Allusionist Apple Fest transcript

Listen to this episode and find out more about the topics therein - and see photos of the apple festival - at theallusionist.org/applefest

This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, ask language, “How do you like them apples?” and language replies, “Those apples, you want to know how I like those apples,” and I say, “Not any more I don’t.”

Today we return to an autumnal classic Allusionist: the one where we learned all about how apples get their names. It is a really fun time, I’m happy to hear it again - and stick around to the end because there’s an extra new adventure: last weekend I went to an apple festival, and you’re all coming with me.

Two points of information before we begin: 1. Patreon now offers a free tier, so if you want to keep track of what’s happening in the Allusioverse - new episodes arriving and suchlike - then you can sign up there at patreon.com/allusionist to receive occasional updates. Then if you want to level up to paid membership, you also get loads of extra stuff: livestreams with me and my dictionaries; watchalongs such as the current season of Great British Bake-Off; the company of your fellow Allusionauts in the Allusioverse Discord community, which is a genuinely pleasant corner of the internet; and you get behind-the-scenes missives about each episode, last time Patrons received some real deep cuts about audio production. That’s for the paying patrons, but sign up for free and you’ll get an email a once or twice a month, no more inbox clutter than that, I promise. patreon.com/allusionist.

Point of information 2 is for you if you listen to the show using Apple Podcasts: apparently a new update will unsubscribe you if you don’t listen to the show promptly enough. And I don’t want to pressure you or add more deadlines to your life, so may I suggest you set the show to download because I gather this will mean you do not get automatically unsubscribed, or at least not as quickly. And it would be so sad if you thought the show had just gone away - which happens, I got a message from someone just the other day who thought the show stopped three years ago. It didn’t! I’ve been here the whole time!

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And now, the Applelusionist, which was a collaboration with the Sporkful podcast - their episode was about how new kinds of apples are made, mine was about how apples are named, and why? Because back then, in the autumn of 2019, a new apple was about to be launched. 

It’s been in development since 1997. It’s expected to be a huge moneymaker of an apple, being reliable for growers, and staying good for a really long time. Millions of trees have already been planted, millions of apples pre-ordered: it’s the biggest product launch in apple history.

It has its own trademarked slogans: “The Apple of Big Dreams™” and “Amazing Flavor + Infinite Possibilities™”

It’s the apple formerly known as the WA38: the Cosmic Crisp.

HZ: What's the big fuss about the Cosmic Crisp? Why is everyone so hyped about this particular apple? In your opinion. 

DAN PASHMAN: Well, it's probably a little bit of a circular thing, because so much effort and expense has been put into making it: that creates the hype; the stakes of the thing create the hype. If it was just like a soft launch like, “Hey, we're going to plant a few trees, we're going to see how it goes and then maybe in twenty years we'll have the Honeycrisp," that's not as exciting. 

HZ: You've really got to be incredibly patient, haven't you, when you're trying to come up with a new apple that's great, because you might not find out that it's failed for so many years. It is not an easy process. You have got to be a diligent and patient human who loves the company of trees. 

DAN PASHMAN: The guy who first came up with the cross that became Cosmic Crisp retired before before the process ended. That's how long it took. 

HZ: Didn't get to see it come to fruition, what what?

DAN PASHMAN: Oh. Very nicely done.

HZ: Don't reward me for bad behaviour. 

HZ: On the Sporkful episode, Dan and I find out about what goes into developing a new kind of apple, and right here on the Allusionist, it’s all about apple names.

KATE EVANS: Coming up with the Cosmic Crisp name was a little agonizing initially.

HZ: This is Professor Kate Evans, who’s been leading the Cosmic Crisp breeding program at Washington State University since the apple’s father Bruce Barritt retired in 2008.

KATE EVANS: Various people have said it is actually worse than naming your child because people criticize you if they don't like the name and usually people don't say, hey that's a terrible name you named your child, why did you do that? 

HZ: Don’t they?

KATE EVANS: But with an apple, you get a lot of that. 

HZ: How do you name the apple that’s getting the biggest launch of our lifetimes?

KATHRYN GRANDY: Kathryn Grandy. I am chief marketing officer for proprietary variety management, and we have been contracted by Washington State University to commercialize the WA38, which is now called Cosmic Crisp. 

HZ: It’s a catchier name.

KATHRYN GRANDY: As a marketing group we look at the category: what is the heritage of the apple? What's the parentage? How was it bred? Where was it developed and researched? What is the location that it's being grown in? And we evaluate the category. And then we look at the physical characteristics of the apple. And is it red, is it green, is it two colours, bicolour, what does it look like? 

HZ: The Cosmic Crisp is very round, with pale firm flesh and shiny dark red skin covered in little light dots - the lenticels, the apple’s pores. It’s a good-looking apple; you’d cast it in a production of Snow White. 

KATHRYN GRANDY: And then we taste it and what's the flavour profile: is it sweet, is it crunchy, is it juicy? And we collectively develop a profile for that that product, and then we do sensory testing with consumers.

HZ: The University worked with focus groups, doing taste and sensory testing.

KATHRYN GRANDY: Cosmic Crisp is the first apple named by consumers, which I find interesting.

KATE EVANS: And it was really just getting the apple in there, brainstorming with different groups to come up with words that they thought were descriptive of that fruit that they were looking at and tasting.

KATHRYN GRANDY: And we do try to guide them away from some of the more interesting names.

HZ: Such as? 

KATHRYN GRANDY: People love to name fresh fruit after candy and we've had candy cane, candy apple, candy crunch, Jolly Rancher. Taking a fresh piece of fruit that's very nutritious and calling it Candy or Sugar just didn't feel right. 

DAN PASHMAN: But can I ask, Kathryn: I would think that people know that fruit is generally healthy. And so anything that tastes like candy but is still fruit would be a good thing.Why is candy crunch or candy apple not a good name for an apple?

