"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 12/02/18 (acronyms: quango, pog, laser, sim card, care package, pelican crossing)

Just a few acronyms for you today. Such a boring word, acronym. It's got acro in there, which is the Greek for height. You find it in lots of words - acropolis, acrobat, etc. But an acronym is a word that is formed from the initial letters of other words. And although it is a boring term, it has produced lots of nice words in English. Not all of them are obviously acronyms. I am going to start with quango. We don't often takl nicely about quangos - administrative bodies connected to the government outside the civil service, usually used in associoation with red tape and administrative boringness, really. But it sounds like it ought to be a tropical fruit drink. It sounds quite nice, but it's not. It's, in fact, a Quasy-Autonomous-Non-Governmental-Organosation. So, boring is as boring does, I suppose. Pog - did any of you used to play with Pogs? I think they were sort of... Yeah, around '80s, '90s... Little cardboard discs. I'm not sure anyone knew the rule for the game of Pogs. But this one does come from a tropical fruit drink, in fact - a Hawaiian fruit drink - the lids of which provided the first discs that were used. And Pog is an acronym for Passopn fruit, Orange, Guava, in case anyone was wondering. Laser, perhaps... people know this one. It's a good illustration of why we use acronyms, because they are such a mouthful when yo uspell them all out. Laser - you might imagin a James Bond film... You'd never imagine a James Bond saying Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. That's what laser is. Sim card - you might probably guess that a sim is an acronym, but maybe not for Subscriber Identification Module. It's all about the user's network details. Care package - this is perhaps the most surprising of all the acronyms that I've come across anyway. Widespread use, especially in military. Care packages sent to soldiers at war, but also students at university you might send a care package to. But the "care" originally stood for the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, which sent out aid in the afretmath of World War II. Finally, the pelican crossing - you can't get more British than the pelican crossing. That's actually a respelling of an acronym - PEdestrian LIghts CONtrolled crossing. Again, pretty boring on its own but once you make it into an animal, it sounds so much better. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 09/02/18 (word from places: cantaluope melon, mayonnaise, denim, jeans, jersey, lesbian, balaclava, cardigan, raglan)

I want to talk a little bit about words that came over into English from places. Because it's chock-a- block with words that originated in one praticular place, and they've slipped into the mainstream so much that the place name that they stem from is noe pretty much unrecognisable. Sometimes we just don't know that it comes from a place. A cantaloupe melon, for example, comes from Cantalupo, a place in Italy, whose name actually means "singing wolf", which makes this cantaloupe melon a little bit more sinister. Mayonnaise - the French captured the island of Menorca during the Seven Years' War, and the victory was apparently celebrated with a huge amount of feasting, together with a very special condimentthat was native to that particular place. The capital of Menorca is Port Mahon and the "aise" in mayonnaise means native to. Which is where we get mayonnaise today. Most people probably know that denim was originally serge de Nimes, it was a fabric from Nimes, in France. The serge eventualyy got dropped off and de Nines became denim. Similarly jeans were named after their place of origin, which was Genoa in Italy. A jersey - we wear jerseys all the time. Knitted pullovers that were native to Jersey, in the English Channel, originally worn by fishermen. Kept them very warm in the winter. Lesbian comes from the Greek island of Lesbos, the home of the great Greek poetess Sappho. She was the leader of a religious community that was dedicated to Aphrodite, goddess of love - who dave us aphrodisiac - and her surviving lyric poemsexpress often intense affection for the girls who were members of this community. Balaclava - close-fitting woolen hood or hat, covering the ears and neck - originally worn by soldiers in the Crimean War. And Balaclava was a small port in southern Crimea, in the Ukraine. And in 1854, it was yhe scene of that very famous battle involving the Charge of the Light Brigade. And curiously, two people involved in that war as well also gave their names to the items of clothing. So, from places to people. The Earl of Cardigan, who led the charge, gave us the cardigan, obviously. He was said to wear that knitted type of buttoned sweater to keep himself warm. And possibly less well-known, the first Baron Raglan gave his name to hot only a type of coat, an overcoat, but also the raglan sleeve. And what he wore was quite peculiar, in a way. At least, it ws different from the fashion of the time, because the sleeves continued in one piece up to the neck, so it produced a larger and looser armhole that people weren't used to. But it suted this particular Baron Raglan. And that was because his right arm has been amputated after the Battle of Waterloo, because he'd had it so severely injured. So, the raglan sleeve goes all the way back to a one-armed general. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/02/18 (friend, definite, free, fiend, frenemy)

