co-champion and mom.
Question 10 from Clare
Question ten from Clare is:
What is the origin of our word ‘chaplain’, and from which 'chap' does its derivation come?
HZ: OK Clare, how many ‘chap’ words are there? Chap the informal word for a person, chap for the fissures in the skin, chap books?, chaps the garment - I’m going to rule out chaps the garment as the origin of ‘chaplain’, beguiling as that visual image is. I also don’t think it would have anything to do with chapped skin.
I’m thinking it’s more to do with the chap part of words like chapter and chapel, and I remember that deriving from the Latin for head, caput. But because of all the cape- and hood-related etymologies that came up last episode, I also remember that Latin word for head also begetting a lot of cape words, so I reckon it is either from the Latin for head or from one of its cape-like offspring.
Clare’s answer is:
It is derived from the French word for a cloak. The French Merovingian King's carried a (supposed) piece of the cape of St Martin of Tours into battle, as a holy relic for oaths to be sworn on. The priest who cared for it was called a cappellanu and this was then used to refer to all military priests, and from this we get chaplain. Also chapel.
Yes! I’m giving myself a point because that French word for cloak is from the Latin head origin that has given us so many words, like in last episode I mentioned biceps and capsize, here are some more: cabbage, capitulate, mischief, and precipitation, which meant falling headlong.
Chap the person slang and chap books are from the word ‘chapman’ which had unrelated etymology, it has germanic origins, meaning tradesman.
St Martin of Tours is cloak-famous because: some time in the early-mid fourth century Common Era, when he was a teenager, he was forced to serve in the Roman army, and was stationed in Gaul, in modern-day France. And one day while he was on duty, he encountered a man out in the freezing cold, begging, and Martin cut in half his thick army cloak and gave one piece to the man. So they could both sport a fetching minicloak to keep out half the cold. That night, Martin dreamed of the man to whom he had given the hemi-cloak, and in the dream that man was Jesus. This vision compelled Martin to be very pious and spend his life serving the poor; meanwhile his half of the cloak became a holy relic.
Now, according to St Martin’s biographer Sulpicius Severus, he had already given away the rest of his clothes to people in need, and if that’s true, him going around on military duty wearing only half of a cloak is - well it’s a scene that I haven’t seen in many churches’ stained glass windows, and that’s really too bad.
Because of this cloak fame, St Martin is the patron saint of wool-weavers and of tailors. He’s also the patron saint of France, and Buenos Aires, and of sheep and horses, as well as the patron saint against poverty and against alcoholism. But confusingly also the patron saint of winemakers. Patron saints can have it all! It’s because his feast day is around the time of the late grape harvest. Make him the patron saint of late grapes then, pre-fermented!
Halfway through, how are you scoring? I have got seven points. It’s respectable, not dazzling.
Question 11 from Declan
Question eleven is from Declan, who says:
What's the name of the yellow-coloured globe lamp atop a tall black and white striped pole, marking pedestrian crossings of roads in the UK & beyond?
I know this one! But I don’t know why it is called what it is called. What it is called is a belisha beacon.
Declan’s answer:
A Belisha beacon. [Triumphant sound effect.] This lead me down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia to Mr. Hore-Belisha, Zebra crossings, Pelican crossings as well as Puffin and even Toucan crossings (where "two can" cross - pedestrians and cyclists)”
A toucan crossing is a pun? Now I’m angry! But I’ll go down that rabbit hole too, Declan: the eponymous Belisha was the late British politician Leslie Hore-Belisha, who was the Minister for Transport from 1934 to 1937, right around the time when a lot of people were newly travelling by car, as motoring had become more affordable. But people were allowed to drive without any training, and speed limits had been abolished in 1930, so there were a lot of accidents - a record number in the year Lord Hore-Belisha was appointed to the job. He even had a narrow escape himself while crossing a road in London and nearly being ploughed into by a car.
So he wasted little time in instituting measures to make the roads safer: he reinstated speed limits, and introduced the driving test - incredible that hadn’t been a thing before. Like letters I know everything had to start somewhere, but you would hope it would start a bit earlier in the existence of car. And pedestrian crossings had hitherto been poorly marked, but now had belisha beacons added at the kerbs, because when you’re driving, it’s much easier to see a big orange lollipop than some little marks on the road, or a pedestrian. And lo, the number of road casualties did fall considerably, thanks in part to the belisha beacons.
