"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 27/10/17 (cliffhanger, end up on the cutting-room floor, being in the can, silver screen

I've been browsing through the Oxford Dictionary's blog, which I recommended quite often, just a free site with lots of lovely facts and stories about the English language. And thix one remind me of all the words that have passed into English from movies and movie-making, film-making. Since its inception in the early 20th century, lota and lots of worda have travelled into English. Cliffhanger - that of course came from shots of people literally hanging onto a cliff by their fingertips, becamr a famous film with Sylvester Stallone as well. Something might end up on the cutting-room floor, we might just say that, that obviously refers back to parts of the film that were literally cut out from the reel and discarded onto the floor. We talk about things being in the can, reffering to the canister in which a film reel is held once editing is complete. But there's one that took me by surprise and I didn't know this one, and I love it. We talk about the silver screen - that goes back to people first visiting the pictures, as they well called, and movie screens were coated with reflective metallic paint, so it resulted in a really highly reflective silver surface to better display the projected images, so from the screen projector. And, obviously, as technologies moved on, then that died out. So there you go, just the smattering of words that have passed into English from the cinema. But I like silver screen, I didn't realise it was literally silver to being with. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 26/10/17 (handsome)

I had an e-mail from Moira. Didn't want to give her last name. But Moira is a keen viewer of Coundown, so thanks for writing in. And she wanted to know what the "hand" is doing in "handsome". It's a good question. Again, it's one of those words that you don't usually question. And the earliest evidence for it is surprisingly early - it's 1440. And it's an English-to-Latin bilingual dictionary for kids. And it says, "Handsum, of esy to hond werke"- hand work - "manualis". That was the Latin translation. And essentially, they were saying that something handsome was easy to control or... or handleable, if you like. So, how do you go from something that's easy to handle to striking? Well, it's a kind of... process that happens a lot in English, really. If you thing about something that's easy to use, as I say, a sort of malleable in some way, that it makes life a lot easier. It's sutable for a particular job, it makes life agreeable and pleasant. And handsome slipped into English really to mean well proportioned and elegant arount the 16th century. So things could be particularly handsome because they looked nice as well as being sutable for a particular job. And of course these things nice and thn people could start to look nice, too, and it was Spenser, Edmund Spenser, who was one of the first to use it in his famous Faerie Queene. And then Shakespeare, who loved his Spenser, use it in Richard III in one of his big rants. He talks about "a handsome stripling". So, it's a long, long journey that handsome has taken through the ages. But "hand" is still preserved there, really, if you think about sort of manual work and how that was its original meaning. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 25/10/17 (going for a Burton)

Well, I mentioned yesterday, talking about aviation slang and the words and expressions that have come from the skies, so we talk about "going for a Burton" or "gone for a Burton", which is one of the phrases that attracts most debate, probably, in ethymological circles. Lots and lots of theories abound for this one. What we do know is that it definetily does go back to the RAF, which was a home for a lot of slang, actually, in current English. It means, if you've gone for a Burton in the RAF, it means you have been killed, sadly. So, ruined or destroyed. But of course, we use it slightly more figuratively now, to mean, it's just... it's broken. So you might say, "My laptop has gone for a Burton". But what is the Burton and where did the phrase begin? Well, two main theories. I have to say, there are many, many more, but two main ones which hold most water... which is slightly inappropriate pun for the skies. But they both demonstrate tha black humour, really, that is needed to deal with the fact that during the World Wars, aviators did die, obviously, in some of the horrible dogfights that took place up there. The first involves the English town of Burton-upon-Trent, which is known for its brewing industry. And a Burton came to refer to a type of delicious ale. And when an aviator crashed into the sea, which is known, of course, as "the drink", informally, the idea was that the person was aabsent because they'd gone for a pint of beer. So it was a nice, friendly, slightly affectionate euphemism for an aviator that had died in action. The second one involves a very famous family of tailors called Montague Barton. Burton's, of course, you can still find, I think, in high streets today. But if an airman went for a Burton, he'd died and gone to be fitted for a wooden suit. That was the idea. So, again, a lot of black humour there, that he'd got a wooden overcoat, if you like, ie a coffin because he'd died, again, in action. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 24/10/17 (leading edge, pushing the envelope, flat spin)