KATHRYN GRANDY: Well, my personal opinion is because we're promoting nutrition and health; but in general, they don't resonate with consumers. Consumers don't really like the sugar or candy implication either. So having had that feedback, describing it as candy wasn't necessarily the the right direction for us to go. 

DAN PASHMAN: Got it.

KATHRYN GRANDY: Others wanted to name it after the state where it's grown, in Washington; but, being a global brand, it didn't necessarily resonate resonate outside of the state. 

HZ: Are there any other terms or words that you preferred to steer clear from?

KATHRYN GRANDY: We had a list that we received, and collectively I think there was about two hundred and fifty names on it from growers and consumers, and we did get things that described the colour of the apple, like we received the name Red Darling, and Cardinal Crisp, and Red Beauty. And so I think the colour description’s always nice, but there are so many apples today with ‘crimson’ or ‘red’ or that description that it wasn't unique. And the combination of ‘Red Crisp’ or something like that is very difficult in today's world to trademark. 

HZ: What are the criteria for a trademark?

KATHRYN GRANDY: It has to be unique and it can't be similar to another food product. An example would be ‘Red Beauty’. 

DAN PASHMAN: That was on your list for Cosmic Crisp? 

KATHRYN GRANDY: Yeah, for Cosmic Crisp - Red Beauty. There are other trademarks in other areas of the world that use similar name combinations and Cosmic Crisp needed to be unique not only to be trademarked in the US but it's a global brand and needed to have a meaningful name that went internationally as well, and that meant all the right things in other languages and other cultures. It gets complicated trying to to name something that will resonate with people in all cultures across the globe. 

KATE EVANS: You've got to look at what does that name mean? What would that name mean in different countries with different languages? It is a challenge coming up with a decent name that works wherever you are. 

HZ: It took around a year to settle on the name ‘Cosmic Crisp’. 

KATE EVANS: And the word ‘cosmic’ came up quite early on because somebody associated the appearance of the fruit with the cosmos. It can be a relatively reddy purply kind of background with almost looks like little white stars over it. Those are the lenticels on the on the skin; all apples have them and they in some cases are a little more prominent than others in terms of appearance. And so this: oh, okay, well it reminds me of the cosmos. 

DAN PASHMAN: I think freckles is a better analogy.

HZ: It reminded me a bit of a dappled horse. 

HZ: Nobody asked us, though. 

KATE EVANS: So the word ‘cosmic’ came in at that point and crisp is very very obvious word to go with the apple.

HZ: It is a crisp apple. Also ‘crisp’ nods to one of the Cosmic Crisp’s parents, the Honeycrisp. Its other parent, the Enterprise - eh, bad luck, Enterprise.

KATHRYN GRANDY: After the name was selected and initially growers and even some people from WSU didn't really like the name Cosmic Crisp

HZ: Oh, why not?

KATHRYN GRANDY: They said it's like The Jetsons, too futuristic. 

HZ: Is that bad?

KATHRYN GRANDY: You know, I love the name; and being futuristic and like The Jetsons I think is pretty cool. But the one thing I've learned being in marketing is everybody is an art director. Somebody wanted to named Cosmic Crisp ‘Sparkle’. And to me that makes me think of dish soap. And it is a trademarked name for paper towels. So I think there's a lot to naming it properly. 

HZ: There's an apple called Strawberry. How is that allowed? It's just confusing. 

KATHRYN GRANDY: Well, maybe it looks like a strawberry. 

DAN PASHMAN: Maybe it has hints of strawberry in its flavour. 

HZ: Not good enough. I like that there's one called Jonathan as well. That's the normcore apple. 

DAN PASHMAN: But is there one, Kathryn, that you haven't had any involvement in that you're just like, “Oh man, that's a great name”?

KATHRYN GRANDY: I like the name Snapdragon. That’s a New York apple, and the tagline’s great: “A monster crunch.” I think that's pretty descriptive. They have a nice logo. 

DAN PASHMAN: Helen, do you have a favourite?

HZ: Not yet. I feel like the best could be yet to come. And also I find it difficult to separate the quality of the name from the apple. So for instance, I enjoy a Jazz apple, therefore I like the Jazz apple name, but do I? Do I?

KATHRYN GRANDY: And why was it named ‘jazz’? I don’t know.

HZ: It's a fun word. But then I don't think I don't feel like the apple is what jazz music would taste like. 

DAN PASHMAN: I agree. I feel like like it's a name that like sounds good on the surface, but upon further reflection makes no sense. 

HZ: I think it's more like a jaunty brass band number or something. 

DAN PASHMAN: Yes!

HZ: I have a question. Red Delicious. How dare it. 

KATHRYN GRANDY: Oh boy. Are you not thinking it's so delicious any more?

HZ: Come on. Who is thinking it is?

DAN PASHMAN: Helen and I are going to team up on a class action lawsuit for false advertising.

HZ: It is red. I’ll allow that.

KATHRYN GRANDY: We're moving it to the potato category, because that’s what it tastes like these days. 

HZ: I think some people be surprised that when they are mentioning an apple by name, they're actually mentioning a trademarked word. They might think, “Oh, that's just what it's called. Like a carrot is called a carrot.” 

KATHRYN GRANDY: Yeah. I notice with Cosmic Crisp people are already trying to shorten it to Cosmics, and because of our trademark protection you know we of course want them to say Cosmic Crisp, but it's kind of like cola and Coke or Xerox and copy. We have to be very protective and careful to use the trademarked name so that we we don't lose it. 

HZ: Is there a way that we should be pronouncing the r in a circle at the end of Cosmic Crisp?

KATHRYN GRANDY: Just use it. 

HZ: I’ll mime it with my hands. Do you know of any apples that were called ‘dreary fluffball’ and then they renamed them ‘fantasma mouthgasm’ so that they would sell better?