I wonder how they chose which part of Leslie Hore-Belisha’s name to use in the eponym here.
Question 12 from Amanda
Question twelve is from Amanda.
AMANDA: This is Amanda from Washington DC. Which of the following sign languages have a direct linguistic lineage with American Sign Language? Select all that apply.
A. Nicaraguan Sign Language
B. British Sign Language
C. French Sign Language
D. Jamaican Sign Language
HZ: From what I know of Nicaraguan Sign Language, it developed uniquely. British Sign Language is as far as I know very different too. So I’m going to guess French Sign Language and Jamaican Sign Language, because I don’t think Amanda would have specified ‘select all that apply’ if the answer had only been one. Which I own up is not an answer based on my active knowledge, so please inform me, Amanda:
AMANDA: C and D. Nicaraguan Sign Language emerged with limited influence from other countries when students with all kinds of disabilities, including deafness, were brought together at a centralized school in the 1970s and 80s. British Sign Language shares no common ancestry with ASL.
A notable difference is that the BSL manual alphabet uses two hands and the ASL alphabet only one. French Sign Language was a primary parent language that helped the formation of ASL when the American School for the Deaf was established in 1817.
Jamaican Sign Language emerged from ASL after Americans Mennonites established a Deaf school in 1975. The indigenous Jamaican Konchri Sain has pockets of signers in rural areas and likely also influences Jamaican Sign Language.
Question 13 from Aliza
Question 13 is from Aliza. Aliza says:
In 2018, I attended a conference in DC and was shocked to hear someone use the phrase "double-double" to refer to a cheeseburger with 2 patties and 2 slices of cheese.
As a Canadian, I use the term "double-double" to refer to something else entirely. What does this phrase refer to in Canada?
(Helen - have you learned this one yet?)”
Despite having moved to Canada nearly two years ago, I have not been taught all the vocabulary yet. I know people love to refer to the stereotypical outfit of Canada, double denim, so is double double wearing double double denim? Denim shirt under denim jacket, with jeans under jorts?
Aliza’s answer is:
A double double in Canada is coffee with two sugars and two milks.
Aaah, here’s my problem, see: I don’t drink coffee so I have never ordered a double double! But I will file this away, in case one day I need it for the citizenship test.
Question 14 from Randy
More Canadian language testing from Randy. Randy says:
In Canada, a "dart" is slang for what?
a) a pine tree
b) a cigarette
c) a slim-fitting dress
d) a pen or pencil
Um… None of the above, Randy? I live where there are many trees, including pines, and have not heard the word ‘dart’ in reference to them. A slim-fitting dress may well have darts in it, to make it fit closely, but I don’t think it would have that name overall. Pen or pencil? Perhaps, perhaps, but I’m going to go for cigarette.
It’s a guess, because like the coffee thing, I don’t smoke and I have not observed my Canadian friends who do smoke using this term, but it seems the least implausible.
Answer: b) cigarette.
[triumphant sound]
Looking it up, it may have been the Australians who came up with it first, and there’s some not very accurate-looking guesses about where it originated - was it a brand, was it a joke about taking a dart to the lungs, anyway, the answer is b) cigarette, so give yourself a point if you deserve one.
Question 15 from Sweth
Question fifteen is from Sweth. Sweth I know from the Allusioverse Discord is excellent at etymology.
Which of the following pairs of words (probably) does NOT have a shared etymology?
A) wile & guile
B) villain & vilify
C) sewer & ewer
D) flu & flux?
Flu and flux I think do share etymology, I talked about it with Rachel Botsman in the Trust episode, how influence and influenza are from the same Latin root, to flow from a source, and I think flux would share that. Wile and guile I think would be diverging pronunciations of the same thing. Sewer and ewer, I actually don’t know, but my answer is villain and vilify do not have shared etymology because they look like they would therefore I suspect the villainry is in tricking us!
Sweth’s answer is:
B: villain and vilify.
[triumphant sound.]
Sweth explains:
Wile and guile likely both derive from Frankish *wigila meaning ‘trick or ruse’ - a wile is a trick, and guile is the quality of being able to trick people.
Sewer and ewer both derive from Latin aquarius, meaning ‘pertaining to water’ - a sewer is a conduit for water, and ewer is a water carrier.
