"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.