"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 29/09/17(crestfallen, showing the white feather, pedigree)

I have to thank Annie Jackson for an e-mail. She asked where the ajective crestfallen comes from? And it'a a good one. I've spoken before on the programme about how some of the cruellest sports in our history - such as bear baiting, etc - have given idioms to the English language. And cockfighting has done exactly the same, unfortunately. And crestfallen goes all the wat back to a rooster who's lost his fight, so he might well have a fallen crest in a very literal sense. And the very first evidensce for it in the Oxford English Dictionary in from 1589, probably reffering to a person, but likening them to a rooster. "Oh, how meagre and lean he looked, so crestfallen that his comb hung down to his bill". So we have cockfighting to thank - if we have to thank it for anything - for crestfallen. But also a few other idioms. Like showing the white feather, associated very much, especially in the Second World War, with cowardice, of course. That goes back to the fact that gamecock that had a white feather was concidered to be of inferior breeding. So, poorly bred. And hence not to have as much gusto and bravery as the real pedigree roosters. So to show the white feather was literally to turn tail. But just one final stop, not really to do with cookfighting, but I mentioned showing the white feather, and the idea of the bird of poor breeding, if you like. And poor pedigree. And pedigree is actually a wonderful one, which I love, a wonderful origin. Because in medieval manuscripts, a mark that consisted of three curve lines was used to indicate a family lineage. So it was a family tree, not too dissimilar to the ones we have today. And people saw resemblance between this mark and the claw or track of a crane, so they called it a crane's foot. And in the French, the Normans who came over after the conquest, that was a pie de grue. And eventually pai de grue, in the English tongue, became pedigee. But its literally meaning is a crane's foot. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 28/09/17 (at loggerheads)

I had an e-mail in from James, who asked, "Why do we talk of being "at loggerheads" with someone?" It's a very good question. If you looking "loggerhead" up in the dictionary, you'll find lots of definitions. It can be a species of turtle, a moth, a duck and even a place name. And originally, "loggerhead" became the term for an iron implement. It had a really long handle and a ball or a bulb at the end, which would be heated above a fire and it would be used for stirring liquids. So quite haedy alcoholic mixtures, such as flip, which was a mixture of beer which was sweetened with sugar and often lots of spirits added in as well. And if you can imagine it, aones you've had one or two drinks, these hot pokers in their hands would have been quite treacherous weapons. You can imagine perhaps them wielding them after a fight and they would literally be "at loggerheads" with each other. I hope that answers James's question. "At loggerhead" probably goes back to those very frightening pokers. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 27/09/17(char, cup of char)

I'm focused on Alice Reynolds, who e-mailed in and said, "I've often wondered where the "char" and "cup of char" came from"? which is appropriate for an almost tea-time show, as we are. It emerged as a slang for "tea", "char" in the 1920s, and it was actually a popular spelling of "cha" and that was form Mandarin dialect of Chinese, that was their word for "tea". So you might expect the "char" in the now old-fashioned term "charwoman" to have, sort of, slightly the same history - perhaps a charwoman used to serve tea. Actually that's very different, it has very different beginnings. It is linked to the word "chore", and that goes back to an Old English term meaning "a turning", with the idea of doing a turn of work which, of course, is what a charlady of a charwoman used to do. It's perhaps slightly derogatory to use it now, but certanly, it used to be very much in vogue. But London's Charing Cross shares that same ancestry, because its name is explained by the fact that the old hamlet of Charing was situated at a bend, or a turn in the River Thames. So "char" crops up there as well. And there's one other sense of char which I think requires possibly an even greater leap of faith, because in Scotland, when the door is neither open or shut complitely, it's almost "at a turn",  it's turned a little way. It was described as being "at char" - again, that idea of turning comes into it. And, of course, gradually, as things do, they become a little bit slippery in English, and "at char" became "ajar", which is we get "ajar" from today. So, three lots of "char", very different senses, but they all share the same ancestry. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 26/09/17(malaphor)

Today is something I find quite entertaining, but I have to thank Rachel for this one because she alerted me to the concept of a malaphor by her friend Jamie. A malaphor is a mix of a metaphor and a malapropism, and it's when you mix up your idioms and you come up with something a little bit odd, so, for example, if you wanted to comment on the untrustworthiness of somebody, instead of saying "I couldn't trust him as far as could throw him", you cross this with, "I wouldn't touch him with a bargepole", and you have "I wouldn't trust him with bargepole". Those sort of thing are incredibly common and if you track Oxford's databases, you will find they are eventually catching up with the real versions, if you like, and may-may some day overtake them, so I thought I would give you some of our favourite malaphors. One of the most common is, "We'ii burn that bridge, when we come to it", which make a lot of scense. That's a whole new kettle of worms". "I'm walking on tenterhooks". "Put your best face forward", which I like. "Untill cows freeze over". "That's no shirt off my nose". And, "It's a walk in the cake", which is quite sweet. And possibly my favourite, which I genuenely heard somebody say, and it was a real compliment, talking about another person, they said, "He is a minefield of infirmation". Those are malaphors. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 25/09/17(sae change)

I'll speak about the origins of the phrase a sea change, because it sens to get bandied about these days, and thanks to linguistic inflation, as we call it, it's just lost a little bit of its value, a bit like tragic and hero. They do get used a little bit too much so that when something really tragic happens or somebody really is genuinely heroic, they tend to have lost their power, and sea change possibbly one of those. It's a big thing in business speak these days just to mean any sort of big change, but a sea change is actually something really fundamental that changes in your life or in a particular situation. And like many of our colourful phrases, it goes back to Shakespeare. Not sure if he coined it, I think he did in this instance. He, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is responsible for 1610 first records of words. So, it goes back to The Tempest, in Ariel's song to Ferdinand - "Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something reach and strange". So here,sea change is more than just a change in appearance or functioning of something, it was a really radical change in the nature and composition of something - "of his bones are coral made." So the dort of fundamental change, perhaps, that might come from long-term immertion in the sea, that was the idea. And it's a wonderful mataphor, really, but actually, it flew below the radar for a very long time after Shakespear - it didn't get picked up again until the 1900s, when it still kept that fundamental, overwhelmiing change. But then, as I say, as it's gained more popularity, it's become used a little bit more liberally and a little bit more freely. But I like the origin meaning - somrthing that is so overwhelming, just like the sea, that it's really impacted your life in a very big way. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 22/09/17 (gin and gunpowder)

I have some alcohol for you today. I had a tweet in from Ben Pope, who asked whether... He'd had a rumor that "gin" is actually an alteration of "gun", "gunpowder", because it's so strong. It'a complitely wrong, unfortunately, but a nice idea. But gin is made from juniper, and it goes bzck to "juniperus", which is the Latin for the juniper berries. Very strangely, somewhere along its way, it became to associated with the city of Geneva in Switherland - it has absolutelly no connection with that at all, but in English, it became "genever" and eventually, it got shortened and changed a little bit to "gin". So very, kind of, strange route that it took, but nothing to do with a gunpowder there. But, as strange, as the idea might be, there is connection between gunpowder and gin, because the measure of the alcohol content of distilled spirits is proof - we talk about something which is alcohol proof. And that proof - meaning to establish the validity of something - goes all the way back again to the Romans, "probare" maening "to test". So when we say the proof of pudding is in the eating, that's actually the testing of the pudding is in the eating. And morden distilleries today use very sophisticated machines to measure the ethanol, so the amount of alcohol, in a liquid. But before then, the distillers did use gunpowder to prove the alcohol content of their drinks. So equal anount of the brew that they were testing and gunpowder were combined. A flame was applied. If it didn/t burn, it was under proof, and contained too little alcohol, but if it was too bright, it was over proof - that meant it was too strong. Just right which is about 50% alcohol - I think it's 57, actually - the mixture burned with very steady blue flame, and that's when they knew that they had the proof right. Of course, in America, still, they talk about something being 100% proof of whatever for their alcohol. So there is a connection between gunpowder and gin, just not the one that Ben thought. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 21/09/17(blockbuster)