I've been talking recently about words that began their life at sea. So, many, many words in English have nautical origins behind them. So, I thought I would look at aviation today. So, words and expressions that were born in the skies. We're going to is start with "leading edge". We talking about something that is leading edge, it's at the vanguard of development, it's right there at the forefront. It was, to be fair, first found on the seas as well, but when it came into aviation terminology, it meant the foremost edge of an aerofoil, especially a wing or again a propeller blade. There's another one which again you might think of as management speak and that's "pushing the envelope". Slightly annoying, pushing the envelope, but it means to extend the boundaries of what's possible, thinking outside the box, if you like. That goes back to 1940s, where in aviation parlance, an envelope or flight envelope, the definition is a set of limiting combinations of speed and altitude or speed and range possible for a particular aircraft of aircraft engine. And so, to push that envelope is to test it beyond its limits, almost, which of course is an important thing when you researching an aeronautical capabilities. Finally, we talk about being in a "flat spin", often, these days, if we're really agitated or slightly panicked about something. Probably, you can guess this one. It does go back to a serious situation for the pilot which may well lead to a sense of panic, and that's the aircraft descending whilist staying almost horizontal. Not a very nice experience at all. That goes back to 1917. So, all of those began in the skies. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 23/10/17 (cut and run, copper bottom, up sticks)

I've been looking at words and expressions that began at sea, so I'm going to have three expressions, very quickly, for you today that began at sea. The first is to "cut and run". If you cut and run, you make a swift exit, usually from a tricky situation. In the age of sail, however, it meant something very different and much more literal, because a captain's options were very limited if an enemy ship came up to it and it was at anchor. Obviously, he didn't have very much time to move, so if the situation was very, very urgent and staying put would lead to a loss of life, then the captain might deside it was safer and more prudent in fact just to cut the anchor cable and to leg it, living to fight another day, and that's exactly what cutting and run meant. It was the literal cutting of the anchor cable. So that's cut and run. Copper bottom, we talk about giving a "copper-bottomed assurance", a "copper-bottomed guarantee", which is cast-iron, if you like, to use another expression. And those two goes back not to sturdy saucepans, but to sea, and the use a copper to cover the bottom of wooden ships, and it was done specifically to protect ships from a really pesky mollusc that was called the teredo, or, in fact, is called the teredo, and it drills into wood. Copper also prevented shells and weeds accumulating on the bottom, which also hampered a boat's progress. But then it slipped into mainstream language, meaning something that was secure and sound because it had that copper bottom. And finally, to "up sticks", this was a bit of a surprise to me, that too goes back to a ship where the sticks in fact are either masts or the portion of a mast. A mast can often be unshipped, ie, removed from their regular or a fixed position when the ship's at anchor, but when you want to prepare the ship to set off, again, the mast, or masts, the sticks, in other words, must be upped. In other words they must be set up, and once that happens, the ship is ready to sail away. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 20/10/17 (swinging the lead, marine)

I don't suppose anyone's ever accused you of swinging the lead. I think probably not. But if they had, they would've been accusing you of being a sriker basically, a lazy malingerer, and the British idiom, definitely British, it's first founded in the Army slang, so during the First World War, but it probably came onshore via the vital Naval activity which is depth sounding, so measuring the depth of water in which a ship stands or floats, if you like. So masuring between the ship and the seabed or river bottom. And these were in the days before sonar transformed the entire exercise. Soa lead was a very large lump of lead that was suspended from a rope and that was known in full as a lead line, and it was lobbed from the side by the leadsman and it came to reat on the seabed. And it had markers, knots, or different sort of measurements, if you like, so that the leadsmen could gauge just how far the ship was from the sea bottom and it would ensure, of course, that the vessel didn't run aground, which was incredibly important. That lead was incredibly heavy, so it could weight anything from 9 lb to 32 lb. So particularly in rough weather, if you can imagine, that was a pretty demanding task. So that all seems a bit puzzling. Why then did such a difficult task come to mean something that involved, you know, somebody being lazy, basically. Well, it's probably because in some cases, the leadsman, instead of dropping the weight right to the seabed, would shrink his duty and just swing it over the side and then sort of happily sit there, if you like, without giving the exact measurement. But more likely the meaning stemmed from the rivalries, traditional rivalry between the Army and the Navy, because when I had to research my book, and I spoke with sailors and soldiers, they had such joking acronyms for ewach other and the ones that the Army insists on for any marine is that "marine" itself is an acronym for Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Expected. So, swinging the lead, yes, something you,ve never, never done, but it's a really good expression, I think, for somebody, who's just really bunking off and not pulling their weight. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 19/10/17 (brass monkey)