I was talking recently about how tricky English is in terms of its sprlling. And there are sometimes tips to help you remember. So, definite, if you remember two Is because it's linked to finire, the Latin, meaning to finish. So definite is linked to finish, and that way you might remember the two Is. And one way to remember friend, which is another really commonly misspelled word, is to think about fiend, the I-E, because, believe it or not, friend and fiend derive from pretty much the same root and they have grown in parallel courses, if you like, over the course of English. So although, they developed independently from two different Germanic words, they were once very much seen as paired opposites, and alliteratively paired opposites as well, if you like. So to take friend first, that entered old English as freond. And that from a Germanic verb brought by all the Germanic invading tribes, which was freon, meaning to love. And believe it or not, freon is also behind free. Free, once meaning belived or dear. And we think it's because members of a household united by blood or by kinship were seen as not only were they dear to each other, but they as free, as opposite to the slaves that they hired to wait upon them. And over time that meaning changed. Free and friend and to love. So friends in those days meant exactly the same as it does today. So a person other than a lover or a relative who you hold in affection. Fiend goes back to another Germanic word and that was feond. So it wasn't freond, it was feond. So just the R was missing. Meaning to hate. And it was used very much in the form of an enemy. So a feond was somebody who was your arch-rival, if you like. In time it came not to mean your personal arch-rival but a rival to humankind itself, in fact to the very devil, and it is from that idea that fiend took on the idea of Satsn incarnate, if you like. Or to anybody who had evil intent. Foe took the place, if you like, of fiend in that sense. It was friend or foe, rather than friend or fiend, but those were the two exact opposites in the olden days. Eventually fiend was applied to somebody a little bit devilish, if you like, or had some sort of uncommon craving, like a fiend for chocolate, for example. If you don't know whether somebody is your friend or fiend, then you can call them frenemy. Frenemy being a modern blend of friend and enemy. But that idea of two polar opposites has been around for a while. In Samuel Johnson's dictionary talks about a backfriend. A backfriend is pretty much the same as a frenemy. So he called it "a friend backwards, that is, an enemy in secret". 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 07/02/18 (lemure)

We've been talking recently about spirits and demons from folklore and myth and most of the words - ogres, imps, devils themselves, you would expect to be on the list, but I don'r think you would put this word on the list of spooky things and that is the animal, the lemur. Because lemur actually means "spirit of the dead" in Latin and there's quite a story behind it. They were given their name by Carl Linnaeus and he was the founder of the names of many of our animals. And he was clearly familiar with mythology and the works of Roman poets like Virgil and Ovid. In Roman tradition, lemures, rhymes with "please", were believed to be the ghosts of all those who have not been afforded proper burial rites or had died leaving unfinished business behind them. And ultimately, there were ghosts of lots of people from sailors who had been lost at sea, from suicides, who weren't then granted a proper burial, to murder victims, criminals who had been executed in some grisly way, so lot og unquiet souls who were said to haunt the streets of Rome looking for peace and looking for solace. It's the same sort of ideology, I suppose, that's behind the idea of ghosts today. The idea is that they would rise at night and, as I say, walk along the srteets haunting their former homes neighbourhoods. It's quite a sort of spooky idea. But from there, if you skip forward a few millennia, the Swedish naturalist  I mentioned, Carl Linnaeus, entered a record of the creature that he called the lemur in his Systema Nature - that was his book, as I say, in which he created a lot of the names from Latin for the animals that we know today. Why did he do it? It seems a bit of weird chioce, but he says, "I call them lemures because they go around mainly by nights in the certain way similar to humans and roam with a slow pace". So despite all their cuteness, he obviously saw something quite spooky, perhaps their expressive eyes, their nocturnal habits, sort of humanlike expression that they take on as if they're lost souls, that made him go all the way back to mythology to choose his word. I love that, sort of ancient Rome's creepiest ghosts really haunting the streets of Rome have inspired the lemurs that we know today.  