I have to thank Paul Antony Jones, who wrote a treat book called The Accidential Dictionary that I like delving into from time to time, and he remindede me about one particular word which we bandly about these days, but which actually has a quite dark history to it. These days, when a film fails to earn any money at the box office, we tend to call it's a bomb, but if it's really successful, we call it a blockbuster, which is still literally a bomb, and the reason why is it takes us back to wartime and Britain at the height of the Second Wold War. This is when the Royal Air Force began developing a new design for a huge aerial bomb. It called the high capacity or HC bomb. It took a long time to develope, but when it did emerge, it was nine feet long, the first one in 1941. Half a tonne of steel and weighted a total of 4000lb. If that's not enough, a staggering tree-quarters of that was made of pure explosive amatol, so one of the most explosive materials around. And on the 31-st of March, 1941, the first of ones was dropped in an air raid of the city of Emden, that's in north-west Germany, and one of the pilotes involved in the raid described, quite sadly, how whole houses took to the air. Then war intensified, the neeb for bigger, greater bombs emerged, and by the end of the war, more than 12000 HCs had been dropped on German targets. To the RAF pilots, there were simply called cookies, and there is a tradition of calling bombs sort of quite affectionate names, really, Big Berthas or... It's quite a strange thing, I suppose a little bit a black humour, but it was the Americans who decided to call them blockbusters because they were so huge that they could literally destroy an entire block, and thanks to American wartime reporters, that crapt into English lexicon and it's stayed there ever since, thankfuly not to describe bombs so much, but to describe anything that makes a massive impact. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 20/09/17 (going from pillar, pillores-stockings)

I have to thank Audrey Jones today, because dhe asked me... She wrote in to ask why we talk about going from pillar to post when we're making a great effort to achieve something. So thanks to Audrey and everyone who writes in. There are two theories about this. The first is that it goes back to the sport of real tennis. We know it first appears in English in around the 15th century but it first appear from post to pillar, so the other way round. And the explanation, the theory behind this one is that a tennis player chasing the ball ricocheting from the posts and pillars of the indoor courts in those days was a really vivid metaphor for somebody who was just going hither and thither in search of something, in an effort to achieve something. But there is another theory, which is the most plausible and ehich the evidence seems to fit a little bit better, and that interprets the post as a whipping post and the pillar as pillory, which was punishment, really through humiliation. It was this contraption, as you probably know - it was a short post and it was topped with a wooden frame, and the offender's head and hands would go through this, and essentially they would be mocked by every passer-by, the ocational pigeon, etc - real humiliation, which is why, of course, we talk about pillorying someboby today if we're really given them a hard time. So not a very nice origin but, as I say, that's probably the most plausible one. But while we're on pillories, worth mentioned stockings, as well, because it's slightly strange that an item of lingerie today actually began with that same instrument of torture, or at least a very similar one. The idea was that people put their legs through this horrible wooden blocks in the same way that you'd put your legs into stockings, so very strange progression but we thing that stockings almost certanly go back to those original pilories and stocks. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 19/09/17(you are what you eat, Kellogg)

I'm going to take a slightly different tack today in honor of Janet, because you were talking about super foods and clean eating ant whether of not that'a such a good idea. So I thought that I would look at the origin of the phrase "you are what you eat", which is a bit of a mantra these days, and probably very, very true as well. It's actually linked with a Kellogg's Corne Flakes, believe it or not.  Kellogg's Corne Flakes was founded as the Battle Creeck Toasted Corn Flakes Company. That was founded in 1906 by Will Keith and Lohn Harvey Kellogg, who is the most famous one, obviously. Thwy were very much influenced by Seventh-Day Adventist principles, if you like, and beliefs. They'd worked together at Battle Creek sanatorium in Michigan, hence the name. And that was a really popular health resort that had fairly radical ideas about how to keep healthy. So they promoted good diets, which I'll come to, but also frequent enemas to claense the body. But as far as their diet was concerned, it was low-fat, low-protein as well, at that point, and fibre-reach foods supplemented by grains. So nothing, I suppose, particularly radical there. But in addition to the diet, they also promoted various physiological therapies for the mind and body as well. So hydrotherapy, for example, electrotherapy also. There was an advert for Kellogg Food Company in 1909, which is what the Battle Creeck company eventually became. "Bringing the sanatorium direct to you, you can't have good health without good blood. You can't have good blood if you don't eat right food. Nature works through the stomach, you are what you eat. Get the stomach right and everything is right". And people who had stayed at the sanatorium and followed this diet actually went to found their own breakfast cereal companies, and also enclosed little booklets - little, secret tips as hoe to eat clean - in their own cereal boxes. Which all goes to show that clean eating and healthful living didn't start in this century. It all goes back all the way back to breakfast cereals in the early 1900s. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 18/09/17 (Great Scott, hold the fort)

I have two American sayings that arose during two different wars. And the first is Gerat Scott, something you're not really likely to hear these days. Very old-fashioned exclamation of surprise. It arose as a euphenism for "Great God", so that's not particularly surprising. But who was Scott? Well, the consensus is that it's a General Winfield Scott who was the leader of the US Army in the war against Mexico, so it was in about 1846. And he was known to be really fussy about how he liked his orders carried out and very, very adamant that everythinh should be carried out according to the letter of his law. And his officers, accordingly, gave him the nickname of Fuss and Feathers. It seemed like they were always trying to make up for not doing things in exactly the way that he wanted. And one unknown officer apparently coined the expression "what does The great Scott want now?" And over time, "great Scott" just singled out as an exclamation, a little bit like Gordon Bennet, which is another story altogether. And a secon phrase is "hold the fort", which actually goes back to the Civil War and the eve of the Battle of Alatoona, which was in Atlanta. In October 1864, a Confederate, called General Hood, wanted to destroy the army that was stationed in a fort. Now, this army was held by someone called General John Corse, and he was almost ready to surrender untill hw saw a message, signalled by flags, which was General Sherman, the leader of the massive Union Army. It said, "hold fast, we are coming". And Corse held, and Sherman's forces relieved the fort. But "hold the fort" then flew into public currency, if you like, and it's stayed there ever since. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 15/09/17 (taking umbrage, umbrella, squirell)

I had an e-mail form Laura O'Connor, who said, "I hope you won't take umbrage, Susie, if you tell me of the origins of tell my of the origin of taking umbrage?" And I'm going to start with umbrella, because you'll notice there's probably some relationship between umbrella and umbrage, and there is. It goes back to the Latin umbra, which meant shadow. And in the case of umbrella, it was the diminutive,  so the little form, of the Italian ombrella. And that meant little shadow or shade. And that was reflect to the umbrella's original use, because it was meant to peotect the user not from rain but from sun. An ombrela was a sunshade, in other words. It was only when umbrellas were imported into Britain - this was probably about the 17th century - where, obviously, rain outweighs the sun by a very long margin, that umbrellas became popular as protection from cloud bursts, or thunder-plumps, as dialect likes to call them. So that's the umbrella. But umbrage has a very similar story, really. That entered English, not from Italian this time, but from Old French, in the 15th century. And that was in the literal sense of shadow or shade. So you might find unbrage under a nice tree, for example. But then, slowly but surely, umbrage took on the meaning of suspicion or doubt. In other word, someone had thrown shade over you, as we might say these days, and had given you a grounds for suspicion. And while we're on shade, I just want to finish with the squirell, because it's one of my favourite little origins, really. Because squirrel goes back to a Greek word that simply meant shadowy tail, because its tail is so big that it cast the whole of the little sqirrel in shadow. And I quite like that one.