KATHRYN GRANDY: Ohhhh, gosh.

DAN PASHMAN: Did you just say ‘fantasma mouthgasm’, Helen?

HZ: You can have that. 

HZ: It’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility. Some apples do have very grandstanding names.

JOANNA CROSBY: Laxton’s Superb, Laxton's Epicure, Laxton's Exquisite, Laxton's Peerless, Laxton's Triumph. You get the idea - apples grown by a 19th century chap called Laxton. He is not shy on advertising, was Laxton.

HZ: This is Joanna Crosby, who studies the social and economic history of apples. I asked her about how apples used to be named before focus groups and taste testing and marketing departments were part of the process.

JOANNA CROSBY: When a new variety of an apple comes up, a lot of the time it's named after what it looks like.

HZ: Crimson Delight, Pink Pearl, Brown Snout, Knobby Russet...

JOANNA CROSBY: So for instance, there's an apple that probably dates back to the Roman times. You can still eat it today - which is quite an amazing piece of time travel, I think - and it's called the Court Pendu Plat. Which means 'short, hanging and round', which it is. Once you've seen it, you can't forget it; it looks like a like a flat peach, like a doughnut peach, in shape. It is really flat, and it's really round. There's also apples like the Red Streak. There's also Sunset and Suntan. Now they have the most beautiful coloured skins. There's Cats Head, which is indeed exactly the shape of a cat's head. You could put some ears on it, make a little Halloween lantern out of a Cats Head apple. Actually the tree related to an apple, the medlar. It's like an early cousin of a sweet apple tree; it has a small fruit on it. Its country name is, I'm afraid to say, 'cat's arse', because that's also what the fruit looks like.

HZ: It does. Luckily - or unluckily? - there are lots of apple names that are not referring to appearance.

JOANNA CROSBY: Then Orleans Reinette - reinette means 'little queen', and they were all named in the 18th century in the periods when we weren't at war with the French, and all the reinette apples were when France and everything French were incredibly popular. There's one called Mere de Menage, which sort of means housewife, but it's a much much more beautiful name for an apple than housewife.

HZ: Envy; Flamenco; Jonagold, a portmanteau of golden delicious and the Jonathan apple...

JOANNA CROSBY: There's one called Clear Heart, Early Transparent, Colonel Vaughan, Cornish Pine, Cottenham Seedling, Chivers Delight...

HZ: Splendour, Peasgood’s Nonsuch, Foxwhelp, Slack-ma-Girdle… Northern Spy! Green Cheese?

JOANNA CROSBY: There's Pitmaston's Pineapple, because it tastes of pineapple. So there are ways of describing an apple which gives you those names. 

HZ: An apple’s name might contain information about its origins - for instance a pippin is an apple grown from seed, or its name might contain the apple’s place of origin: Roxbury Russet, Carolina Red June, Beauty of Bath, Westfield Seek-No-Further...

JOANNA CROSBY: There's one called a Kentish Fillbasket, and they are well-named because one apple would indeed fill a basket. They are huge. If Isaac Newton had under a Kentish Fillbasket apple, he would have been knocked out cold and would never have thought about gravity again probably.

HZ: And a lot of apples have named after people: perhaps the person who first grew them, or the person who popularised them...

JOANNA CROSBY: And the Bramley apple: named after the gentleman who first exhibited it to the Royal Horticultural Society. So he is saying, "Here, this is my apple," but really the Bramley apple should be called the Mary Ann, because the young lady who grew the pip from which the Bramley apple and then all Bramley apples have come was called Mary Ann Brailsford. So perhaps we should claim it back for her.

HZ: Was Granny Smith a real person? 

JOANNA CROSBY: Granny Smith is named after the lady who grew up from a pip. She was properly called Mrs Ann Smith. And it comes from New South Wales; Granny Smith herself came from Sussex and emigrated to Australia and she found a seedling tree growing in a creek. And so it is her apple. 

HZ: She didn’t name it after herself; only a couple of years after discovering and propagating her apple, she died, and a little while later other growers named it in tribute to her. Other apple tribute names are less sweet, and were more... compulsory, say if you worked for some aristocrats and cultivated a kind of apple on land they own.

JOANNA CROSBY: It is sensible if you want to keep your job as an estate gardener if you name your apple after the lord or the lady who you're working for. So we have Lord Derby, which is another large cooking apple. There's also one called Lady Henniker. Now, history does not record how delighted she was to be named after this apple or this apple named after her, because it is quite an ugly lumpy misshapen big green apple. She may not have been delighted. 

HZ: Do you think it was an insult, if the orchard-keeper hated her? 

JOANNA CROSBY: Well, I don't think so. No, but it's not the daintiest of apples, so I do wonder why she came to mind. 

HZ: The problem with this system - well apart from issues of meritocracy vs aristocracy, or using the apple names a an insult - was that you might have had a situation where the same apple is growing miles apart under two different names. Or more than two.

JOANNA CROSBY: An apple variety, if you look up a variety, it can have something like 20 names. But it's the same apple. So now in 21st century we are DNA-profiling apples, and I think we will actually find that the number of varieties will reduce because we will have worked out that these apples are one and the same thing.

KATE EVANS: I have also spent a fair amount of time going through some of that material and testing it, kind of like DNA fingerprinting it, to determine whether or not things are actually the same but with different names. When you start to look at the history of how some of those old varieties have moved into different places, sometimes they came into a particular region and were given a local name and then got absorbed into the into the national collection at some point with that name. And then you find out actually there are two or three different - we call them accessions, different entries into the collection that are that are all different names but in fact they're all the same thing. 

HZ: The Victorians decided something had to be done about this, and with DNA testing not yet an option, in October 1883, the National Apple Congress was held in London. Growers from all over the UK sent in their apples in to be catalogued and categorised by a committee of fifty fruiterers - they received 10,150 apple submissions altogether.