Flu and flux both derive from Latin fluere, meaning ‘flow out’ - flu is short for influenza, Italian for influence, and influence was originally thought to be caused by outflows of ‘controlling energy’; flux was originally an excessive outflow of fluid, and thus also referred to dysentery.
Villain comes from Latin villa, meaning ‘country house, farm’; a Latin villanus was a farmhand, and villain originally meant someone rustic or low-born, then someone shameful or offensive, and finally someone who commits evil acts -
the evil act of not being rich? Unfair!
- while vilify comes from Latin vilis, meaning "cheap"--the same root as vile and revile.
Sweth, I’ve told you before but I’ll tell you again: you need your own etymology podcast, it would be very good.
Question 16 from Chris
Question sixteen is from Chris, who says:
The word ‘run’ sees a lot of use - from jogging, to executing computer programs, to running your mouth, to, well, several others! How many different definitions would you estimate that the word ‘run’ has?
Eurghhhh, no! ‘Run’ has got to be one of those short words that lexicographers spend an infernal amount of time on, like set and put. And we have to consider verbs and nouns.
Chris has helpfully given us three uses of run already: jogging, executing computer programs, running your mouth, I’ll add run as in a river runs, run to be in charge of something like how apparently I run this podcast, run like a salmon run - would that be the same as a run like a large enclosure for a mammal? For the sake of numbers let’s say it’s separate - there’s also print run, a run in tights, run for office, run in the family, the runs, a run on something like the stock market or a product, run a temperature, run aground, a vocal run, running like functioning as in “Are the trains running on time? Lol no!”, a run of bad luck, home run - would cricket run be the same but different? - run errands so a verb there, but also the noun version for errand-running like going on a grocery run, run like “the wall runs the length of the garden”, run someone through with a sword - how many is that, got to be twenty?
I know there are a lot more but I have run the gamut as much as I am going to run it.
Chris’s answer is:
Per this article, over 600!
Oh, I was way off. And the article Chris links to is an NPR interview from 2011 with Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, who talks about ‘run’ being the three-letter word with the most definitions, at the time 645, who knows how many more have been added since 2011, I did try to look that up for you but mostly just found other references to the same interview. But lexicographers, let me know.
Anyway I did not guess 645 but I say you can award yourself a point if you guessed between 600 and 700, or half a point if you guessed between 500 and 600 or 700 and 800.
I did not.
Question 17 from Helen
Question seventeen is from a fellow Helen, who says:
According to The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, what is a ‘ludlow’?
Don’t be angry at me, Helen, I haven’t read The Meaning of Liff, sorry!
Ludlow, noun: a wad of newspaper, folded table-napkin or lump of cardboard put under a wobbly table or chair to make it stand up straight.
(This is my favourite 'Liff' word - it's so useful! 😀)”
Indeed, a ludlow very useful object.
A ludlow was formerly trademarked, as a kind of printing machine. It’s also a charming market town in Shropshire in England, and the name came from Old English ‘hlud’, meaning loud waters, and ‘hlǣw’, meaning hill, because the town stands on a hill next to the River Teme, which historically was a rowdy one.
Question 18 from Alaric
Question eighteen is from Alaric. Alaric says:
I’ve been learning continental Portuguese for the last year and that’s inspired me look into English words of Portuguese origin (Without tying together with Spanish, which is surprisingly hard). Assuming I’ve done my homework right, which one of these words are NOT of a direct Portuguese origin?
A Embarrass
B Shampoo
C Vindaloo
D Cobra
OK, I know that vindaloo does come from Portuguese, via Goa; it referred to wine and garlic.
Cobra, I can believe that again, that word had a journey via Portuguese colonisers, from the cobra-containing regions of the world and landed in English.
Shampoo, I have looked up before and I can’t remember where it does come from but I’m pretty sure it’s not one of the Romance languages.
Embarrass, I thought was Latin or French or Spanish, but Portuguese could be in there. So my answer is shampoo.
[triumphant sound.]
Alaric’s answer is:
B. Shampoo.
Shampoo is from ‘champo’ in Hindi that meant to rub or massage. Embarrass - well that did get to English from French via Spanish, and there’s some dispute over whether portuguese was involved or not. Whichever it was, the ‘barrass’ part referred to a halter, because the pre-shame sense of the word was to be blocked or held back.
Cobra - cobra de capello, serpent of the hood. How is this show hood-themed now! I’m not complaining I’m just confused.
Question 19 from Rosalie
Question nineteen comes from Rosalie, and it is:
What is the shortest moth name?