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 05/02/18 (tarantella, hell, Lucifer, devil, blues)

This is going to pick up very briefly on something Suzannah was talking about earlier, this dancing, this impulse to dance. And that is behind quite a lot of words in English, or at least three words that I can think of. Tarantism was a disease that was thought to be exactly that, the psychological impulse to dance, and it was prevalent in Italy, perticularly during the 15th and 17th centuries. It was thought to be cos by the bite of a tarantula. And the taranrula and tarantism, behind those words are Taranto in Italy where it was first diagnosted, if you like. And the dance, if you still dance today, is known as the tarantella, so it still sort of lives on, that mad, frenzied impulse to dance, which is pretty helliesh. And I was going to talk today mostly about words to do with hell, so diabolical words, if you like. And hell has been around sinse Old English times as a word, as a name for the abode of the dead. And it comes from the Old English verb helan, which meant to hide or to conceal, so it was somewhere hidden away where you would least like to go. Other English relatives actually might surprise you - helmet, hull, hall, and hole and hollow are all related to that word hell. Lucifer is another interesting one because Lucifer seems a bit of a contradiction in terms. Lucifer obviously the name for the devil, and yet it means light-bearing, so it seems a bit of strange name for the Prince of Darkness - the exact opposite. The word is from lux - light - and then fere in Latin - to carry - so someones who carries the light. It was also applied to the morning star that heralds the dawn. But the reason it was applied to the devil is that it was applied to the name of the angel before his fall, so it was Satan before his fall. Christ talked about, "I beheld Satan as a lightning fall from heaven", so that idea of the light disappearing, which is why it was applied to Satan. So it depicted his former respectability in heaven, if you like, before the fall. Devil itself, and diabolical, goes all the way back to the Greek diaballein, which meant to throw across. In other words, to slander but also to thwart, so to thwart good with evil, which means that the devil and diabolical, those two words are linked to other strange mates, if you like, in English - metabolism, ballistics, hyperbole, symbol, and perhaps more appropriately parable and problem. And finally the blue devils. The blue devils were the demons that were said to affect people with deep, deep melancholy, a bid belief again in the 17th century that they would haunt the mind of somebody who was prone to feeling sad and blue. Blue devils eventually shortened to the blues, which is why we talk about having the blues today, and that in turn in the 20th century was applied to the music called the blues, the melancholy music.  

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 02/02/18 (silent letters: debt, doubt, salmon, solemn, ghost, gnat)

Today I have more silent letters. Yesterday I was talked about the Ks that we used to have, the hard Ks in English, whuch we took from all Germanic invaders that had come to Britain around the fifth century. So we had knots and knitting and knees and knechts and knight and things. So today we're going to talk about some other silent letters. And I'll start with B, the silent B that we get in things like debt or doubt. Those goes back to 16th-century scholars, and I mentioned recently how there was a big drive around this time to make English more classical, to make it more refined, a little bit more like Latin and Greek, and not just more refined, but more predictable as well, so, easier to learn, because Latin and Greek are sort of quite smooth in terms of their endings and their plurals, etc. And probably a little bit of showing off as well, amongst all these scholars. So they decided that doubt, which had previously been spelt D-O-W-T or D-O-U-T, deserved B because the Latin for doubt is "dubitum". Same for debt, it was "debitum". So they put the B in there, but they didn't suggest we change our pronunciation, they just liked the B for the spelling, because it looked more Latinate. Likewise, salmon got L, it goes back to the Latin "salmo", and solemn got an N, it didn't have one before, the Latin was "solemnis". And so, that accounts for a lot of the silent letters that we have in English. But some of them, the words were serendipity, really, or accidental, or even hiccups. The H in ghost, for example,  we owe entirely to William Caxton, who standartised a lot of our spelling in English and was huge influential. He did very, very good things. But he learned his trade in Flanders, and in Bruges, and when he came over to England to set up his printing press, he didn't ehought typesetters, so he brought some over from Flanders, where he had been working. They were Flemish, the Flemish for ghost is "gheest", with an H, so they stuck one in because it looked more familiar to them. And we've been left with the result ever since. And finally the G in gnat - nothing to do with Latin, nothing to do with Germanic. That is an Old English word, and the G would have been pronounced when it was first used in the days of King Arthur. So, it would have been a g-nat, which I eould love to bring back. So, with all this confusion going on, I thought we should give ourselves a big pat on the back for knowing how to spell anything at all. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/02/18 (silent letters: knight, knot, knife, knitting, answer)