JOANNA CROSBY: And they put them all out in bowls and first of all they looked at them and tried to see if any were the same variety.

HZ: The apple-growers also submitted information about such things as what conditions the apple grew in - soil and subsoil, sheltered or exposed places, what the trees are like - and they had to list what kinds of recipes the apples lent themselves to.

JOANNA CROSBY: And the public came in to look at this fruit; they'd never seen anything like it. And they actually had to extend the opening hours of the apple congress to allow everybody to come in and see it.

HZ: And while the public were having fun being dazzled by all these apples, the committee had to catalogue all the fruit, record each apple’s colour, size, shape, texture, time of the season it ripes, and whether it’s to be used for dessert, cooking, or cider. They found that there were 1545 kinds of apples at the congress, exhibited under 2020 different names or variations on similar names. Some apples had had several different names. For instance, the Scorpion apple also appeared as D’Eclat, Harvey’s Wiltshire Defiant, and Russian Transparent. Those are all strong names - very evocative. How do you choose the best one that the apple’s going to be known as henceforth?

HZ: I was wondering how you, Dan Pashman, would settle it to choose the apple name that would be the name that the apple got to keep. Throw apples at each other?

DAN PASHMAN: Am I like the king in this situation - do I decide by edict or is this a group effort?

HZ: Well, I mean, it's your apple fantasy; but sure, you can be King Apple for the day. 

DAN PASHMAN: I'm the Apple King. I guess I would want to form a focus group of one. And I would want to eat the apple and do some sort of like free association exercises to figure out what the apple reminded me of, how it made me feel; and then I would pick which name seem closest to that. 

HZ: And would you think, "Okay, this apple tastes better when it's known as the Royal Crisp versus when it's just Jonathan's apple"?

DAN PASHMAN: I'm sure that makes a difference. I'm sure that the name is make a difference in how you perceive the taste so you'd have to then do a different kind of test. I wouldn't just wanted to issue it by by edict, now that I think about it, Helen; I would bring all of my subjects together and I would divide them up into a scientific study to see how the name affects the taste perceptions you have. You'd have to run studies in both directions: how does the taste dictate the name, and how do different names dictate the flavour perception?

HZ: At the same time, you could decide to destroy hierarchies and create a republic through the medium of apple taste testing.

DAN PASHMAN: So you're saying to turn it into a democracy? To, of my own volition, relinquish all my power?

HZ: Yes, it's for the greater good. Through apples. Now that you have learned how much time and work goes into an apple when you're reaching one now are you more or less appreciative of it. Are you thinking 'gosh this is just the result of years if not centuries of cultivation" or are you thinking, "wasn't worth it, it's just an apple"?

DAN PASHMAN: I think it was worth it! I mean, I didn't have to do anything. I think that the folks who dedicated their lives for this are super passionate about it. So they're happy, and we get to eat the apple, so we're happy; everyone wins. 

HZ: That was the Sporklusionist, now brace yourself for more appletimes because we’re about to go to Applefest 2023.

HZ: I moved to Vancouver BC in January of this year. And I’d heard about the apple festival at the University of British Columbia and been told it was a hot ticket. So I set a calendar reminder to buy tickets, made sure to book early for the tasting tent. And when I arrive at the first entry session of the first day, with my husband Martin and our friend Hannah, there’s a line to get in, everyone hyped to look at apples; eat some apples; and see some fun apple names, maybe it was just me feeling hyped about that. A little apple-shaped stamp on the hand, and we’re in.

There are apple pies and dried apples and apples getting hand-crushed for juice, and you can buy apple saplings and 3lb bags of apples of many kinds.

HZ: Topaz. Refreshing, sharp, sweet, mellows with age. I mean, that's... Something for me to aspire to, but I feel I'm going the other way. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: I'm definitely getting sharper and more acidic with age. 

HZ: I'm getting withered and bitter without having achieved true ripeness. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Sorry, could we just check in about what it means to achieve true ripeness?

HZ: Each apple varietal had a little card with background information about the varietal's provenance and tasting notes.

HZ: “Gloster 69. Juicier and stronger flavoured than Red Delicious.” 

HANNAH McGREGOR: “Rubinette”. I'm creating a Rubinette. It's a Reuben sandwich, but for ladies.

HZ: Finally something for ladies to get their tiny hands around. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: “Winter banana”?! 

MARTIN AUSTWICK: Oh no, that's confusing. It definitely looks like an apple. It’s not even the right colour?

HZ: Brown snout!

MARTIN AUSTWICK: Is this the insults table? 

HZ: "The Brown Snout is subject to splitting at crotches." 

HZ: Fun as it is to read the labels on the apples, we had our much anticipated appointment at the tasting tent, to eat tiny cubes of around forty different types of apples all grown here in British Columbia. We start with A for Ambrosia.

HZ: “Ambrosia is a chance seedling. Good size, crisp, sweet, low acid, very juicy.” 

HANNAH McGREGOR: This is sweet.

HZ: Aurora, another BC apple. Belle de Boskoop, that's a sexy name. That's a more rowdy one, acidically. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Oh, I like some rowdy acidity.

HZ: Blue Pearmain. “Old New England favourite dating back to 1700s.” That's a large apple. A bit fluffy. I'm no on the blue pearmain, I'm afraid.

HZ: Braeburn. Bramley’s seedling. Cortland. Cox’s Orange Pippin. 

HZ: By the time we reached the end of the afternoon, Apple alphabet, I think we'll be kind of over apples. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Not yet. 

HZ: Not yet, we've got to the Ds. Discovery, pretty good. Ooh, Elstar. Empire. Fameuse, the Snow Apple - that's a beautiful name, both of them. It's because it's white. It's so white! With this dark red flesh. It's a very dramatic apple. 