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 14/09/17 (redneck, pommy)

I have to thank Pamela Smith who e-mailed in to ask about the origin of "redneck". She said, is it so obvious as it seems?  It is purely sunburnt necks from people working in the fields? But there mayby a little bit more to it than that, because it was first applied during the Great Depression, which was during the 1930s, when food was very scarce, particularly in the rural South, the southern states of America, and so many poor people subsisted almost entirely on maize. And they used to eat something called hominy grits, which I have eaten when I lived at the States. It's loke a sort of porridge maid of maize, entirely. And that diet was very lacking in niacin. And severe niacin deficiency can cours a really harsh reddening of the skin. It's called pellagra. It was endemic during the Great Depression because of that real lack of food. Sunlight only made it worse and so, if you imagine these poor Southernes, working in the sun, they had red neck like probably nobody else at the time. So quite a sad origin for that one. But it made me think also about the word "pommy", which, of course is what the Australians like to nickname the Brits,  and that derives from "pomegranate". A pomegranate, with an Australian accent, was in turn wordplay for a Jimmy Grant, and a Jimmy Grant was rhyming slang for an immigrant, somebody who had just arrived on the shores of Australia, and very oftgen, again, fair-skinned Brits would arrive on the shore and become completely sunburned from the blazing sun in Australia, and so pommys, short from pomegranates, because of these poor, red-necked Brit arriving. Nothing to do with being a Prisoner of Her Majesty, which is famous acronym, or a backronym, that's applied to POM, and everything to do with sunburned skin. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 13/09/17 (upshot, parting shot)

I had an e-mail from John Travis, who's a regular viewer, and asked about the origin of "the upshot" of something, so the outcome, and before I get to that, it gives me a chance to give one of my favourite stories in English, which is "parting shot". If we say something a parting shot, that's a, sort of, conclusive remark, perhaps something that you give as you walk out with a triumph and a flourish, but it goes back to another expression altogether, which was a Parthain shot, The Parthhain being an ancient race living in south-west Asia, very skilled warrior with very, very clever battle tactics, and the horseman would buffle their enemies with incredibly rapid manoeuvres, one of which was to discharge arrows backwards as they looked to be fleeing, so it looked like they were, sort of, riding away, when in fact they would turn around on their horse  and send off fatal arrows at their enemy. But to come to upshot, that's been around for quite a long time, not quite as long as parting shot, but more then four centures at least, and the first recorded usage is in 1531, and it's wonderful because it conjures up all these images of 16th-century England, when archery tournaments were very big deal at festivals and general, sort of, celebrations, if you like, under royal command. An upshot was the very last shot in an archery competition, so it was a diciding shot, and that first record I mentioned is from the Privy Purse, showing the expenses of the Henry VIII, where it says, "Item paid to the same Coton" - being a man, an archer, - "for one upshot that he won of the king's grace". In other words, he was representing the king, and he won the archery competition with his upshot, that final winning shot, and so he rcieved some money from the Privy Purse. And so that was an upshotit had everything to do with bows ans arrows. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 12/09/17 (southpaw, ambidextrous)

Well, I have talked so many times on Countdown about the misfortune of left-hanfers in English, but I've learnt a couple of new things recently, which are to do with left-handers and right-handers, and the first was southpaw, why we call a left-hander a southpaw, and also, of course, it's a left-handed punch in boxing. Well, the baseball term goes back to the orientation of the diamond, which is basically aligned to the points of the compass, which means that the pitcher has his left hand on the south side of his body, and that's what inspired both the baseball term and the boxing term. But there's another one that surprised me, and I have to say I learnt this from the Accidental Dictionary, which is a really nice book written by Paul Anthony Jones, and it was about ambidextrous, because, of course, if you're ambidextrous, that's usually a very, very good thing. It means you can write with both hands. But that literally means, when you think about it, right-handed on both sides, so it's not really something that I'd pondered before. So it means really, that you're skilled and therefore right-handed, again - it's a bit of jibe, if you like, at left-handers. So, that's a literal meaning of ambidextrous, but if you go right back to the 16th century, it actually meant deceitful or double-dealing, so it has a slightly shady past. An ambidexter was a dishonest lawyer, and the idea was that he - it usually was a he - would accept a payment, literally one in each hand, from both parties in a dispute. Today, of course, it only means that you can write with both hands, but it has, as I say, that slightly interesting past. But it, once again, is a bit teasing, if not mocking, towards left-handers out there, so I think we should cetebrate left-handers. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 11/09/17 (fibs white lies)

I'm going to talk about fibs and white lies today. Where does fibs come from? It's quite a cute word, really, and it's got quite a sweet origin as well. Because go back to the 1600s and you'll find a slightly whimsical word for nonsense, which was fible-fable, and that was simply a playful what we call reduplication - sounds very complicated in linguistics, but as I've mentioned so many times in Countdown, our language is full of them. Hoity-toity, namby-pamby, that sort of thing. Jingle-jangle, okey-dokey. So, fible at some point became separated from the fable, which was the main part of it, the fable being, you know, a story, and hens perhaps a lie. And fible became shortened to fib, and so we are left with the result today. But why a white lie, which is what a fib usually is? Well, that's based on our ancient Western idea of polar opposites, in which white represents good, something good and pure, and black is often represented, in popular cultures at least, as being the symbol of evil. We have white magic, for example, which is benevolent magic, so, good spell that are cast in order to bring about good things, as opposed to black magic, which is thought of as being quite malevolent. We had a White Paternoster a while ago, which was a spell, or prayer, rather, or chant, recited at night to protect against evil spirits, and children would often be tauhgt their White Paternoster. The Black Paternoster, on the other hand, was a spell recited to conjure up evil spirits or devils. Should just say, that Paternoster, which mean "our father", of course, in Latin, it was the beginings of the Lord's Prayer, that probably gave us patter, because the first patter were prayers recited incredibly quickly. So, if you think about a sales patter today, it probably goes back to Paternoster. But anyway, goes back to white lies, it's a similar sort of thing. A black lie was one with incredibly evil intent, whereas a white lie is something fairly harmless or trivial, said in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/09/17 (get off scot-free)