I have some silent letters for you, cos for the last few days I've been talking about how tricky English is, such an irregular language. Silent letters are some of the things that puzzle people so much, because we have no idea why they are there. Some of languages are entirely phonetic, or certanly more phonrtic than other. Lots of words in Ehglish are phonetic, they sounds as they are written, but there are so many others that aren't. The reason fo this, again, is that English has absorbed so many words from different cultures. Quite often we have absorbed letters which we then don't pronounce because it's too difficelt to get round our native tongue. So if you take the word know, to have knoledge with its silent K. That's just one example. You've got knight and knee and knives and knit and knock. You have a silent G in gnat and gnome. B in subtle, numb. L in salmon, N in solemn. A W in answer, and so it goes on and on and on. So I thought I'd take some of these examples and explain why they're there in the first place. English is predominantly Germanic language, so around the 5th century, the Jutes came over the Jutland, that's part of northen Germany and Denmark now. They settled in Kent. The Saxons came over from Saxony in Germany. They settled south of the Thames. The Angles came over from what is now Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, and they settled in northen and central England. So you had all these Germanic tribes coming in and the result is an awful lot of silent letters that we took from German, but they weren't always silent. To take knight, the German word for a boy or a knave was knecht. For a while, when that was twisted around our tongue and became knight, we pronounced it as k'night as well. Likewise, we took a k'nife. We ate with a k'nife before we had "nives". We went on to our k'nees to pray. The Anglo-Saxon talked about k'nitting, which turned out to be knitting in the end. K'not in ropes or strings, that gave us knitting and knots. So that explains that. The W in answer, likewise, is Germanic. The easy way of remembering that is that it's very much linked to swear with the W in that as well, which we do pronounce. So ot cimes from answarian, which we took from German. To answer originally was to respond to an accusation in court. So if you remember that legal sense of swearing and answering to rebut an accusation, you remember that W. But over the next two days, I'll take some more silent letters and explain why they are there and possibly why we don't pronounce them any more as well. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 31/01/18 (plurals: goose, moose, ignoramus)

I have more strange plurals. I talked about octopuses, octopi, octopodes, yesterday and how difficult it is to grasp plurals in English and how often you need to be careful. Ignoramus, for example, the plural is never going to be ignorami. Because it never started off as a noun in Latin. It was used by grand juries who couldn't convict a felon and ignoramus or ignor-amus means "we do not know" cos they didn't have sufficient evidence so the plural is always ignoramuses there. Why are plurals so strange? I mentioned this yesterday. English is Germanic but than it had huge influences that came over with the Normans. It had a thing for Latin and Greek. It eavesdropped on practically every land that it encountered in its seafaring exploits. It is essentially just a hotchpotch of various influences, various words from different cultures. So it's unsurprising that a language with all of that going on is very, very irregular and a bit of topsy-turvy. It's the same with plurals. I'm going to talk about goose and moose because lots of people will say, "If the plural of goose is geese, why do we not talk about meese?" It's a good question. I'll start with goose. That goes back over a thousand years to the Anglo-Saxon word gos. For them the plural of goose was not geese, but it was ges. So they gave us the beginings of that change of the O to the E. We have pretty much stuck with that today. But moose is a far more recent addition to the language. It is about 400 years old and it was adapted from Algonquin, which is a group of North American native languages. It gave us toboggan, moccasin and quite a few other words as well. So it gave no sense to give moose an old English plural, why would you? So meese has never really made any sense at all. By the time it arrived in our language, we did stick an S onto our words so you would think it might be mooses but in fact for animals, we have always preserved, game animals particularly, we've always preserved that singular plural. Not quite sure why but we have deer, we have elk and so it was with moose, The plural of moose is moose. As for meese, it never really got a look-in because the Anglo-Saxons had no hand in it whatsoever. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 30/01/18 (irregularities: octopuses, octopi or octopodes)