Anyone investigating the origins of words will quite often refer to a certain body that operates under the acronym CANOE. And CANOE stands for Committee to Ascribe a Nautical Origin to Everything. That's because so many words in English are said to have begun their lives on the high seas and, as you can probably tell, not all of them are true. But one of the most hotly disputed stories of all involves the saying brass monkeys. If you talk about brass monkeys weather, it's incredibly cold and in full, the expression is to freeze the balls of brass monkey. It's said to come frome triangles that supported large kind of pyramid-style stacks of iron candles that were held on sailing ships - military sailing ships. But the plot does thicken a little bit, because we do know a naval cannon itself was known as a monkey and the boys that loaded the cannons, the cannons on naval ships were called powder monkeys. So a nautical origin is just about possible, but where it gets confusing  is that the cannonballs came along after a whole line of other sayings involving brass monkey. Most of them involve extremes of hot or cold weather. So you would have, "It's hot enough to singe the hair off a brass monkey", "hot enough to burn the ears off a brass monkey", you could also talk the legs, not off the donkey, but off of  brass monkey. You might not have the brains of a brass monkey, or you could touch the heart of a brass monkey if you did something very, very kind. There's a whole line of expressions involving this brass figure. Which means in the end, with all those bodily references, that the balls in question are simply testicles with an added punning referense to those monkeys that I mentioned, which were the cannons on naval ship. So the sea does come into itsomewhere, but it's a very, very thick plot that you have to really kind of get into to find out the thruth. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 18/10/17 (spitting image)

I had an e-mail from Jen Dalton, so thanks to Jen, she asked where spitting image comes from because she's often told that she's the spitting image of her sister. It's evolved through various incarnation over the centuries so it's pretty old, this one, but they all convey the idea of an exact likeness to someone or something else. First emerged in the early 1800s, because people would describe a child particularly as the spit of their mother or father. In other words, they looked so identical it's almost as though they've been spat directly out of their parents' mouth. A very direct image, if you like, a little bit crude, maybe. And a little later, this idea of spit was combined with image, that's just for added emphasis. So there was a Victorian romance, for example, which goes, "She's just like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit and image she is". And that same phrase, spit and image, if you said it very quickly, it sounds a little bit like spitten image and spitten was the old past tense of spit. So today we say spat, but in the olden days it was spitten. And that in turn was then misheard as spitting, so it's basically sort of trips of the ear, if you like, we hear something and then we register that in writing and that's, of course, where the expression remains today. But it was literally as though somebody has been spat out of somebody else's mouth,  and I hope that answers Jen's question. Spitting image was ones spitten image. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 17/10/17 (Cedric, Fiona, Jessica, Kim, Pamela, Vanessa)

I'm going to look to first names that have come from literature cos very often we know about words that were coined by various authora and dramatists. Shakespeare, we know, was a prolific coiner or at least populariser of new words but we're less, perhaps, familial with the first names, the baby names, if you like, that come from our authors. So this is... I have to credit the Oxford Dictionaries Blog, which I love. Free site you can just go and browse. Wonderful origins like this. The first one is Cedric. Not so much used nowdays, but Sir Walter Scott invented that for a character in Ivanhoe, his 1820 novel, and he apparently based it on Cedric, and he was an Anglo-Saxon king form the sixth century, so he had to look a very long way back. Fiona was invented by the Scottish poet, James Macleod. It's thought to be an English version, if you like, of the Gaelis worf meaning white or fair haired. That's quite nice. Jessica. We have to thank Shakespeare for the popularity of this one. He calls Shylock's daughter in The Merchant of Venice Jessica, possibly modelled after Iscah in the Bible, which means to behold, which is quite nice as well. Kim. This male name, and it was a male name at the time, was popularised by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, of course, Kim. And he took this as a shortening of his character's name which was Kimball. Kimberly has a completely different origin - that comes from a palace name in Norfolk. But we have Rudyard Kipling to thank for man being called Kim. Pamela was from Philip Sidney. He invented that for a 16th-century work - Arcadia. And finally, I like this one, cos it's very romantic - Vanessa. It's a poetic invention. It'a very clever as well because it was penned by Jonathan Swift who wrote an autobiographical poem, Cadenus and Vanessa, and it was about his relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh and he created the name, so it was slightly coded by taking the Van of her last name and combining with Essa, a pet form of Esther. So he was a very first person to coin the word Vanessa, which I think is quite lovely. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 16/10/17 (pedant, naughty, nice)