I’m thinking two letters, because one letter would be too short really to be practical for moth identification; three might not be short enough for Rosalie to note it. I’m no lepidopteral linguist, alas, so I don’t actually know the moth names, so now I’m thinking of the two-letter Scrabble words because some of the more obscure ones seem like the kind of thing a moth namer might find beguiling. BUT I never memorised all those words either, because I don’t enjoy the aspect of Scrabble whereby you can succeed by memorising all the two-letter words - I don’t think that’s an enjoyable way to play! - so this is a bit of a dead end.
I’m just going to call the shortest-named moth Al.
OK, what’s the real answer, Rosalie?
Rosalie says:
The real answer is Io.
Io! OK, here’s something about Io:
Io, named in 1775 by Johan Christian Fabricius, the Danish entomologist who named around 10,000 species of creature. This one is after Io who in Greek mythology was one of Zeus’s lovers, which is usually a pretty cursèd thing to be, as it is in the story of Io, because Zeus’s wife Hera was about to catch him with his lover, so the ever-resourceful Zeus turned Io into a cow. Not much of an exonerator, because anyone familiar with Zeus would know he’d be lusting after that cow too.
Hera did not see through the smokescreen, or rather cowscreen, and claimed to admire the cow so much that she insisted on Zeus gifting it to her, whereupon she banished Io the cow with a guard, Argus Panoptes, a giant with 100 eyes, all to watch to make sure Zeus didn’t return to romance the cow. Instead he sent the messenger god Hermes to kill Argus Panoptes, after which Hera took all those eyes and put them into peacock tails for posterity, and sent a gadfly to sting Io forever so Io could never rest and would be on the run in perpetuity. But, eventually, she did return to human form, and her great great great great great great great great great grandson was Herakles. And the Bosphorous Strait, in modern-day Türkiye, is named in reference to her, it means cattle strait being Greek for cattle. Anyway, the complicated love lives of Greek deities, part three zillion and ten.
Question 20 from Sarah
HZ: And finally, question twenty:
SARAH: This question is from Sarah McGrath in France.
The Irish word for jellyfish is smugairle róin. Does smugairle róin translate to
A, jellyfish,
B, sealsnot, or
C, stinging jelly?
HZ: It’s too good, it has to be seal snot,
SARAH: Answer, B, sealsnot.
[triumphant sound.]
HZ: Beautiful. Well done, Irish. And well done for calling squid ‘suckmother’. If you’ve been looking for a band name, good news: my cursory searches suggest Suckmother is available.
SARAH: Congratulations, Helen, on your 200th episode. Hope you have 200 more.
HZ: Thank you, Sarah. Check in in another ten years.
Bonus question from Doug
And, OK, finally finally: one bonus question from Doug:
People often claim acronyms as the origin of words. For example: Fornication Under Consent of the King, Port Out Starboard Home. How often is this true?
A) all the time
B) never
C) a vanishingly small number of instances
D) all of the above.
Maybe in the course of these 200 episodes you have come across Zaltzman’s first law of etymology: it’s almost never an acronym. If the word predates the 20th century, it is very very VERY unlikely to be an acronym. And the swears are older, so please may we end the “fornication under consent of the King!” rumour! Before our current King decides, “Oh yeah, maybe I’ll make it a real thing!”
But some words from the 20th century and beyond are acronyms, like radar and laser and taser, so from Doug’s options, I choose C) a vanishingly small number of instances.
Doug’s answer is:
C, for example laser and scuba.
[triumphant sound.]
Let me offer you a rare treat: a term that looks like it is not an acronym but actually is an acronym: care package! Care packages were named post-Second World War, they were food supplies for people in Europe facing food shortages, and CARE stood for Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere.
Award yourself 180 points if you got this right; scores are out of a possible 200.
I scored 193, how did you do?
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
dewclaw, noun: a rudimentary inner toe present in some dogs; a false hoof on an animal such as a deer, which is formed by its rudimentary side toes.
Try using ‘dewclaw’ in an email today.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. The music is by Martin Austwick of PaleBirdMusic.com. Thanks to all of you who sent quiz questions. Each of you gets an extra 200 points.
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, contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads.
And as ever you can hear or read every episode, get more information about the topics therein, donate to the show and become a member of the Allusioverse, find me on the socials, check out any upcoming Allusionist events and see the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, all at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