I thought I'd talk a little bit in the next few shows about irregularities of English, becauseeven native speakers know just how thorny and tricky English spelling is - pronunciation, plurals, there are just so many things for us to learn, and I always pity children, except in many ways, that's what makes English what it is, because it is the result of this vast melting pot of different influences that have to bear over the course of various centuries. And one thing, one plural that often comes up, believe it or not, is that of octopus. What is the correct plural of octopus? And in many ways, this small story illustrates just how difficult English is to learn. So, what do you call more than one eight-legged cephalopod? Is it octopuses, or is it octopi? Well, it first showed up in English in the mid-1700s, and it was gives the standard English plural E-S, because that's what we used to do with nouns. So far, so good. Except there was a movement afoot at the time who wanted to bring English into line with classical languages, because they were thought to be not just refined and sophisticated, but also more predictible, and smoother in many ways. So, grammarians at the time took a whole group of English words and gave them Latin endings. It made sense. So, aquariums bacame aquaria and syllabuses became syllabi, criterion, which is Greek, became criteria, etc. And many of them we still keep today. And this is what happened with octopuses as well, they gave it the Latin ending, octopi. So, that sort of makes sense. Except there is only one problem, because yes, it did come to English via Latin, but ultimately, it goes back to Ancient Greek, and when the smarter grammarians worke this out, they gave it the correct Greek plural, which is octopodes, believe it or not, so it's P-O-D-E-S at the end. So the picture became even more difficult. But eventualy, the tide of resistance became too strong, most English speakers accepted that, you know, if it's going to be English, we're going to put the E-S ending on, and that's what they did. So, most people today will say octopuses, rather that octopi or octopodes. But you do have a choice. If you consult Oxford Dictionaries, it will tell you that on a formal occasions you can get away with the Latin ending, but no-one going into guitar shop, as I did once, and asking for a couple of plectra, instead of plectrums, and practically being laughed out of the shop, would do that, I think. Just stick to the English endings - I think pedands will say no, it's got to be Latin. Fine in formal contexts, but otherwise, the English is absolutely fine. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 29/01/18 (boxing, sport metaphors: pugilism, cadaver, Real McCoy)

Well, out for the count, not pulling any punches, below the belt, on the ropes, in your corner, saved by the bell - English has possibly more metaphors from the sport of boxing than almost any other, including football. Perhaps it's because it's captured the public imagination for many, many centuries, so they are carvings from ancient civilisations and they are alresdy wearing their tight wrist-straps to protect their bones. It was known to the Romans as pujilato. it was incredibly popular. That's what we get "pugilism" from, of course, and it was really impoltaint patr of gladiatorial sport. It was verey, very bloodthirsty, and the boxers would wear leather knuckle-dusters knowing as caestus, and they were really horrible. They were decided to shred the face and limbs of the opponent, and that word shared the ancient root with "cadaver", and did ultimately, usually the result in the death of one and huge adultation of the winner. We get not just all those expressions, but also some idioms as well, so the Real McCoy was certanly popularised by Kid McCoy, who was a very popular Anerican boxer. He was so much inpressionated, he went under the epithet the Real McCoy, cos that was really him. And as happy as Larry, again, he probably wasn't the originator, but Larry Foley was a very, very succesful boxer himself, and retired very early, so he too was happy. But the sport of wrestling is just as old, and its name come from Old English, but again, its ars goes back thousands and thousands of years and, again, you can find carvings representing the sport ever back then. Again, it's given us lots of expressions. They have lost their moorings somewhat, but no holds barred is one of them, and that refers to a no-holds-barred contest, quite obvious when you think about it, in which the usual rules are complitely lost or left behind, and competitors are permitted to use any means they can to throw their opponent, topple him or her, and keep their shoulders pinned to the floor. Before there were any regulations, wrestling was indeed a freeform affair, so you didn't even need to say no holds barred. But cage fighting, hardcore wrestling, they still have no holds barred, and the Hulk Hogan slogan was, of course, "No ring, no ref, no rules". Thst's pretty much what it is. But, yes, so many words come over from boxing. 

 - Why it called boxing?

