Four Letter Word season continues, and this time we do not require explicit tags or content warnings, because our four-letter word is QUIZ! Or rather, today we have a quiz about four letter words.
Read moreAllusionist 209. Serving C-bomb transcript
Things have changed for a word that despite being around in written text for 900+ years, didn’t even get listed in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1972.
NICOLE HOLLIDAY: I never say this word.
HZ: No, I feel bad to force you.
NICOLE HOLLIDAY: No, it's funny. Well, I'll say it on podcast, this is professional environment; but in my normal daily life, I can't imagine that I would personally say it. And this might just be like, I'm kind of a prude and I was raised kind of religious, but it does sort of seem like beyond the pale for me personally. I wonder if were 20 if I wouldn’t feel that way, but I spent so much of my life like judiciously avoiding very strong taboos. And this one, just my gut reaction is that it overwhelms. So when you asked me to do this, I was like, “Oh, no! I have to say that word!”
HZ: I'm sorry. We could probably skirt around it and then people can spend the whole episode trying to guess which word we're talking about.
Read moreAllusionist 208. Four Letter Words: Ffff
If you’re thinking, “How the fuck can you write a whole 500-page dictionary just about the word ‘fuck’?” consider, say, the many meanings of ‘ass fuck’, noun and verb - and that’s before you even add similar terms like ‘bumfuck’ and ‘buttfuck’. And there are so many less usual terms, like ‘fucksome’ or ‘fuckstrated’ or ‘fuckist’ or ‘fucktious’.
Read moreAllusionist 207. Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Today’s episode is in the Tranquillusionist style, to give your brain a break while I say words that are not too consequential over a soothing backing track. And this time, the words are all the randomly selected words from the dictionary from every episode of the show, in reverse chronological order.
Read moreAllusionist 206. Bonus 2024 transcript
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, have been stashing away special Allusiobits all year, when the people who appeared on the show said interesting things that I couldn’t fit into their episode because there wasn’t room or it was not about language - waiting, just waiting, for this, the annual Bonus episode! This year we’ve got something called the ‘universal blank’, which actually does not refer to my emotions; we’ve got tricorn hats, poets with migraines, and why Boston cream pie isn’t a pie. And so much more.
Read moreAllusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2 transcript
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Elsie does lie. I had just given her the "sleepy" button and I was in the kitchen. I was making lunch, and she goes to the button board and she says, "bedroom, sleepy, lie down." I'm like, "What a great contextual use. Yes, absolutely. Let's go take a little nap," and walk into the bedroom. And my cat doesn't come in, and I come back - and she's eating my cheese sandwich. And she has, multiple times, tried to send me out of the room in order to get my food. So when I'm making lunch and she starts talking to me and it's something like, “Go check the litter box” or something like that, food goes into the microwave and then I investigate whatever's happening.
HZ: How did that make you feel? You're like, “I can never trust her again?”
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I don't know. I was like, oh, right. Cat.
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1 transcript
HZ: It's a lot of deductive reasoning happening with how she's using language. Fascinating.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, it really is - which is why, when I get comments on videos where it's like, “Oh, this cat is just walking across buttons randomly,” I'm like, no, I have a dog that does that. I daily have moments where I'm like, okay, no, this is really a thing that's happening.
Allusionist 203. Flyting transcript
ISHBEL McFARLANE: “You crap so much that you sunk a ship you were on.”
HZ: I’m gonna use that.
Allusionist 202. Singlish Singlish transcript
GWEE LI SUI: We have not yet known what it's capable of. Singlish is one of those things the potential of which we're yet to tap in properly. There can be so many things you can do with it.
Read moreAllusionist 201. Singlish transcript
BIBEK GURUNG: You grow up with the sense that if your first language, or one of your first languages, Singlish, actually a bad version of an already existing language, you kind of get this sense that “I'm just bad at language,” which is… language is a fundamental human skill. It's what separates us from the lemurs or whatever. And to just have this sense that you're bad at this very fundamental skill, I think, really does a number to your self esteem and your abilities to communicate in general. I still have a lot of - I don't know how to phrase it, maybe like cultural cringe - around Singlish. And when I meet someone from Singapore, we do sort of lapse into Singlish and communicate in that way, except if I'm with American friends and then I just feel so self conscious and I'm not able to do it. As a student of linguistics and someone who just knows about the sociolinguistic dynamics, I still find it really hard to shake.
Read moreTranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations transcript
Let’s hear it for some of the constellations that we used to have but are now ex-constellations.
Read moreAllusionist 200. 200th episode celebratory quiz! transcript
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.
Read moreAllusionist 199. 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet - transcript
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.
Read moreAllusionist 198. Queer Arab Glossary
HZ: So how do you go about building a glossary when you have to do that yourself from scratch?
MARWAN KAABOUR: Yes, it's a good question. Like, why would a graphic designer with a steady job decide to open this can of worms?
Allusionist 197. Word Play part 7: Word Sport
Unleash the bees!
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