HZ: The Fameuse is the oldest apple varietal at the festival, its card said it “has been known in Quebec since the first settlement in the 1600s.” I thought ‘has been known’ was weirdly passive as to how it came to be in Quebec; the only apples native to North America are crabapples, although since the Europeans planted apples here, many varietals have been begotten and cultivated. This one, the Fameuse or Snow Apple, did well in Canada because it can handle the cold.

HZ: Golden Delicious, boo! Ah, so pointless. People know you don't want to fill up on Golden Delicious here, so we've got to go. Oh, we're coming up to Grimes Golden. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Ooh, that's exciting. 

HZ: I preferred her earlier work. I'm gonna guess someone called Grimes put his name on it?

HZ: I guessed right. Thomas Grimes put his name on the Grimes Golden, because the apple originated on his farm in 1832 in what is now West Virginia.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: Golden Delicious is the spin off of Grimes Golden. 

HZ: Oh really? It's like the Chet Haze of apples. 

HZ: There were several eponymous apples in the tasting tent, like Canada’s national apple, the Mcintosh, discovered by John McIntosh on his farm in 1811 - it’s this apple that lent its name to Apple Macintosh computers. There were apples named after their place of origin, like the Kent, an apple born in the same English county as me. There were some portmanteau apples, like the Idared, a red apple developed in Idaho.

HZ: Hey, and we're over halfway through the alphabet. The Apple Alphabet. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: I'm really proud of us. This one has a very fun story. 

HZ: Newtown Wonder. “The original Newtown Wonder tree was seedling growing out of a thatched roof of a pub in King's Feet in Derbyshire in the 1870s, presumably the result of a pit dropped by a bird.” It's amazing this doesn't happen more. “It is very large.” 

HANNAH McGREGOR: I like it. 

HZ: Oh yeah. It's feisty.

HZ: Our apple tasting was, alas, incomplete: in one of the pitches there was just an empty plate next to the apple's name card.

HZ: I'm afraid Northern Spy is not here. Its cover must have been blown. 

MARTIN AUSTWICK: It's there, you just can’t see it; it’s disguised. 

HZ: “Oaken Pin received their curious name after a wooden pin once used as a door fastener in England in reference to the fruit’s long and egg like shape.” Ooh, thank you. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: No good. 

HZ: Then there was the Piñata® apple, created by German researchers but its growers in Washington State gave it the trademarked name Piñata® - which is a registered trademark in the USA - was a portmanteau of two of the names the varietal goes by in Europe, Pinova and Sonata. So if you were hoping that when you hit the apple with a stick, sweets will fall out, no luck there.
After that, there was the Prima: a partial acronym or applenym. “This cultivar, introduced in 1970, is the first of a series of disease-resistant apples to be released from a cooperative breeding program by research stations at the Purdue, Rutgers and Illinois Universities, hence the prefix PRI. Its complex parentage provides genetic resistance to scab.” What a useful family inheritance.

HZ: Look at these beauties. Red Rome. “It's popular because it blossoms late.” I'm excited to taste a Rubinette. 

MARTIN AUSTWICK: It's a great name. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: I think Rubinette would be a really nice pie apple pie. 

HZ: Mmm. Yeah. Really good flavour. And handsome. No uggos in in our pies. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Yeah, I have a strict rule.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: I'll have another one of these, just to remind myself. 

HZ: Yeah, that's really good.

HZ: There were a lot of tasty apples up in this section of the alphabet - Shamrock, Spartan, Spencer, Staymen Winesap, the Topaz…

HZ: We’re so close to completion. Wolf River. Oh, these are massive. Look at them.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: See, Wolf River just sounds like a horror movie in which a young woman gets trapped in a fruit. 

HZ: World Number One. That's a grandstanding name. 

APPLEFEST STAFF: [rings bell] Five minutes!

MARTIN AUSTWICK: I feel like calling an apple ‘World Number One’ is a bit like calling your child Senator or something.

HZ: It’s a Delicious x Golden Delicious cross. That's risky. Wow. These are huge apples. [Bell rings.] That apple bells are ringing. It’s a chuck-out bell, like at a pub.

HZ: We had tasted all the alphabetized apples from Ambrosia to Yataka. Our apple festival was complete.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: I think I hate apples a bit less after this festival. 

HZ: Aahhh, that's progress, Martin. I'd say it's the best Apple Festival I've been to.

HANNAH McGREGOR: It's the best and only Apple Festival I've been to.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: I loved watching those apples getting bashed to a pulp. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Martin enjoyed the anti apple violence. 

HZ: Martin loved seeing apples getting pounded. 

MARTIN AUSTWICK: Yeah. Sounds like a Chuck Tingle book. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: I mean, yep, pounded in the apples. 

MARTIN AUSTWICK: With a big wooden spatula. I was furious about the number of apples named after fruit. It's not enough that apples dominate every other fruit in the pantheon.

HZ: Oh, here we go.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: There's ones called bananas and apricots. If you're an apple, own your privilege.

HZ: Well, apple used to be the word for any fruit, Martin, so... 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Did it? 

HZ: Hence there's a lot of argument about what Adam and Eve ate, fruitwise. Some say quince, but you try eating a quince off a tree. Good luck.

HANNAH McGREGOR: Well, I don't think it was delicious, the fruit of knowledge. 

HZ: Hard to say. I mean, that's the propaganda, isn't it? That doesn't want people to have knowledge.

HANNAH McGREGOR: That’s true. I liked the part where we tasted a bunch of apples.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: I liked that part too, even though I don't like apples. But I found a couple of varieties I like. The snow apple -

HANNAH McGREGOR: - Fameuse.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: Yeah, great. I had, like, notes of almond, there's all sorts of stuff going on, but...

HANNAH McGREGOR: You said that about every apple you liked.