 - It's a really good question, and it's a bit of a mystery. No-one knows. It probably comes from Old English, and maybe the idea of the clenched fist forming a box shape, but that's as far as we go. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 26/01/18 (to look at: took a butcher's at, a quick gander in something, a shifty)

We had a nice e-mail from Alec Dodd from the butifully named Derbyshire town of Ambergate, and he said, "Whot are the origins of phrases meaning "to look at", especially "took a butcher's at" "a quick gander in something", "a shufty", et cetera?" And it's a nice question so I was going to have a quick wiz around verbs and expressions meaning "to have a look". We have lots of them in English. As well as ones Alec mentioned, we have a squiz, a look-see, a double-O, a Bo-Peep, et cetera. But I/ll start with gander. This goes back to the late 1800s, and it sounds like a rhyming slang, but it is not. The image is simply of the resemblance between an inquisitive person and a goose stretching out its neck to take a look at something. It's the same idea as craning our necks - the idea again goes back to the bird, the crane. Butcher's is a bit of nice rhyming slang - having a butcher's, butcher's hook - look. In Australia and New Zealand, where rhyming slang is even more popular that it is here, going butchers means something very different. That's rhyming slang for being angry, being crook, so butcher's hook - crook. Shufty began in the British military and was brought back from military encounters abroad. It's from the Arabic "shufti", simply, "Have you seen?" And in the same way, having a dekko was harvested by the British Army during the governance of Indi, and its from the Hindu, again meaning simply "to look". So they're just words that we borrowed from other continents. But while we're looking at verbs and expressions meaning "to look', I thought I'd just give you a couple of idioms. One is to keep your eyes peeled, which always used to make me shiver when I was little. That a pretty obvious, really - it's just to take the covers off your eyesand really have a good look for something,  but "peel" actually goes back to "pill" and "pillage" - it was the Vikings word meaning "to plunder". And then the idea of stripping something came along a little bit later. And finally, "to look a gift horse in its mouth", the idea  is that if you were given a horse by a king or a royal, as a present or as a gift, never, ever look at its mouth because if you look in the teeth, you'll be able to see how old it is - that would be considered incredibly rude because horse's teeth change shape, bacame a little bit protruding as they get older - they leterally get longer in the tooth, which is where that comes from as well. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 25/01/18 (gambling: jackpot, to be above board, blue-chip stocks, gimmic)

I'm going to talk a little bit about gambling today and how it has influenced English and English idioms. Many of them we probably realise originated at the gambling tables so to be above board, keep your hands above board you'd avoid tricking or decieving your opponent. We talk about blue-chip stocks or companies - that goes back to blue chips on the gambling table that were the highest value in these particular games and then of course it was transferred over to a financial sector. Or you could pass the buck which was another one. A buck was a sort of deerskin counter often that was used in gambling. Gimmic as well. I remember talking to Paul Zennon about this one. A gimmic was originally a mechanical device by which a gambling apparatus like a roulette wheel was secretly manipulated so it was all to do with trickery again at the card table. We are going to talk about origin of jackpot because I'm often asked about that one and that popped up around the 1870s and it was from the pocker game called Jack or Better.  It is much loke the  traditional five-card draw, except in this case if the opening player doesn't have a pair of jacks or better in the first round he or she has to pass. Doesn't necessarily mean they have to be holding a pair of jacks, as long as the card they're holding will beat a pair of tens, then they can have a go. And so it goes on, once the opening player has placed a bet in the opening round, the rest of participants are free to declare whatever they want, but again they have to have a lacks or better in order to win and if noboby wins, the ante - the stake, we talk about upping the ante - goes up and so it goes on until this pot of money gets bigger and bigger and because the game was played in jacks or better, it bacame known as the jackpot very simply. And then it became associated with big cash prizes, coin slot machines and today, if we hit a jackpot, we find real happiness in life or we have a very big succes of some kind. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 24/01/18 (being in one's element)