You know, how much I love reading dictionaries. And the reason is that the most of the words in everyday English have been in and sometimes out of circulation for centuries, and if you read something like the Oxford English Dictionary, a historical dictionary, you can see the story of a word right from its birth to its current meaning, and so many of them have been around for centuries. But there have been some very startling twists along the way. So a "pedant", in the 16th century, that was a schoolmaster, simply. But do you remember those ads for cream cake in the '80s, '90s and the slogan was "Naughty but nice"? It was a line that was writing bu Salman Rushdie, who used to be a copywriter. Well, those two words, "noughty" and "nice", have undergone a really long journey. So if you go back to the 14th century, "naughty" had a very, vety different meaning, and it draws on that word "nought". In other words, it was someboby who had nothing, they were paupers, they were just impoverished in every way. And that idea of being a pauper turned to somebody who was morally bad and wicked, in other words, they were poor in virtue. They had no good qualities at all. So you can see that that one's brcome much more diluted over time and now "noughty" 's a lottle bit mischievous, if yuo're describing a child. And "nice" is another really odd one. Goes back to the Latin "nescius", meaning ignorant. And it was "ne-", meaning not, the negative, and "scius" there is linked to science, it was all about knowledge, so it was somebody who had no knowledge. And as a result they were foolish of silly. So a very different maening of "nice" to today. It then encompassed so many different qualities like cowardice or laziness, etc. But eventually, in the Middle Ages, it took on shyness and reserve. That meand somebody who did not neccessarily know a lot - still going back to that root - but were somehow quite shy and reserved with it. And those were seen to be very, very nice qualities - "nice" - and it's how we ended up with "nice" today. Although, it may gone full circle, because if you call someone "nice" of a pair of throusers "nice" those days, it doesn't always meanthat it's particularly gushing compliment. But those are just a few of the examples of thing that have just come such a long way. And who knows, they may still evolve over the next 100 or 200 years. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 13/10/17 (calumny, chalenge, gladiator, gladioli, knife)

Today we have trolling and online abuse. But if you goes back to the Middle Ages, if you heaped calumny on head of a man by exposing him to slander or false accusations, which was calumny means, he would probably in all likelihood challenge you to a duel. And in that collection of words that we've just spoken there, you can see directly how one word can actually spawn another, which is obviously how English evolves. Because the term calumny actually gave birth to the word challenge. They both goes back to the same, calumnia, the Latin root, simply because slander and lies so often led to a deadly duel. Duel, incidentally, goes back to duellum, which was a fancy form of Latin, bellum, meaning war. So it's linked to being belligerent and bellicose. But two opponents in an argument, in a duel, might also take to the sword, and if they decided to formalise it, maybe with a little bit belligerence, to fencing. And we actually take a few words from fencing as well, including foible. A fouble is a weak point of a sword. The strong point is the forte. But we get that directly from fencing. But lots of other words in English from sword. Gladiator, because the Romans' word for sword was gladius. And the wild lilies that are the gladioli as well, because of their sword-shaped leaves. And finally the Saxons were warriours with knives because the old Norse, sax, meant a short sword or a dagger. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 12/10/17 (falcone, tercel, lore)