MARTIN AUSTWICK: Notes of almonds? 

HANNAH McGREGOR: That's the only tasting note you know. “Notes of apple, notes of almond.”

HZ: It's all the cyanide I feed him. 

HANNAH McGREGOR: Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Everything tastes of almond, and also dying. Yeah, it was pretty fun, to just taste a lot of apples -

HZ: - in alphabetical order.

HANNAH McGREGOR: - taste a lot of apples in alphabetical order.

HZ: I would like to eat more foods in alphabetical order. Something to take note of. 

MARTIN AUSTWICK: We could do all our meals that way.

---

Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…

kenning, noun: a compound expression in Old English and Old Norse poetry with metaphorical meaning, e.g. oar-steed = ship.

Try using ‘kenning’ in an email today.

This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The Sporkful is hosted by Dan Pashman, and you can hear the partner episode to this one about the cosmic crisp at thesporkful.com and various podplaces. You also heard from Kate Evans, Kathryn Grandy and Joanna Crosby.

Thanks to my Applefest companions Hannah McGregor from the podcast Material Girls, and Martin Austwick, who also makes the Allusionist music. 

If you get the chance to go to the UBC Apple Festival in years to come, I recommend it. Just remember to get your tickets early. And if the sound of apples being eaten in this episode was a bit horrible for you, next episode is going to help with that.

Our ad partner is Multitude. If you have a product or thing about which you’d like me to talk, sponsor the show: contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads. 

Seek out @allusionistshow on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, the phantom of Twitter. And you can hear or read every episode, find links to more information about the topics and people therein, donate to the show, and see the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, all at the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.

Allusionist 4 Detonating the C-Bomb transcript

Hear this episode at theallusionist.org/c-bomb.

This is The Allusionist in which I, Helen Zaltzman, dive under the bonnet of language to tinker with the engine. Coming up in today's show there will be a lot - a lot - of profane language, so this is your opportunity to clear the area of young children, linguistically-fragile elders, anyone within earshot who will be offended by all the potty mouth business.

We'll limber up to the code red swearing with a little light swear word history. 2015 is the 100th anniversary of the first officially recorded instance of the word "bullshit". It was a century ago that T.S. Eliot submitted to Blast magazine his poem entitled "The Triumph of Bullshit". Now, the young T.S. probably didn't coin "bullshit" himself. Usually words have been floating around for some time before they're committed to print and thus considered official dictionary fodder. And the dictionary doesn't even cite him as its first written source. The poem was never published, but it was named in a letter that Blast's editor Wyndham Lewis wrote to Ezra Pound, explaining that while he enjoyed the "scholarly ribaldry" of "The Triumph of Bullshit", he wasn't going to print it, as he was determined to avoid words ending in "-uck", "-unt", and "-ugger". And presumably "-ullshit". So happy bullshit centenary, everyone.

OK, I wasn't kidding about the swearing in this episode, so if you want to avoid words ending in "-uck" and "-unt", this is your last chance. Ready? On with the fucking show.

---

SWEAR CORRESPONDENT: I think the worst swear word is probably "cunt", which I don't like to say unless I'm really angry at a politician or something like that. 

Mine would be the word "twat", and I think that that's due to the physical connotations of the word in reference to female genitalia. 

EMMA BARNETT: It is "cunt". 

HZ: Why? 

EMMA BARNETT: Because it's one of those words, like when when you start swearing in front of your parents as you become an adult, which is quite a moment, they flinch. But I still couldn't say the word "cunt" to my mum. I just couldn't. I think the mum test is quite key.

I don't really care about bad swearwords. I don't... I mean, "cunt".

"Cocksucker". "Cunt". 

Probably "cunt". 

The worst swear word I can think of is "cunt". 

DAWN FOSTER Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt. 

Yeah, it's gotta be "cunt", right? 

[Samples of the above clips are edited in tune to the crescendo of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", with the following lyrics: Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, fuck, pissflaps. Cunt, cunt, mothercuntfucker. Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, shitcunt. Cunt, cunt, fuck, cunt, cunt, jizzchest. Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cock, cunt, cunt, cunt, motherfucker. Cunt, cunt, fuck, twat, minge. Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cocksucker. Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt. Cunt.]

JANE GARVEY: Let's put it this way, it's no coincidence this rudest word belongs to the female of the species and not the male. 

HZ: Jane Garvey, presenter of BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour. Opinions are Jane's own, and do not represent the BBC. 

HZ: However, "twat" means the same as "cunt", and "twat" is a much lower-level swear. Why the inconsistency? 

JANE GARVEY: I guess... 

HZ: Another four-letter word? 

JANE GARVEY: Yeah. I think "cunt", you know, it sounds a bit ruder. 

HZ: Do you think? 

JANE GARVEY: Does that make any sense? I honestly think it's that simple. 

HZ: Is that conditioning, though, or genuine cuntiness? 

JANE GARVEY: I think it is conditioning. My problem is that we have accepted for too long that that is the rudest word of all. We've let it have some special potency, which, and I simply... I mean, I actually, to be really - some people might think this is obscure - I think there's a connection to stuff like feminine hygiene. Another of my bugbears, when you go into the chemist there's this special aisle, "feminine hygiene". 

HZ: God help any man that wanders into that aisle. 

JANE GARVEY: Why not just call it "sanitary towels and tampons", or whatever you want to call it. 

HZ: "Cunt products". 

JANE GARVEY: Well, that's what they are. 

HZ: Yeah.  

JANE GARVEY: Because apparently we're smelly down there. Now I mean, listen, I'm no woman of the world, but I put it to people that men's genitalia can whiff a bit as well. 

HZ: Where's the men's hygiene aisle? 

JANE GARVEY: I'm going to invent them. "Cock wipes". That's what the world needs. Well, why not? 

HZ: "Knob sponge". 