I had a tweet in from Danny Smith in Southhampton who asked why when we escape from something or somebody do we get off scot-free? And the expression has nothing to do with Scotland. You probably would expect it to. But its dtory instead began in Scandinavia where skot, S-K-O-T, particularly in olf Icelandic, was the word of a payment or a tax. And ehen the word came into the English in the 12th century, it described spesifically those taxes that were paid by feudal tenants to their ruler in proportion to their ability to pay. In other words, they were means tested. So those who had little or no money at all could go without paying. The equivalent perhaps of council taxes today. And they consequently could go scot-free. They would not have to pay the scot and could just happily go on their way. Although, as I say, they didn't have too much money to go on. But before long, the expression then ancompassed a more general meaning of going without punishment of some kind, which is how we ended up with scot today. But there were a lots o other scots or taxes durinh this period. So a soul-scot, for example, was a tax paid to the parish or behalf  of the deceased person. And Rome-scot was an annual payment made to the Pope as this was a pre-Reformation England. But a scot-ale was probably the most curious thing and it was festivety held by the lord of the manor, and an ale was a party, a massive gathering, lots of  drinking, which is how we got to our modern version of ale today. So bride-ale was a wedding feast originally and that gave us the word bridal. But this scot-ale, as I say, was held by the lord of the manor, but attendance was compulsory. In other words, every single person in the villiage or the town had to go to this scot-ale. But it also carried a really hefty cover charge, hence thу scot. In other word, you had to pay to be there, even if you didn't want to go. So I think it was divided between fairly unhappy villagers who went, paid their money, and simply stood there for the sake of it, and others who decided to get in on the action, or the spirit of the thing, and then became very, very heady on ale. But scot-free was something trhose people who went to the scot-ale did non benefit from. They had to pay this cover charge. But scot all was about payment and taxes. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 07/09/17 (piece of cake)

When we talk about something that's a piece of cake. If something is a piece of cake, obviously, it's incredibly easy. And we know that cake goes down very easily. WE're not completely sure of the origin of this one but it might actually go back to quite a lovely story. Remember the MAry Poppins song, A Spoonful of Sugar, which is, "Every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake". That certanly cemented it in the popular imagination. But we thint it in factgoes back to the 19th century when cakewalks were incredibly popular in America. particularly amongst the African-American communities. Basically couples would compete, they woud go arm in arm and they would walk as elegantly and as fashionably as possible. And the prize was a cake, and that was awarded to the most graceful and stylish team going. It demanded skill and grace, but the term came to be used from there for a boxing fight that was very, very easily won. So it's very pissible that a piece of cake followed a similar route. So from sophisticated art of cakewalking back in the 19th century to the easiest thing inaginable. But it didn't not end there, either.  Because in America they also talked about taken the cake which was to carry off the honours. And that of course in British English becanme taking the biscuit, which for a while was a really good thing, to take a biscuit. The phrase taking the cake is actually much, much older, even, than those cakewalks in the 19th century. As early as 240 BC, the Greeks were talking about taking the cake as taking off victory from a military campaign, for example. You'll find it in Aristophanes and quite a few Greek writers so it goes bask a very, very long way. Yeah, taking the biscuit, taking the cake, possibly all the way back to those cakewalks. Thaking the biscuit we tend to use today for something that's not very good - "That take the biscuit!" There's usually the element of surprise. But once it was to do something which was the most stylish and graceful thing imaginable. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 04/09/17 (jejune)

I'm going to take you an adjective that mean dull of insipid and has also something to do with human anatomy and actually gave us a meal of the day, so it's very roundabout route I'm goung to take you on today. It's not a particularly familiar word,  but it's just one that I find quite interesting. And that word is jejune. As I say it means insipid or dull or bland. It's not something you particularly want to be. And it took, again, its history, as a part of the human anatomy. It's part of the small intestine. And it goes back to the Latin word, jejunes, which meant "fasting". And that seems quite odd, to go from fasting to a section of the small intestine, but there's a slightly morbid reason, for that which is that, when you die, the intestin is apparently empty, as though you'd been fasting, so thatbit of he intestine is always enpty at death. Not particularly nice. But the word then came into English arount the 17th century and it kept that the Latin meaning of fasting. It als omeant hungry, without food, so some riffs on the same theme. But it didn't take long before figurative language took over and jejune began to be applied to people who were just unsatisfying in some way,  so that idea, again, of emptiness. There is one more link in the chain, because the Latin also has the word "disjejunus", which literally meant, "to break one's fast". In French we have "le dejueuner", which today means "lunch" but when it first went into French, it meant breakfast. So "disjejunus" gave us "dejueuner" and evetually it ended up in English as "to dine". So, no breakinh your fast in the morning, but breaking your fast in the evening. So, section of the small intestine, fasting and dullness but somehow it was crept into English as mealtime of the day. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/09/17 (by hook or by crook)

THia is a story that I have told before, but it's one of the questions that I get asked most regularly by our lovely viewers, and that is where does "by hook or by crook" come from? And a part of the reason I love it is that it's invited so many different, colourful stories as to its true history. The first one relates to the villages of Hook Head and nearby Crook, which are in Warerford in Ireland. And Cromwell is supposed to have said that by landing his army at one of those two places during a siege, which is in around 1649, 1650, Woterford was fall by Hook or by Crook, which is a colourful one and entirely plausible when you look at it. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't fit. Anothet point to an English judge who served under Charles I, and Charles I tried to impose quite a hefty ship of money tax as it was called, without a consent of Parlament, which is obviously unconstitutional but he did it anyway. And the judge is said to have refused to pass this, refused to actually enshrine it in law and so it was said that the ship money tax would get through by hook, in other words by force, but hot by crook,not by the judge. The truth, or as closest we can get to it, lies elsewhere and that's that around the time the saying appears, villagers were granted permission by Royal Charter to collect firewood. Obviously incredibly important for fuel and for warmth, and they could either gather it from local forests, provided it lay on the ground or could be taken from the dead wood that was hanging from branches. And reaching such branches? of course, needed the appropriate tools, so the villagers were allowed to gather their fuel by hook, in other words by shepherd's hook, or by crook. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 31/08/17 (darbies)

I had a nice e-mail from Rachel Davies, who asked... well, she'd been reading an old novel, and she said she came across the use of darbies for handcuffs. And she said, where on earth does that come from? The answer is it's pretty old. It's over 300 years old. And the term is a development of an earlier phrase which is a slightly curious one on the face of it and that's Father Darby's bands. And that reffered to an incredibly rigid straitjacket of a loan, really, that somebody would take out and would de banded firmly in the power of the moneylender. Not perhaps unlike some of those loans today, payday loans today. And many lender of the time were pretty unscrupulous, would often resorts to pretty violent means to get their money back. So essentially, if you were carrying Father Darby's bands, you were pretty much handcuffed to the moneylender with very little room for manoeuvre. The question of course is, who on earth was Father Darby? And it's really frustrating because history doesn't quite give us an answer. But it's been suggested that it goes back the one particularly unscrupulous money-monger who lived in the 16th century. And... I don't quite know why "Father". Perhaps that was a mocking nickname for him, but you certanly did not want to be within his power. But whatever the origin, darbies then settled in the lexicon as a criminal unredworld  and Darbies and Joanes were fetter which were linking a pair of criminals. So you would be possibly handcuffed to somebody else in jail. And a Darby roll was the type of walking that betrayed a former prisoner that can be kept in shackles because they had a slightly rolling gait because obviously they had been kept up fettered for so long. But I mentioned Darby and Joan and that's actually got a lovely history as well. We use it today, Darby and Joan, as a devoted old married couple really. And it goes back to 1735 and a poem in the Gentleman's Magazine ehich is an anonymous poem and it contained the lines, "Old Dardy, with Joan by his side / He is dropsical, she's sore-eyed / Yet they're never happy asunder". Which I think is quite pretty. Nothing to do with handcuffs in that one. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 30/08/17 (hotchpotch, potpourri, balderdash)