I went to a National Trust house quite recently, and they had a falconry display, and it remind me again of all the terms that we have in English that came from this sport that was so popular in medieval times. Particularly after the Normans came over, and the Normans aristocracy broughn falconry with them. Knowledge of its vocabulary was seen as a real mark of the elite, if you like. It was a real badge of a social status. So much so, in fact, that one person described it as, "distinguishing a gentleman from a yeoman, and a yeoman from a villein". The villeins beign the servants that were attached to a villa, originally. But I just thought I'd give you  a quick whizz through some of the terms that comes from there. First of all, falcone itself goes back to the Latin for a sickle, because the sharpeness of the blade was said to be similar to the bird's hooked talons, if you like. The peregrine and peregrine falcon, that's from the Latin for piligrim, because they were often tracked on migration, as they were travelling, rather than in the nest. The male bird is called the tercel, and it goes back to the Latin tertius, meaning a third, either because the male is the third smaller then the female or, according to the legend,  the third egg in the clatch was said to produce a male bird. But perhaps the most surprising term of all from falcony rerers to a bunch of feathers with a bit of meat attached to a long string which was swund around the head of the falconer in order to recall the hawk. That's known as the lure. As I say, desined to attract the falcon so that it always returns. And a Norman nobleman would have called it "a lure". And of course that's where we get the idea of something that's powerfully appealing of mysteriously attrective today, the "allure' that has spilled into English mainstream. It goes all the wat back to falconry. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 11/10/17(argy-bargy, hoity-toity)

I had an e-mail from Geoffrey Davies who asked, "Where does the term agry-bagry comes from? I get a bargy bit, but why argy?" And it's a good question. And it's an example of what linguists call, and I've mentioned it on the show before, a reduplicative compound. It's a combination of words that echo each other, that rhyme in some way. And often one of this word has very little inherent sense, and it is simply added on to provide a bit of a sound effect, if you like. English is asolutely full of concoctitions like this. Higgledy-piggledy. Shilly-shally. Helter-skelter. Hugger-mugger. Roly-poly. Hioty-toity. Hoity-toity is a good one, becuse to hoit was an old verb for indulgigng in riotous mirth. It's a great definitionin the dictionary, which I quite like. But back to argy-bargy... It's actually the argy element, that carries the sense of the word, not the bargy, as Geoffrey thought. It's a variation on argle, which was a Scottish dialect form of argue, and has been around since the 16th century. And to argle-bargle became a sort of joking reference, really, to bandying words in a very stubborn, obstinate argument over something. And the bargle was there simply to add a rhyming element, but perhaps that element of pushing and shoving and barging somebody around, whether literally or metaphorically, but it all goes back to argy-bargy, which I almost like better then argy-bargy. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 10/10/17 (lieutenant, could, pease)

I have to thank Kevin Loughran, I think is how he pronunces his name. He e-mailed in to say, "Is that any reason, historical or otherwise, why we pronounced lieutenant with an F sound?" It's some of the big riddles of English. It's true. In the normal British pronunciation, of course, we do say "leff-tenant"whereas in America they say "lou-tenant", which seems much more plausible. WE're not completely sure where the British pronunciation came in but our most plausible guess, really, is that at some point before the 19th century, when it began to change, the U at the end of the Old French, lieu, was read and pronounced as a V. This may have been done simply because it was easier to pronounce because lieu doesn't exactly trip off the English tongue. But it may also have been done in error. Vere often these errors happen by association. There was another word around at the same time and that was lief, and that was used as a term of address, particularly towards a superior. So it may be that somehow in the heads of English speakers the lief got mixed up with the lieu and the "leff" crept in to the lieutenant. So I hope that answers Kevin's question. As I say we can't be completely sure, but that's our best guess. I talked about mistakes in English etymology, which that may have been an example of. There are quite a few, in fact. The could in the past tense of can, that never had an L originally. That just crept because shall ans will kept their Ls in the past tense so we shoved one in could, as well. Similarly, pease, we used to have pease pudding. We thoughtif you have a lot of pease, you must be able to have one pea. So we kind of invented our own singularity in that case. So many, many examples in English where we've got someone slighlty wrong in the past and we're left with a result. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 09/10/17 (shizzle, bling, pulling out all the stops)