JANE GARVEY: You said "knob sponge", I said "cock wipe". 

HZ: And so what swear would you rather see at the top of the swearing tree? 

JANE GARVEY: Well, no, if I'm angry with someone I call them a "knob". 

HZ: Quite a jolly one. 

JANE GARVEY: I say they get off lightly. No, I just think if we want to use "cunt", we should say "cunt". 

HZ: Reclaim "cunt".

Of course, cunt has been reclaimed by many before us, perhaps most famously by Eve Ensler in The Vagina Monologues. 

CLIP FROM THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES: I call it "cunt". I've reclaimed it. "Cunt". I really like it. "Cunt". Just listen to it, listen to it. "Cunt".

HZ: But reclaimed from what exactly? A couple of centuries in word purgatory, before which it seems to have been, yes, vulgar, but not particularly obscene. In fact, in the Middle Ages, many of Britain's major towns contained a street called "Gropecunt Lane". That's right. "Cunt" was sufficiently un-rude that it could be a street name, albeit the name for the street where cunt-groping took place, as back then streets were typically named after the activities that took place thereon, and "Gropecunt" was the street where sex workers ply their trade. However, since the mid-16th century, they've all been renamed "Grope Lane" or "Grape Lane" or something else more sanitised, Though I did stumble upon an e-petition to the British government calling for the reinstating of "all former Gropecunt Lanes". It had one signature. 

I'm fine with not having words like "cunt" on street signs, but I am an equal opportunity swearer, and I don't see why the word "cunt" should be kept in solitary when its gentlemanly equivalents like "dick" or "bellend" are allowed to roam fairly freely. I don't imagine, historically, someone decided on a league table for swearwords. Their differing levels of rudeness probably would've been established gradually and largely unconsciously, reflecting the preoccupations and social structures of the time. But there are recent examples of the swearing hierarchy being officially codified. I got hold of one in the form of the manual issued by ITV to television programme makers, in which swearwords and other offensive terms are sorted into Category A, or Category B, and then, within each category, according to several strata of strength. 

LEON WILSON: They are funny, the swearwords. It's just funny, and the different tiers of it. 

HZ: This is Leon Wilson, managing director of Talkback Television and executive producer of Celebrity Juice, one of the sweariest shows on British television. 

LEON WILSON: Someone's had to spend a lot time and money sitting down and categorising all these different words. 

HZ: Which is worst, "bloody", or "knobhead"? 

LEON WILSON: Yeah, I think it probably "bloody", but is it, if it's talking about... Yeah, well, I was going to say something really rude there. "Cunt"s the worst. 

HZ: OK. 

LEON WILSON: Generally that's sort of seen - and it has, you're allowed two per show. Special dispensation, we were allowed four once. 

HZ: Why do you think that there are different rules for "cunt" than for "twat", which is considered a lower-tier swear, but means the same thing? 

LEON WILSON: Because it's not about meaning of what something is. It's about... There's no real logic to it, in a sense. 

HZ: No, why is "cunt" worse than "twat"? 

LEON WILSON: It just is. 

HZ: Why? 

LEON WILSON: I think I would argue that the word "cunt" has got a particularly aggressive sound to it. 

HZ: Do you? 

LEON WILSON: "-unt", the "-unt" is quite a, "-unt" is fairly... Whereas "twat" feels more playful. 

HZ: But to me, "cunt" is quite a playful word as well. It sounds to me like the sound a squash ball makes when it's hitting against a wall. 

LEON WILSON: There was once the lawyer that asked us to bleep "twats", and he argued for it, like you, he said, "Up north, 'twat' means 'cunt', it's the same, so we should bleep it." We argued that we shouldn't, and we actually, it went really quite close to the wire. It was a new lawyer and we had to refer it up, and these things usually get referred up and eventually they came back and said didn't have to bleep "twat". 

HZ: It was good that law time was spent on this. 

LEON WILSON: Oh, a lot of time. The amount of conversations, a lot of conversations we've had, "cunt"s always had to be bleeped. And sometimes we can keep the "cu-" at the beginning, and sometimes they, it's depending on the nature of the "cunt", it's quite interesting. So there are different types of "cunt"s. So there's an aggressive "cunt", for want of a better phrase, where, [aggressively] "You fucking cunt," you know, that's a very aggressive way of doing it, but we'd have to bleep the whole word then. But if it's more of a sort of a playful "cunt" - [playfully] "Bit of a cunt, aren't you?" - that kind of way, then we're allowed a bit of the "cu-" at the beginning, because it's not seen... It's often about the way it's expressed, whether it's aggressive. And generally I would never, very, very rarely, would I ever allow an aggressive "cunt" to stay in the show, because it's very rarely justified. Most television, entertaintment television, shouldn't really have that kind of stuff in it. 

HZ: In the manual, "cunt" is right at the top of Category A, kept company only by "motherfucker". 

LEON WILSON: Originally we were only allowed, we weren't allowed to have any "motherfucker"s in the show. 

HZ: Is "motherfucker" worse than "cunt", then? 

LEON WILSON: "Motherfucker"s used to have to be bleeped as well, but they have now relented on that. They've sort of given up. 

HZ: Ah, so "motherfucker"s alright? 

LEON WILSON: Yeah, but they allow us generally four "motherfucker"s per show. But again, the way "motherfucker"s said is very important, because, weirdly, doing it in an American accent somehow makes it less rude and less offensive. 

HZ: Does that work with "cunt" as well? 

LEON WILSON: Well, I think doing "cunt" in a Cockney accent makes it less. [With accent] "You cunt." 

HZ: [With accent] "You cunt."

LEON WILSON: [With accent] "You fucking cunt." 

HZ: Yeah. 