I have a whole hotchpotch of things for you today, Nick, quite literary because I'm going to talk about the ogirin of hotchpotch and also other terms in English that mean some sort of medley of ingredients in some way. And hotchpotch is an earlier form of hodgepodge, which we still can hear today as well. It goes back to a very old French word, hochepot - actually, it was "po", "hoche-po", I guess - from which the English is derived. It's from hotcher, which meant to shake, and pot or "po", which meant thse same as we have it, a pot. So a hochepot was a stew with many, many different ingredients and they were all shaked, obviously, when cooked together in one big pot and then simmered for hours. An early English cookbook - so many wonderful cookbook you can find around the medieval times - and this one from the 14th century - contains the recepe for goose in hochepot. So you can see actually it was around as, as I say, a sort of stew of different ingredients from around the 15th centery. That, of course, gave a rise to the figurative sense that we know today of a whole assortment of ingredients. Anr thre's another one word in English that means pretty much the same thing although it has a more fragrant resonance to it, I suppose, and that's a potpourri. And a potpourri, again, can be useed figuratively to mean a whole assortment of things. You might talk about a potpourri of influences, or it can be a medley of music as well. Actually, that's got a really unsavoury begining because it  actually goes back to the Spanish meaning putrid pot and, again, it was a cooking term and it was just lots and lots of different ingredients thrown in and kept over the stove for a very long time. Quite why it was putrid and smelly by the end of it, we're not sure, but certanly, it was cooked for a very long time. Perhaps that's why, perhaps eventually it turned and gave of a not very nice smell. Today, of course, we use it very differently. Potpourri is a quite nice smelling. And finally, balderdash. Now, balderdash today means nonsense, piffle, etc, but actually that two was once a medley of different ingresients cooked in a pot, only this time the ingredients were really quite disgusting. Milk and beer, beer and wine and, if you look at one novel by Tobias Smollett, he talks about a wine merchant of Nice that added to his particular bottles pegeon dung and quicklime. But bulderdash, again, was a kind of confused mixture of ingredients and eventually it became known as something which is not particularly nice ingredients, appropriately, and complete nonsense. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 29/08/17 (kangaroo court, claim jumper)

Well, one of the things that was puzzled ethymologists is "kangaroo court". Where does that term come from? It describes, really, an illegitimate court that has been set up that desides of the fate of somebody, and wouldn't stans up in court at all. It's quite old. It's over 150 years old, that we know of. And the immediate assumption would be that it would be Australian. But there is no link in the story, no link in the chain, that would take us back to Australia. But the first recorded use of kangaroo court is from Australian publication. It's about 1853. Nothing before then. That was about the time of the California gold rush. Of course, we know that a lot of Australians, who were often known as the 49ers, from the year 1849, which was that start of the main gold rush, we know that they did flock to California to seek their fortune. So it's possible that these gold-diggers could have brought the phrase with them. Of course, gold-digger gave us "digger", meaning "mate", in Australia. So it has affected the vocabulary in lots of different ways. But there is a more plausible explanation. If you took over someone else's mining claim without permission during the gold rush, you were set to be a "claim jumper". That's a phrase that looks back to a pretty old sense of the verb "to jump", which was to rob or cheat. You might still talk about "jumping" someone and robbing them in some way. So if you combine the idea of a claim jumper with the idea, of course, that kangaroos are word-class jumpers, and that's probably where kangaroo court comes from. There's one more link in the chain, which is that there is so much evidence in the Oxford English Dictionary of it been use in jail, where prisoners woulf set up a kangaroo court, to insist that new prisoners would give over their money and it would be divided amongst the inmates and then used for buying tobacco and others luxuries. But our best guess is that it goes back to those claim jumpers of the gold rush. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 28/08/17 (bishop, blessing)

Today I'm going to become a little bit religios, and I'm going to talk about bishops and blessings. And if you think about a bishop, they have a croiser in the forn of a shepherd's crook, and that is meant to symbolise that they are in fact overseeing their flock,  and they have a duty of pastoral care. And the significanse of "bishop", the actual word "bishop", reflects that symbolic association of the croiser as well, because the Old English word, aling with several other similar therms in Germanic languages, comes from the Latin "episcopus", which meant "bishop" or an overseer, so, somebody who watches over. The "epi-" meant "on" or "over",  and "scopus" was one who watches. That idea of watching, you will find in many, many words in English. So, "telescope", for example, is warching from afar, "tele-" meaning "from afar". And "horoscope" as well. That too goes back to "scopos", and the first element "horo-" was related to the Greek "hora", meaning "the time of day", so astrologers basically purport to tell the futureby watching the positions of the planets and the stars, particulary at the moment of birth. So much for "bishop" and the idea of watching over. Well, "blessing" is a little bit more grisly, because the Old English "blod", blood, is believed to be a source of our word "blessing", and that's because in pre-Cristian England, in pagan ceremonies,  the verb was used to mean "to make sacred with a blood". So the practise was to spread the blood of a sacrifical animal on something in order to ward off evil influences, and when we converted to Cristianity, that verb was used to mean to consecrate by some sort of religious ritual, but it has its root in blood. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 24/08/17 (he'a a geezer, cheap)

I have to thank Paul McFedries. He is a graet linguist and loves looking at new words in particular. But he was also looking the other day at the word geezer, which means something very different in the US to in Britain. So I was saying to Martin (guest), "What do you think of if I said, "He's a little bit geezer?"" And Martin's definitoin was, "A rough diamond charmer and a bit of a lad". Which is perfect, I think, very pithy definition. Whereas in the US, it mean a senior citizen, often a quite cranky and crotchety old man, particulary. So, very, very different, but the origin is the same for both of those senses. And it goes back to the word "guise". So, a pretence, as we would still use it today. And it really was a disguise or a mask. Cos around the 15th century, the noun guise became a verb that meant to dress in the fantastic way - fantastic in the sense of using your imagination, slightly grotesque sometimes - to go about in masquerade dress. And people who would do this kind of thing became known as a guisers. And by the 19th century, the pronunciation and the spelling of this word had changed to geezer. And it reffered originally to anyone who was a bit of a charecter. So that kind of chimes, really, with hiw we view somebody today, but in America it stayed with the sort of oddity, this sense of fantastic dress and something slightly eccentric about them. And from there it developed to mean, as I say, a slightly cantakerous old man. The other possible word that goes along with geezer is chap, which I always enjoy with origin of and the story behind this one. That's very much linked with the word cheap. London's Cheapside use to be a market, and cheap meant a marketplace. If you got a really goob bargain at the marketplace, you would have had a good cheap, and of course that gave us the sense of cheap today, something that you've got actually at a good price. But the person who was selling at this market was the chapman. He was a market trader who would be giving those good cheaps, etc, at Cheapside and other markets up and down the land. And the chapman eventually got a shortened to chap and it became not just a market trader, but an ordinary man on the street. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 23/08/17 (happy as a clam, happy as a sandboy)

