Visit theallusionist.org/swearalong to listen to this episode, find out more about the topics therein, and play the quiz on an interactive score sheet
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, jump out of language’s birthday cake. What a rotten surprise. You want a cake and you just get some human instead? Boooo!
Today, we’re going to destress, let off some steam, with the Swearlusionist Swearalong quiz. An interactive quiz for you to play along with, every answer is a swear, shout them out when you when you hear this noise:
!@*%
[This being a transcript, though, it will henceforth be noiseless.]
Content note: there’ll be swears. What? It’s educational. Very complex area of linguistics, swears, and as we know from the Swear Pill episode, swearing is good for you, so also this is a HEALTHY episode. Very wholesome. Get ready for wellness.
OK, take some deep breaths, relax your shoulders, warm up with some vocal exercises:
FFFF
UUUU
WWWWAA
KAAAA
Just one more reminder: there will be swears. So if you are swear-abstinent, this is your last chance to remove yourself.
On with the swearalong quiz! There’s one point for every answer. Shout them out.
An easy question to start:
● Debutantes went to them, tennis racquets hit them, your feet have them:
Balls
Balls of the feet are so-called because they look like balls. The dance balls are from the Latin verb ballare, to dance.
● In the 17th-19th century, members of the clergy were given the nickname of the scrotal slang term:
bollocks
In the 18th century, there were some clergy who were called ‘bollocks’ because they talked a load of rubbish. Which is probably how the term ‘talking bollocks’ came about.
I don’t want to break the rules of my own quiz, but ‘bollocks’ was actually found in court NOT to be a swear word, in 1977, in the trial of the record store owner who had been accused of violating the 1899 Indecent Advertising Act for displaying the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks. Professor James Kingsley from the University of Nottingham testified for the defence that the word ‘bollocks’ couldn’t be indencet because it had previously appeared in place names, veterinary texts and the Bible - prior to the King James version substituting it with the word ‘stones’. The word over the preceding thousand years had variously referred to small ball-shaped objects, weights for drawbridges, rubbish, and priests. Verdict: not indecent.
● Also in 1977 a Sex Pistols bootleg was released called:
spunk
Spunk has the same origin as the word ‘sponge’.
● There’s a term for when you let out a swear because you stubbed your toe or spilled coffee all over your lap or something: that kind of swearing is called lalochezia. Fancy name, less fancy etymology: ‘lalo’ is speech or babble, and the ‘chezia’ is:
shit
‘Lalochezia’ translates to ‘shitting out of your mouth.’
CULTURE ROUND:
● The Wolf of Wall Street is the feature film to break the record for most instances of the word
fuck
The Wolf of Wall Street contains 569 fucks in all their variants! 358 Fuckings, 169 fucks, 18 motherfuckers, 16 fuckeds, 4 Fucksvilles, and one each of fuckers, fuckface, fuckheads and fuckity.
● The poet TS Eliot wrote the first known written instance of the word
bullshit
● As mentioned in episode four of the Allusionist, which was about the word
cunt
● Another poet, Robert Browning, in his 1841 poem ‘Pippa Passes’, mistakenly used a word thinking it meant a nun’s wimple, in the lines:
Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and *****
Twats.
Here’s how Robert Browning made that mistake: he had read the word in a 1659 poem ‘Vanity of Vanities’ which contained an anti-Catholic joke:
They talk't of his having a Cardinall’s Hat,
They'd send him as soon an Old Nun’s Twat.
Robert Browning must have thought, what would be insulting to someone who was hoping to wear a cardinal’s headgear? A nun’s headgear! What could be more of a diss than that. They didn’t have Urban Dictionary then, Robert Browning couldn’t look up unfamiliar words; just did his best.
How’re you doing? Take a little breather, have a drink of water, roll your shoulders
On we go.
NATURE ROUND:
● Dandelion, the flower, is a contraction of dent de lion, the Old French for ‘lion’s tooth’, because of the shape of the dandelion leaf. But it had another name in Middle English, which referred to the flower’s diuretic qualities, and that name was - fill in the blank - ****-a-bed. I’ll repeat: ****-a-bed.
piss
Piss-a-bed. In French, it was called pissenlit.
● Fill in the blank: If you have a cut and you want to prevent infection, you could rub it with the crushed leaves of the herb ****weed. I’ll repeat: ****weed.
knobweed
Also known as false ironwort.