LEON WILSON: Like, it feels more playful, in the same way, [In American accent] "You motherfucker," feels silly. Whereas if you do, [angrily] "You motherfucker," it feels much more aggressive. And actually aggression is the key part of it, in something not feeling aggressive, is the most important thing that we look at when we look at whether we should keep swear words in show. 

HZ: So British people swearing sounds more aggressive than Americans? 

LEON WILSON: I think so, yeah. 

HZ: But we've got a lot of lower-tier swears that don't really get used in America. So we've got "bollocks", "tossport", "wanker". 

LEON WILSON: Yeah. 

HZ: Is that just because we can't be trusted with the hard swears?

LEON WILSON: I think maybe we've developed a whole other layer to be able to swear in a more conversational everyday sense, to not appear rude. Yeah, I think probably. I mean, there does seem to be an awful lot of British words about, yeah, "bollocks", the testicles basically. 

HZ: Testicles itself isn't on the list, but "bollocks" is fairly low down in category B. You can include it in shows before the watershed, as long as they're not children's shows. "Balls" is considered a little stronger, appearing slightly higher in Category B on the same level as other male genital words like "knob", "prick", and "dick". Though, oddly, "cock" is in the ruder Category A, in the same classification as its female counterparts "twat", "pussy", and "gash". 

Right to the bottom of the chart are the religious swears. I know it wasn't always the case, but I find it a bit odd that religious terms are generally considerably less offensive than bodily and sexual ones. Bodies are mundane, we all have one. Personally, I don't have religion, but if I did, I think I'd be more offended by people bandying around sacred words than slang terms for something as ordinary as genitalia. 

LEON WILSON: "Oh my god" now is seen to be not offensive. People will complain, and there are people out there that will write letters every time someone says, "Oh my god," on TV, there's a couple of people that will do this, but generally though channels have come to the decision in the last 10-15 years that that's allowable. You know, generally it's not a problem. Most people in this country aren't bothered by religion, I would say the majority, but most people still are bothered by sex, and sex will always have a taboo element to it, and therefore swear words will always... Whereas I think religion isn't such a big deal anymore, isn't it? 

HZ: So we're a country of prudish heathens? 

LEON WILSON: Are you just trying to say "cunt" there? 

HZ: I think at this point in the episode, I'd just say it outright if I wanted to. Quantity really reduces the shock quality of a swear. 

LEON WILSON: We are mindful of not having too much swearing in the show, because they lose power over time. I think, in a show like Celebrity Juice, swearing is helpful in certain contexts. 

HZ: Why? 

LEON WILSON: Because swear words have power. They have impact, you know, and you've got to hold some back. I think it would be hard to make Celebrity Juice without any swearing, but I do try and limit it. And when we've got more time in the edits, we do try and take out swear words. We do  remove little... Unnecessary "fuck"s annoy me more. Like some guests will use "fuck" almost as a punctuation, just trying to get a cheap laugh, and sometimes it helps the joke because it adds emphasis, and sometimes it just feels gratuitous and they're just doing it to sort of try and get a cheap laugh. 

HZ: Are you allowed unlimited "fuck"s? 

LEON WILSON: Yeah. They've never placed a limit on the number of "fuck"s in the show, ever. That's more down to us, as a production, trying to self-censor. So the most "fuck"s we've ever had on a Celebrity Juice episode was 110. 

HZ: 110? And how long is the show? 

LEON WILSON: In 33 minutes. 

HZ: Nailing the self-censorship there. What do you think would happen if there was an edict passed tomorrow that just says, "All of our current swears are now neutral, none of them are rude anymore"? Would we have to get by not swearing at all, or would other swears... 

LEON WILSON: Other swears would come in, other swears would appear. There's always something that is taboo. Other words will always replace them, I think, yeah. At my daughter's school they obviously aren't allowed to swear, but they, my daughter's said that the words "you're a swear word" has become a swear word. So they go, "You swear word!"

HZ: So they're self-censoring? 

LEON WILSON: Yes, they self-censor, but now the teacher says, "You can't say 'swear word'," because that in itself became a swear word. So now the kids aren't even allowed to say "swear words", they'll have to think of something else. 

HZ: So it's all about intent, rather than the words themselves? 

LEON WILSON: Yeah. I think that goes back to what I was saying about aggression, whether if it's meant in aggressive way, then swearing is harder to justify. 

HZ: And are your little daughters running around going, "Swear word!" in a particularly aggressive way?

LEON WILSON: Yeah, they do, because I really found this out, one called the other one a "swear word" at the dinner table, and the other one went, "You can't say that, you can't say that!" I said, "What's going on, why you talking about 'swear word'?" And this sort of came out, and it kind of made sense of, you know, something taboo becomes, has power. 

HZ: So perhaps "cunt" isn't really inherently ruder than other words. It's just something had to be rudest. When I was at school, one teacher suggested that in the place of swear words, we all use the word "Jeff", as in the name Jeff. We didn't, and that was for the best. Did she not realise that this was the fastest way to wreak misery upon Jeffs everywhere? Maybe she did realise, and this was an elaborate revenge plot against her ex-boyfriend, Jeff?

Today's show was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Leon Wilson, Jane Garvey, and all the people who contributed swears, especially my friend Tom's mum. She loves to say the word "cunt".

Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…

Maskinonge. Noun. Another term for 'muskellunge'.

Oh, what? What's "muskellunge"?

Muskellunge. Noun. A large pike that only occurs in the Great Lakes region of North America.

Try using it in a sentence today. 

Also try visiting me at @AllusionistShow on Facebook and Twitter, and at theallusionist.org, where, following the last episode, Stephen commented, "May I suggest the origin of 'broad' being the German 'braut'? Noun, bride, a woman taking part in a marriage." Seems plausible to me, Stephen. If I had rosettes for etymologist of the day, I'd give you one. I should get those.

In a fortnight there'll be another episode, with only Category C language and below. But until then... 

[A chorus of voices together say "cunt"]