I've been asked about the origin by somebody who didn't want to give their name out, by the way, but I was always appreciate the people who e-mail in. Where does "happy as a clam" come from? What have clams got to be particulary happy about?" But to get to the story, you'd have to turn, as always, to the Oxford English Dictionary, and that quotes a Johnatan Slick in his 1844 collection of letters called High Life In New York, "Ther seemed as happy as clams in high water", which is full expression, the full term, which explain everything, really, because there's nothing you can do in trem if you're a clam hunter until it's low tide. You're certanly can't go clamming if it's high tide of high water, indeed, so that's when clams are safiest and presumable in their happiest. So, it's just as simple as that, but it's been around for over 100 years. The other expression, of course, is to be as happy as a sandboy, and that's something I'm often asked about as well. Who were sanbboys, and what did they have to be so happy about? Well, to investigate that one, you have to go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, so a little bit earlier still, and sandboys were men and boys who delivered sand to pubs anf to theatres and to homes, and this sand was used as a crude covering for floors. It was before sawdust arrived, before the spit-and-sawdust establishments, as we call them today, were around. And that sand, as I say, was a precursor to the sawdust. It soaked up all the, kind of, split beer and ale, etc. Why were they so happy? Well, as a reward for carrying such heavy loads of sand, and it was incredibly heavy, either in sacks on their backs or heavy wheelbarrow-laods, they were given ale. That was their reward, and there's a lovely mention in The Old Curiosity Shop from Dickens. He describes the sandboys in party mood, and he says, "The Joly Sandboys was a small roadside innof pretty ancient date, with tha sign representing three sandboysincreasing their jolity with as many jug of ale". So, I'm afraid, the sandboys were very happy because they had more than one tipple. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 22/08/17 (rifles)

We're going to talk about rifles today, but not perhaps in the sense that you might think of them, though I will mention the gun. I'm going to go back to the very early days of the word rifle, when it meant to plunder or to scratch - and the idea of scratching was maybe to search thoroughly, to just scratch the earth in order to find something. And today, if we're rifling through a book, we still have that sense of searching very thoroughly. But how that transfrred into a gun sense is quite interesting, because "to rifle" originally meant to making of grooves in the barrel of a gun, so again, that scratchung or etching, if you like, of indentations in the barrel of a gun - and rifle, of course, we have kept today. It transferred then to the gun itself. But only a person who was probably the dregs of society would plunder loot from the bodies of those who died in battle, perhaps from a rifle, and o perhaps it's appropriate that that's a historu of our phrase "riff-raff", ehich is related to these early sense of rifling, and I'll explain why. Riff-raff today, obviously desreputable people, othen used in a fairly classist sense, I guess, for the dregs of society, so not particularly nice word to use. The tale begins with that word rifle, to plunder, but also another word "rafle", spelt R-A-F-L-E, which was to snatch or to carry away. And "rifle" anf "rafle" in French reffered to plundering the battlefield dead anf making off with their loot, whether it was ammunition, whether it was amulets that some of the soldiers took with them, and the phrase eventually wandered into English as "riff and raff". And actually the first meaning was "evry single one", perhaps with that sense of looting so thoroughly, there was absolutely nothing left. Eventualy, riff and raff meant "everyone" and of course, it later came to refer to the common folk, a little bit loke "hoi polloi", if you like. Perhaps there was a whiff of those nasty battlefield thieves and that's why eventually it became the really derogatory term that we know today. But it all began with that horrible looting of dead bodies, unfortunatelly, on the battlefield. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 21/08/17 (cranky, emormous)

I had a tweet from Alison Baker, who wondered about the history of somebody being cranky, you know, if you feeling a litle bit irritable or bad-tempered, why are you cranky? So, your average cranky person isn't right-angled, but that is in fact what the word cranky once meant. It goes all the way back to the 11th century, to describe handless or treadles that were bent at a right angle. Usually to be used to turn something, obviously, and we still use crank in that sense. And it actually comes from an Anglo-Saxon word, so an Old English word, meaning to curl oneself up into a ball, especially on a battlefield, if you were hurt. So, the idea again that you were bent double or bent at a right angle on the battlefield. And this idea of somebody being bent out of shape, I suppose, instead of straight, began to be applied to people who were not just weak or sick, but also to a kind of mental state, so you were slightly bent out of shape, or you were just mentally a little bit out of gear, and of course, crochety is an extension of that, if you're not quite with it, you're slightly out of gear, then you are indeed cranky. It goes all the way back to that idea of beign at right angles. And speaking of angles, the word enormous also comes into this equation, because the Latin tern "enormis" is a combination of the prefix e, meaning out, and as a noun, norma, and a norms was a carpenter's square, and eventually, norma, and then "normalis", which of course gave us "normal" today, came into English to mean right-angled, and that's where it stayed, actually, for a very long time. And eventually that idea of "enormis", so sort of outside the carpenter's square, if you like, led to the idea of deviating fron the ordinary rule. So, being unusual in some way, not quite correct in your shape. Like a carpentry project might be "enormis" in that sort of sense, it might just not turn out as you expect. And that unusualness eventually came to be applied to something that was much larger then normal, and of course, that's where enormous comes in, and that's where it's stayed today.  But we still keep that sense of deviance when we talk about enormity of the situation, which strightly speaking is not about the magnitude of a situation, but it's all to do with how much it deviates from the norm, in fact it's sometimes means complete wickedness. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 18/08/17 (having chip on one's shoulder)

I'm going to talk about "having a chip on one's shoulder", which mean that you're walking obviously with some kind of prejudice or you're overly sensitive about some particelar subject. So where does the chip come from? Obviously it's figurative these days, but it was to be very, very literal. So, for example, if you take one record in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1830, this is from the Long Island Teleghaph - "When two churlish were determined to fight, a chip would be placed on the shoulder of one and the other demanded to knock it off at his peril". So the idea was thet if somebody fancied a spar, they wood put a woodchip, a simple woodchip, on their shoulder and if there was a rival aroundthat fancied a fight, they would simply knok it off the shoulder and that would be agreeing to have a bout of fighting. So obviously that spoiling for the real fight gave way to the idea now of someboby who's just a little bit belligerent and quick to take offence, and usually have some specific feeling of inferiority, so it moved very much from the concrete to the literal. But other way of the signalling that you are ready for a fight,  they was also crept into English as idioms, really, so throwing your hat into the ring, for example, simply means that "I'll have a go". But the ring in question was a boxing ring, it was simply a circle of onlookers and the fighters would gather in that ring, inside this circle, hence the idea of a boxing ring. So any Jack-the-lad who fancied his chances, really, in a about would throw in his hat. I'm not quite sure why, but probably more reliable way of signalling that you were ready to action rather then just shouting above the tumult of the crowd. So two kind of fighting idioms, if you like, that have crept into figurative English, but had their heart in boxing. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 17/08/17 (chewing the fat)

I'm going to talk about "chewing the fat". If you chew the fat with somebody, then you're probably having old, good-fashioned chinwag, which is one of my favourite words. Or you might even be spinning a little bit of a yarn for somone, but, fortunately, today there's no actual fat involved, but it wasn't always that way, because, in the 19th century, sailors would often have to make do with a lot of salt pork when their provisions on board ran out, ehich id some pretty tough eating, particulary when it is particulary gristly and fatty, so it'a no wonder that they would grumble and complain when faced with another meal of salted pork bellies, but from this idea of chewing the fat came the very first meaning of the expression and that was to complain about it, so it meant to literally sit and grumble and moan and whinge over something, and the modern sense of chatting or, as I say, having a good chinwag, came later ehen people would get together and swap tales, have a good, old gossip. The English Dictionary is full of words for gossiping, just because it's one of our favourite pastimes, and chewing the fat is just one of those. Perhaps, you know, a little bit later, people were chewing on tobacco, but certanly those sailors of old would be chewing on fat. The by-products of all that salted pork was again in the form of fat, but as a liquid kind, with barrel loads of slush. It sounds very, very unappetising, but one article about life at sea form 1757 speaks of tars whose stomachs are not very squeamish and who can bear to paddle their fingers in stinking slush, so pretty horrible. But, despite it not being the pinnacle of foodie delight,  if you loke, it was considered a real perk for cooks and for their crew on board the ship and they would sell the fat from the cooked salt pork at sea whenever they reached a port and the proseedings were then pretty much spent in the local taverns and in other places, possibly of ill repute. But this was the first and original version of what we today call a slush fund, because it was a money actually gained from very real, stinking slush. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 16/08/17 (brand new)