I was talked on Friday about words that we have borrowed from the theatre and from the arts. And I'm continuing that theme today. I'm going to talk about music and literature. Music, particularly recently, has given us lots of terms. So, shizzle and bling, which has gone into the dictionary quite recently. But an older one is "pulling out all the stops". And Richard Lloyd e-mailed in to ask where that one came from. And it's a good one, it goes back to the construction of the olf pipe organs. And these instruments had stops, or knobs, really, to control the airflow that went through them. And if you wanted to increase the volume, you would pull the knobs right out. So as simple as that, but one, certanly, that came from music. But words from literature are numerous. So many first names, in fact, were born in literature, and I'll come to that another day. But Lewis Carroll was a brilliant neologiser. So he couned lots and lots of wonderful words, including chortle, which I love. That's a blend of chuckle and snort. And galumph, which actually was a blend of gallop and triumph. Today, we use it slightly differently, to mean to trudge. But he loved the word galumphing about. Namby-pamby goes back to a spat, a literary spat, a couple centuries ago, when Ambrose Philips was a writer of a really sentimental verse, and not many people liked it, so they called him namby-pamby. That was his nickname. Pandemonium was Milton, of course. Yahoo was Gulliver's Travels. And nerd was first mentioned in Dr. Seuss. So, so many words that we have taken fron the literature, all of them kind of slipped into the mainsrteam and lost... mostly lost traces of their very beginnings. But we owe books an awful lot. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 06/10/17 (grafting, muggy, melt, background, barnstormer, hypocrisy, to be explosed)

I don't know, you are a keen watcher of Love Island, Nick? No? Well, it was very succesful. It was succesful not just in TV terms but also in bringing a few new terms into English, or new senses of words. "Grafting" is paying a compliment to somebody, usually with an ulterior motive. There was "muggy", taking someone for a fool. And "melt", if you were just a little bit soppy or idiotic. So those are words that came from there and it got me thinking, not that I was an avid viewer myself, but it got me thinking about words that have come from the arts, because there are so many in English that come over from theatre, music, et cetera. So I thought I would start with theatre. Some of our most everyday words began on the stage. Background, for example. Background was very firmly rooted in the theatre. It simply related to the back part of the stage. Barnstormer. You tend to think of that with American politics these days but these were 19th-century itinerant actors and performers who would travel around the American countryside and put on shows in big barns or open spaces. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy simply meant acting. So the first hypocrites were people who literally were on stage and over time it came to mean to feign emotions, again with an ulterior motive. But my favourite, of course, has to be explosed. The first explosions were on a stage. Explode is very, very much linked with applaud, because to explode somebody in Romans days was to jeer or slowly handclap an actor off the stage. So it was to clap them off, "ex" and "plaudere", to clap. So if you hadn't put in a good performance you would literally be exploded out of the theatre and you may never act again. But the first explosions, as I say, began on stage. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 05/10/17(being fed up, brassed off)

Very often in English, we tend to focus on the colourful expressions so the words and phreses that really seems quite puzzling immediately and those seem to be the fun ones to delve into. But sometimes simplest, most everyday words, they kind of repay you if you look into them a little bit and I was just sitting in the car in a traffic jam the other day and I was wondering about being fed up. Why do we talk about being fed up with something? And it's similar to other expression in the RAF - that began in the RAF as indeed this one did as well - which is browned off, brassed off, cheesed off. Those all begun as an Army slang around the Second World War. But the expression actually goes back to the 18th century if you look all the way back to its beginnings and it was a metaphor. It was when the languid, lazy aristocracy were compared to farm animals that were force-fed to make them plump for market. It was in an English newspaper, the Middlesex Courier, and it recount a court case and it was argued that the Duke of Bourbone couldn't have hanged himself because he was unable either to stand on a chair or tie a knot. And the lawer said, "Everything is done for these princes. They neve learn to do anything. They are fed up, as it were, in a stall to exist and not to act. It is rare to find a princes who can walk decently across a room". Yes, it's all to do with leterally being fed up, particularly if you were a farm animal. But I mentioned a brassed off earlier and its beginnings in the RAF and that goes back probably to the idea of simply being ticked off by the top brass, so by a senior officer. So, no surprise there, but also in the Navy, it was connected to the really menian jod of polishing the brass work on board a ship and it happened to be done with a product called Brasso, so it's probably those two things combined that led to being brassed off entering the English language in a general sense. But, yeah, if you feeling fed up and brassed off, then you have my symphaties but at least you're not a farm animal. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 04/10/17(ultracrepidarian)

