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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 187 Bonus 2023 transcript

December 24, 2023 The Allusionist

It is the annual Bonus episode - because the people who appear on this show always say so much good stuff, it doesn’t all fit into their original episodes, so at the end of each year we get to enjoy all the extra bounty. Coming up, we’ve got a mythical disappearing island, geese, human dictionaries, the dubious history of the Body Mass Index, a Eurovision thing that has puzzled me for years, Victorian death department stores, and much more. 

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In transcript 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 178 Uranus transcript

June 22, 2023 The Allusionist

Have you ever wondered why the planets in our solar system are all named after Roman deities, except two of them? 

One of those exceptions is Earth, which means, well, earth, and it doesn’t fit the system because it wasn’t formally discovered by humans, it was where they already were, so when they started identifying planets thousands of years ago, they hadn’t yet counted Earth as one. 

And the other exception is Uranus.

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In transcript Tags history, words, language, etymology, space, planets, Uranus, solar system, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Caelus, Pluto, Earth, astronomy, astronomers, Johann Bode, William Herschel, Georgian, George III, King George III, Nevil Maskelyne, galaxy, space words, Latin, Ancient Greek, deities, gods, goddesses, Gaia, Cronus, Titans, Furies, Hecatoncheires, Cyclopses, Giants, Nymphs, Ourania Aphrodite, sky, rain, rainmaker, Sanskrit, urine, myths, legends, songs, music, names, naming, International Astronomical Union, orbit, comet, apport, eccentric

Allusionist 124 Nightmare transcript

October 25, 2020 The Allusionist
A124 Nightmare logo.jpeg

Around 700 years ago, the word ‘haunt’ first appeared in written English, at least 200 years before it took on the meaning of a ghost frequenting a place.

HZ: It just meant that way where someone haunts a bar, as in they go to it a lot, but they're not an actual ghost. But it also meant to have sex with. And I could not do enough Googling safely to find out why it had that sense, because it just came up with a lot of websites about people having sex with ghosts. So I cannot find the etymology of this middle English use of 'haunt' in the sexual sense.
PAUL BAE: You've just screwed up your Google ads logarithm by looking up succubus, haunting, "Why sex haunting?"
HZ: The things I do for this show.
PAUL BAE: Exactly.

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Paul Bae, Chelsey Weber-Smith, sex, demons, sleep, bogeyman, boggart, bugaboo, bugbear, cobalt, devil, demon, haunt, horror, incubus, jack-o’-lantern lemur, nickel, nightmare, satan, succubus, bristling, hair, scary, adjectives, adverbs, Korea, Korean, myths, legends, folklore, hell, heaven, spirits, bears, fear, mining, miners, goblins, animals, elements, satanic, satanic panic, bible, Ancient Greek, slander, gods, turnips, kobold, copper, kupfernickel, Hebrew, adversary, Old Testament

Allusionist 100. The Hundredth - transcript

May 27, 2019 The Allusionist
A100 gif smaller.gif

Today there’ll be a celebratory parade of language-related facts that you’ve learned from the Allusionist and I’ve learned from making the Allusionist, so some old facts, some new facts - well, the new facts aren’t recently invented facts, they are established facts, just making their Allusionist debut.

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, bees, gender, sexism, Aristotle, girl, foot, lady, lord, bread, Charles Butler, beekeeping, queen bees, king bees, Old English, Latin, Old Norse, vocables, Toki Pona, invented languages, constructed languages, Lauren Marks, Eclipse, aphasia, dictionaries, dictionary, lexicography, lexicology, eponyms, screws, phillips head screws, cross head screws, plus screws, minus screws, patents, inventions, mountweazels, Henry F Phillips, robertson screws, frearson screws, saxophone, Adolphe Sax, names, acronyms, IUD, g-spot, inventors, sideburns, NASA, TLAs, initialisms, prescriptivism, descriptivism, Skin Project, tattoos, mince, bench, please, step, stepmother, stepchild, stepfather, stepfamily, psychology, CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy, Jane Gregory, seance, portmanteau, portmanteaus, portmanteaux, endorphin, Tanzania, electrocution, log in, velcro, zazzification, pronouns, they, pith, singular they, namaste, orange, curses, Bath, curse tablets, pelvis, c-word, c-bomb, swears, swearing, profanity, penis, vagina, deniance, denial, Oulipo, halcyon, Ancient Greek, mythology, myths, legends, Alcyone, Ceyx, birds, kingfishers, halcyon days, Polari, Barnet, vogue, French, Welsh Patagonia, Welsh, Argentina, Wales, radish, radical, poll, hair, ballot, ball, politics, voting, elections, nice, Amazon, brands, brand names, trust, emoji, Victorians, Christmas cards, Winterval, slang, arseropes, halteres, Earlonne Woods, Ear Hustle, survival
Allusionist Patreon
Featured
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
Allusionist 200: 200th episode celebratory quiz!
Allusionist 200: 200th episode celebratory quiz!
Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.