I had a tweet in from Chris Newson, who said why, when somethinh is entirely new, do we say brand new? What's the brand got to do with anything? So far if we need to look right back to the ancient meaning of brand. It's some slightly curious history but always a slightly inevitable one, as well. You'll find it in Beowulf, that Old English classic. So, very, very old. It originally meant word that was burned. It comes from Germanis root meant burnt word or word burn. It reffered, of course, to a piece of wood that was burning at one end or, indeed, a flaming torch. But, crucially, brand then came to mean the mark made by burning with a hot iron, something we know about today, usually to identify a criminal. So a lot of cruelty involved there. But also before long it was a mark of ownership, it was burnet into the hides of cattle, horses and other animals too. Brand new comes from idea that something is stright from the fire, so still very hot and entirely new. So that deals with that sense there. But in terms of advertising brands, that's quite interesting, as well. Because in the early 19th century, the manufacturers of some goods started burn their names on to casks and wood and metal, etc, and those trademarks became known themselvs as brands. Then when companies tried to differentiate themselvs in the marketplace, they started adding logo. The hole idea of a brand came wrapped up in their own identify. Of course, we still use it in that sense today. That's how the modern concept of the brand was born. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 15/08/17 (all over bar the shouting, It aint until the fat lady sing)

Today I'm going to talk about the story behind "all over bar the shouting", which is an expression that mean that some situation isn't yet done, but we pretty much know the outcome. But when the end does come, there's often no shouting at all, so it seems a little bit curious on the face of it. But it turns out there did use to be a lot of shouting many centures ago, because in Englsnd at that time, towns would make a major decisions by all gathering together and having a sort of live referendum. And it was called an acclamation. And the louder they shouted on a particular issue, the stronger their voice would be heard. And so it was considered to be a vote. They were incredibly noisy, by all accounts. And if, before the gathering, the outcome of vote was known of it was obvious, that's when they would say, "It's all oner bar the shouting". In fact, they were known as "shoutings". There's another similar saying that often puzzles people, ehich almost means the opposite, and that's, "It ain't over until the fat lady sings". And trere's been lots and lots theories about this one. Most of them focus on the American baseball coach, Yogi Berra, who was famous for lots of wonderful sayings, like, "It's deja vu all over again". Or my favourite, "When you come to a fork on the road, take it". But he did also say, "It ain't over till it's over", which sort of make sense, and that's why people associate it with him. Other people think it goes back to opera and the final aria from Brunnhilde in Wagner's Ring Cycle, which is about 14 hours long, so you can imagin some people really were hoping for the fat lady to sing. But, in fact, yhe saying goes right back to the American South in the 19th century, and churchgoers there would say, "Chirch ain't over till the choir sings", or similary, outside of chirch, they might say, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings a blues". It's traveled a long way since those beginings in the American South, and it's as popular today as it ever was. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 14/08/17 (words from cartoons: shazam, Jeep, goon, zilch)

I'va talked before about the few words that have passed over into English from cartoons, so they were used in very secific senses in cartoons and then crept into mainstream language. So I thought I'd do a few more today. I've mentioned shazam, which was Captain Marvel's famous magic wors in the Whiz Comics. And Jeep as well. Jeep obviously stands for G-P, general purpose for the vehicles, but was definitely influenced by Eugene the Jeep, and then there's malarkey as well. Usually taken to be an alteration, if you like, of an Irish surname, but also goes back probably to an American cartoonist who used that surename as a byword for nonsense. I don't know if he was anti-Irish or not, but certanly, again, that probably how it ctept into the language. But I was going to concentrate on a couple. One is a goon and it's thought from origilally derive from an old English dialect word, gooney, and that was used by sailors to describe really cumbersome-looking, quite weighty sea birds like albatrosses and pelicans, a bit loke boobies actually. Boobies was very heavy sea birds that were very, very easy to catch and so the boobie prize comes from there. It's just something that was very easy to gain and so not particulary valuable. In the same way, goon came to be used for a dull-looking or a slow-witted person, but the Popeye cartoonist, EC Segar, created the character of Alise the Goon in his cartoon strip and portrayed her as somebody, I think she was a gaintess, she was about eight feet and so, again, that kind of crept into the language as the hired heavy or a thug, somebody who was just very big but not particulary sharp. And finally, possibly my favourite, zilch. We use zilch to mean zero or nothing, but when it was first used, it was a nickname for a useless or hopeless character of non-entity, and that was because of a cartoon strip that appeared in the Ballyhoo American humour magazine in the 1930s, and it featured a hapless buisenessman, who you never actually saw, but he was colled President Henry Zilch, so President Zilch I think could come in useful at some point. But again, that goes back to the cartoon. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 11/08/17 (to vet, vetting)

The word vetting or extreme vetting, even, meaning the detailed investigation in someone's background, has been in the news this year, really, with President Trump suggesting extreme vetting for refugees or other people, other immigrants, into the United States. And so Alan Williams tweeted in to say, "where does the verb to vet come from? Does it have anything to do with amimals?" Andcthe answer is yes. The political verb forges a slightly strange link with those animal doctors. And the word is a 17th-century borrowing, so quite late, but it comes from Latin veterinarius, meaning the cttle doctor, or one who tended beasts of burden. Some people, in fact, think that that may be linked  to our word veteran because oxen could only be used after a certain age where they were strong enough to draw the oxen. More likely, I have to say, veteran comes from the Latin vetus, simply meaning old, like senex, which also meant old man and gave us senile, senate and senior, etc. But back to vet. Veterinarian was clipped to, indeed, to vet, and that became a verb as well. And originaly, to vet somebody or something was to submit them to a medical examinationand it was using unsurprasingly of rece horses, originally. There's a quote in the Oxford English Dictionary from the late 1800th - "Beau is shaking on his forelegs. I shall have him vetted before the races". So all of that make sense. But within a few years, the word was being applied to any kind of examination, and during World War II in then entered the national security lexicon, meaning to investigate the truttworthiness, really, of any individual, and it stayed there ever since and, as I say, has become very, very topical this year. But, yeah, it does all go back, very simple, to the vets, that tender animals still today.  