● The word ‘rooster’ was an American invention of the late 18th century, so people could avoid saying which word?
cock
So unfair! The word meant a bird long before it had any other connotation - ‘cocc’ was an Old English word, probably imitating the sound of a cockcrow. Also in Old English, ‘cocc’ was a nickname for someone who strutted around like a cock, confident-looking I suppose, and from there it became a more general term for a guy, a chap, a bloke. And thence, the penis.
In the 19th century, cock-shy Americans substituted the word - haystack instead of haycock, roach instead of cockroach, but even rooster-roach, weather roosters instead of weather cocks, and the rooster of a gun instead of cock - although people still say ‘cocking a gun’ not ‘roostering a gun’.
● Fill in the blank: In the 16th century, a kestrel was known as a wind******. I’ll repeat: a kestrel was known as a wind******.
windfucker
Or sometimes a fuckwind. But not because the kestrels fucked the wind, sorry. It might have been from an Old Icelandic word fjúka meaning ‘drifted on the wind’ or blown away. Or, there was an old sense of ‘fuck’ that meant ‘to beat’, perhaps referring to the kestrel beating as in besting the wind.
There’s a name recorded in 1290, ‘Simon Fockebotere’, who was likely somebody who churned butter, beat the butter. Though who can say what he got up to in his own dairy.
● Herons are such graceful-looking birds, but their habit of defecating when taking off in flight earned them another name - fill in the blank: *****poke. I’ll repeat: *****poke.
shitepoke
And also, shiterow.
GEOGRAPHY ROUND:
● Fun photo opp in Scotland, there are not one but two towns named
Twatt
This place name is from the Old Norse þveit, meaning 'small parcel of land'. The same word turns up as ‘thwaite’ in a lot of place names, but only a couple of twatts.
Me visiting Twatt in Orkney
● Fill in the blank: in 1998, I went on holiday to a town in Devon named ****stone
Crap
Crapstone. It was nice! Lovely holiday. Apparently the town was named after a local family.
● In 2012, this town in Dorset was voted Britain’s Worst Place Name. The town sign kept being stolen, so has now been replaced by a 1½ ton block of stone with the town name carved into it, and that town is called: ****terton. I’ll repeat: ****terton.
Shitterton
It’s a very old place name, Shitterton, more than 1000 years old, and named for the river that flows through the town, which people used to shit in.
In the Victorian era, they tried to rename it Sitterton, but you can’t deny Shitterton its linguistic heritage.
● In the Bavarian Alps, you can go up the 1780m tall mountain named:
Wank
Wank Mountain. You can go up it in the in the Wank lift or Wankbahn. Well, actually in German it’s pronounced vank - Vank mountain, vankbahn, and it’s from an old word for slope, sorry to ruin the fun. Although Wank mountain scores 4.5* on Tripadvisor so it probably is still fun.
YOUR FINAL QUESTION:
● Before its current scatological meaning, this word has meant so many things: chaff, residue, weeds growing in the grain fields, dregs of beer, buckwheat, a slang term for money... But now it is what?
crap
‘Crap’ is from the medieval Latin word ‘crappa’ meaning chaff. It is not from the name of Thomas Crapper, the Victorian sanitation engineer who popularised indoor toilets for the home. He was only ten in 1846, the year of the first recorded written instance of the word crap meaning defecation, so would have had to have been a real prodigy of plumbing to get the eponym.
Score yourself out of 18 - tell you what, have a thousand points for free, it’s been a tough year, now score yourself out of 1018.
What did you get?
Fucking brilliant.
Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is:
drabble, verb, archaic: make wet and dirty in muddy water. Origin Middle English: from Low German drabbelen ‘paddle in water or mire’.
Try using drabble in an email today.
Let me know what you scored in the quiz - find me @allusionistshow on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and regarding the Facebook page, it was hacked the other day and for a brief while, became a Vietnamese fashion store, so terrible sorry if you got some spammy posts in your feed. The page is back in my possession now, and if you did order some fashions, apologies because I am not going to be despatching them.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, with editorial help from Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder and Home Cooking podcasts, and the Song Exploder Netflix show. The music is by Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com.
Hang out at patreon.com/allusionist, and to hear or read every episode, find out more information about the topics therein, get links to all the guests, see the full dictionary entry for the randomly selected word, visit the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