Well, as you know, I am all for bringing back obsolete words that seem to have particular resonance in modern times and I think we could do with them. And one of them I was reminded of quite recently, that always proves quite popular, is ultracrepidarian, which is a very odd word really and a bit of mouthful. But it's perfect for somebody who's a bit of shotclog and a shotclog is a person in the pub who you only put up with because they're buying the next round and more often than not if they're the pub bore, they'll be spouting forth on a subject about which they known absolutely nothing. And that is your ultracrepidarian. It's an uniformed know-it-all. It could be a politician. There are so many uses for this, I have to say. But the word has a very classical pedigree and once you unpack it, it all makes sense.  It goes back to a story and a comment, really, from a 4th-century Greek painter and he was called Apelles, and a shoemaker comes to look at his paintings and the pointed out that the pair of sandals that were depicted on the painting by actually incorrectly presented. The painter Apelles has not got painted these sandals particularly right. And then, because he was pretty much emboldened by his new-found art criticism, he went on to comment on the entire painting, and pointed out little flaws here and there. To which Apelles replied, "Sutor ne ultra crepidam", which means, "Shoemaker, do not go beyond the sole". In other words, don't talk about things. Talk about what are you know about, but don't talk about anything that ypu really have no knowledge whatsoever. So an ultracrepidarian literally means beyond the sole, which I think is a lovely story. Yeah, I like ultracrepidarian. As I say, it's very useful for our times. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 03/10/17 (astonished, thunder, Thursday, to steal someone's thunder)

Well, going look back to "thunderous" words and expressions. So words that go back to the idea of thunder, which is, of course, a very dramatic metaphor, so it's not surprising it's so productive in English. Where we're astonished, for example, we are literally "thunderstruck", cos the word "astonished" comes from the Latin "ex", meaning "out", and "tonare", which is "to thunder". And when "astonished" was first used, many centuries ago, it described someone who was stunned, as if by a blow, almost in a trance, and it could be a good thing as well as a bad one. And in the Swedish - I've always loved this - the word for thunder, fogive my accent, is "tordon", and that literally means "Thor's din", because he's making such a noise in the sky. And Thursday, of course, is literally "Thor's day", dedicated to the Viking god. But I'll end with one of my favourite origins, and regular viewers will probably remember this one. "To steal someone's thunder" goes back to a very unsuccesful playwright called John Dennis who, in 1704, put on a play, had a very short run, it was his own play that he'd written. And he was still good enough to go and see the performance, if you like, that replaced him, and that was Macbeth. He saw a production company. He sat in the audience and then he saw that the thunder-making machine that he himself had invented for his own play, which was, a sort of, metal dish, or a wooden dish, with metal bolls rolling around, had been pinched by this company and was been used by them. Allegedly, he stood up in the audience and said, "Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they still my thunder". So really literal origin for "stealing someone's thunder", which I love. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 02/10/17(full stop)

Thanks yo Ian Dunn, who e-mailed me in to say, "Where does the term full stop come from?" in our punctuation. And modern punctuation owes, it turns out, a lot to someone called Aristophanes, and he was a librarian from the 3rd century BC, and he grew more and more frustrated with the difficulties of reading unbroken text in the hundreds of thouthand of scrolls that were housed at his library in Alexandria. And it was he, thanks to this frustration, who introduced the notion for marking texts for rhythm and sense, and his breakthrough was to suggest that readers could annotate the documents and just break up this unbroken stream of text with dots of ink, and they would be at the middle, the top or the bottom of each line. And they were correspondent to pauses of increasing lenght, that would be inserted between formal parts of speech, so, the comma, the colon and the periodos, as they called it. It wasn't quite punctuation as we know it, but Aristophanus definitely set us ot the way to where we are today. As it turns out, the Romans scrapped all of this, but of courc=se, eventually puncruation prevailed, much more sophisticated symbols came about. And Aristophanes' dot survives in the full stop, and the full stop was originally used to mean the end of a speech, and Shakespeare was uset it in that way in THe Merchant of Venice and other plays. But it made absolute sense for that full stop name to be taken to mark the end of the sentence, a complete break in meaning, if you like, and there it has stayed to  this day. But it all goes back to that librarian, Aristophanes, which I find quite fascinating.