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 10/08/17 (emojis)

Well, I'm going to talk about something that I don't think I've ever known you to use, but that I know Rachel uses a lot. And that's emojis. I don't think I've ever seen an emoji in a messege... Well, love them or hate them, they look to be around to stay and they are the fastest-moving language in the world at the moment. So back in 2015, Oxford University Press - whose dictionary we use, obviously - sreated a bit of social media storm when they made an emoji their word of the year. It was the face crying with laughter. Some people love it, some people hate it. But it is a valid language - if you want to look at it in terms of a pictorial language, you could take it all the way back to hieroglyphs, etc, so you could see it as a natural extension of something that we have been doing since antiquity. But they're pictograms, anyway, used in electronic communications. Digitals icons, if you like, used to express an emotion or an idea. The ethymology is quite simple, but may possibly surprise some of us, because most of us would know it's a borrowing from Japanese. It sounds Japanese, but the origin has nothing to do with emotion, as the emo might suggest. In fact, it's compaund of E, which in Japanese means a picture, and moji, which simply means a letter or a character. In other words, an emoji is a word or words created by picture. And sounds possibly nicer than pictograph, which means pretty much exactly the same thing. And so the similarity to emoticon, which is whet we convey an emotion through keyboard charecters, rather than actual images, in entirely coincidental. That one is emotion and icon, so that's a simple method of blending. But it can cross language barriers, obviously, which is probably it is groeing at the pace that it is. So I think you need to embrace them, Nick, because they're the sign of the future. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 09/08/17 (luncheon, rarebit)

I'm going to talk today about words that have changed for no other reasone in English other than through snobbery. And I'm going to start with lunch and luncheon, because, like most people, including myself, you'd probably think that lunch was a shortening of the word luncheon. But, in fact, lunch, we've pretty sure, came first. And it first referred to a hunk or a thick slice of food, such as bread or cheese. And the evidence suggests that lunch evolved from lump, just as hump and hunch and bump and bunch are very closely connected. Luncheon then became a posher alternative, if you like. So people extended it, thinking it sounded a little bit better. Lunch almost completely disappeared, and then when it popped up again, people just assumed it was a shortening of luncheon. But there is another one which is one of my favourites, and that's Welsh rarebit. Now, I was always brought up to say Welch rarebit rather than rabbit and that rarebit was the correct version. In fact, it wasn't. It was always Welsh rabbit. And in a 17th and 18th century, Welsh was used, very unfairly, as a slightly patronising epithet for anything of inferior quality or inferior grade. So, to use a Welsh comb, for example, was to comb your hair with your fingers, rather than with a comb. Welsh rabbit became the nickname for a dish that you resorted to when no meat was available, so they called it the rabbit that the Welsh eat - in other words, they couldn't afford meat, they woud simply have cheese on toast. But over time, Welsh rabbit sounded perhaps a little bit vulgar again, and so people thought rarebit sounded much more refined, and rarebit crept in. Rabbit was the original, the true version, and one that I think we should use today. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/08/17 (to peter out, as in to slowly fail or run out)

Today I am answering an e-mail from Simin Green in Sheffield. He says, "Can you provide the ethymology of the phrase "to peter out, as in to slowly fail or run out"? Who was Peter and why did he falter?" Good question. I should start by saying that the precise origin of petering out is a bit of mystery, but that doesn't mean that we can't have fun trying to find out. We know that the earliest uses are found in 19th-century American slang. Miners used it first of all to describe dwindling reserves of precious ores. And that by itself suggests a link with saltpetre or potassium nitrate, which was a constituent of the explosives that were very often used in mines. But there are other ethymologists who are sort of digging around in the history of our language who believe that the explanation is actually theological. And they point to St Peter and to his legendary weakening of fasith that led to his denial, or in fact denials - three times, before the cock crows - of Peter denying Jesus before the crucifixion, which would possibly make sense, although the evidence doesn't quite fit. But there is a third contender to the claim, if you like, of being the origin of petering out, and this one, to me, make much more sense, and that's namely the French verb peter, which meant to break wind - it still does mean to break wind. Now, that's a term that's also behind the phrase that you'll find in Shakespeare - "hoisted by his own petard". And a petard, the idea of wind, was actually again an explosive. It was a small bomb. It was used for making holes in fortifications. It was used by all military forces in 16th-century Europe and before then. So, it's a small bomb, in other words, which again goes back to that breaking wind idea. And... "peter (fr)", that verb, is also behind partridge, on account of the noise the partridge's wings makes when it takes flight. Apparently, it sounds like breaking wind. But goin back to petering out, the idea of something fizzling, if you like, and slowly dwindling, it does make quite a lot of sense, and I should just say that to fizzle has a breakikg wind at its heart. To fizzle meant to breaking wind quietly. That's the very first definition that you'll find in the Oxford English Dictionary. So, whoever said ethymology was boring? Not me. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 05/09/17 (hippocampus)

I have to thank Janet Irving who tweeted to ask about the origin of the word "hippocampus", in the brain.She says she's always puzzled over that one. So I thought I would talk you through the different terms for parts of our brain, given how essential they are in our lives. I'm going to start with the thalamus which is the inner chamber of the brain, if you like. And that's exactly what it meant in Greek. And if you think about an ophthalmologist, it's got the same "thalam" element to it, and that's a person who look at the inner chamber of your eyes. So that's all related. The cerebellum is the little brain, because it's a part at the back that regulates muscular activity. And the "cer" bit  - the C-E-R - that looks back to the ancient root than mean "horn" or "head", and you'll find that in so many different words in English. It's relates to keratin, which is the substance you'll find in an animal's horns and hooves, it's related to alpenhorn, to cervix, to cork, Cpricorn, rhinoceros, unicorn, triceratops. You name it, it's there in many, many things as well as cerebellum. The cerebral cortex - the cortex originally meant the bark of a tree. It's relates, we think, to cork, the word cork. And then went on to mean the external shell or the husk of something, and the cerebral cortex is the outer, it's the grey matter, if you like, of the brain. The brainstem has the medulla, the pons and the midbrain, and they control the breathing, digestion, the heart rate, etc. And they connect the brain with the spinal cord and other parts of the body. So "medulla" was the Latin for "pith", of "marrow", so it was the inner substance of ehich somethin is made, hence, the white matter of the brain. And the pons, of course, is the bridge.That part of the brainstem resemles a bridge that connects two of the hemispheres in the brain. I've done everything but the hippocampus, which is probably the favourite. It sounds very strange, but it actually implies that you have a seahorse in your head, because the word comes from the Greek hippo campus, wich the hippo is a horse, of couse, the hippopotamus is the river horse, if you translate that from the Greek, and a campus meant "sea monster". It was the name of the crature ridden by the god Poseidon and it was later applied to the marine animal we now know as the seahorse and, of cause, the hippocampus brain structure got its namebecause it simply looks like a seahorse. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 06/09/17 (Short shrift)

I had a few e-mails in asking me for the origin of "short shrift". It's quiet hard to say. What is a shrift?  If you give someone short shrift, you don't really pay much attention to them. In fact, you are quite curt to them, usually. It gose back a very, very long way, to at least the late 16th century and William Shakespeare, unsurprisingly, who seem to have coined ir in his play Richard III. And shrift was based on a verb "to shrive" but that ultimately goes all the way back to the Latin verb scribere which meant to write.  That given us scripture, script, scribe, etc. But shrive originally had a very specific, religious meaning of to hear the confession of a penitent. So it was to prescribe penance to somebody - presumably in writing, which is a link - and to grant absolution. So, over the the years, the noun srift has ment to confession, the sentence of penance, and the absolution itself. And. of course, we keep that word for Shrove Tuesday. Shrove is the past tense of shrive, and that's the day before Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar, which is traditionaly time of confession and absolution. But by Shakespeare's time, it has settled a little bit to mean the opportunity to confess and to be absolved of sin, but specifically before punishment, which was usually a death sentence. So, in Richard III, Lord Hastings, who's about to be beheaded on the King's orders, says, "Make a short shrift, he longs to see your head". In other words, the King is impatient for his execution. So very, very grisly. He was the first, Shakespeare, who use "short shrift" in than sense. Then flew below the radar, actuallly, for a very, very long time, only to re-emerge later with a slightly different meaning, and it's the one that we know today, a bit less grisly, which is a brief and superficial consideration, as I say, and maybe with a stroke of impatience involved there too, just as the King's inpatience for the beheading of a subject. But all traces of penance now have gone, except in Shrove Tuesday, and it says there still.