I had a tweet from Chloe Wrtight, who asked of the background of being in one's element, if you're in one's element. And to answer this, you need to look back to the very elements that were once believed to be the make-up of all human beings. The primary elements being earth, fire, air and water. And, as regular viewers will know, every human being was classified according to their humorous disposition, the humorous here have nothing to do with comedy or wit, and everything to do with bodily fluids and the balance with which they existed in the body. But if you tke those bodily humours, they were always thought to have one corresponding element, whether it was, as I say, air, fire, water or earth, and every human being was thought to have a particular affinity to one of those and they weren't always obvious, either. So a salamander, for example, was thought to exist in fire, so quite curious medieval beliefs, there. But to go back to those corresponding elements, somebody who was inrtospective, quite creative but prone to melancholy... Melancholy, as you know, meant black bile, because a melancholy person was thought to have too much of it. These people were supposed to be ruled by the cold and dry element of earth. The wiry, often red haired for some reason, ambitious and choleric person was dominated by fire, they were hot and dry. And the sluggish, slightly phlegmatic, and perhaps slightly tubby person, was sain to be influenced by water. Whereas someone who was sanguine, red-cheeked, optimistic, they enjoyed all the healthful benefits of air. Obviously there were quite sort of neat categories that they thought people existed in, but it wasn't always the case. Clearly not all of us are red haired or optimistic all of the time, so they were a little bit too neat, and the truth was that... We all need in order to keep a happily existence, to have these elements and  thase humours in good balance. But it was quite interesting, because the phlegmatic person, someone who was full of phlegm, it was thought, and stiocally calm, as a result, was advised not to eat fish, because they would make the water element go overboard, if you'll excuse the pun,  so that easn't a good thing. And someone affected by melancholy was told to avoid eating vegetables because then the pull of the Earth would become too strong, so it really informed so much, not just beliefs as to personality, but also medicine, dietary habits, all that kind of thing. Add all of the characters in the writings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries reflect this view of the world, and references to being in your element date all the way back to the 16th century and beyond, so it was a really core part of understanding the world ant the universe, was to be in one's element, and that was crucial for happy life. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 23/01/18 (walnut and Wales, Cornwall, meat, dear)

I'm going to swerve to Jonathan Wilbur, who e-mailed in to say, "I seem to remember that the country called Walesis somehow linked to a nut. Am I dreaming?"And the answer is no, Jonathan, you're not dreaming. There is a very strange link between the two. The nut in question is a walnut., and I'll start with that, because the WAL part of the is came from an  old English word that meant foreign. In other words, the walnut was the foreign nut, and it was called in order to distinguish it from the native hazelnut. It was introduced from Gaul and Italy, and so it was seen as beign slightly exotic, and in fact the Roman name for it was nux gallicia, the Gaulish nut. And when you think how variety footstuffs in Anglo Saxon times was a lot narrower than it is today, it make sense that it was probably just ine foreign nut at the time. And you can see the same process goin on in the word meat, because meat once meant al food, not just a flesh of an animal. Vegetables in those days, for example, were sometimes known as green meat. And it make sense, once you know that it meant all food, a lot of expressions in English like, "It's meat and drink to me". "One man's meat it is another man's poison". And the morning was called before meat, and the afternoon sometimes was called after meat, so it was used in that general sense, and similary, a deer was any wild animal at all before it became more restricted in meaning. A dear actually comes back to an ancient word  meaning a creature that breathes, which is obviously behind animals as well. Anima - it has a spirit and breath. But back to walnuts. The first element, as I say, meaning foreign is also behind the country name Wales, and it was known as such because it wasn't Anglo Saxon, and so the Welsh were seen as foreigners. And you also find that same root in Carnwall. Cornwall and the Cornish were literally the foreigners who lived on the long horn or the corn of headland, and in surenames Walsh and Wallace. All originally seen as foreign to the Anglo Saxons. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 22/01/18 ( superlatives: cool, playing a blinder, lollapolooza, cut the mustard, peachy, a corker, rip snorter)

I have a tweet in from John Ashworth, who asked for the origin of "playing a blinder". And it's actually quite simple when you think about it. Something that's good, or perhaps, you know, a difficult piece of play in sporting match where you really have overcome the odds. To play something that is dazzlingly good, and the dazzling is what it's all about, because that's why it is blinding. So, it's as simple as that. But it got me thinking about other superlatives, because English is awash, thankfully, with lots of superlatives. We tend to stick to the tried and tested, but there are many that we can use. We like, in slang, to flip bad for good, so "bad" itself means "good" - "sick", "wicked", etc. But we've lost some of the wonderful terms that we used to have. So, "lollapolooza", which you'll still find in dictionary, is a term from the US from the early 1900s for something outstanding, that's "lollapoloosa", it's simply a flanciful formation, but I like it. Or it may be so hot, it's "mustard", and "mustard" was another slang term in the US for something outstanding, and that's where we get "cut the mustard" from. Mustard being it's so hot, it's really, really good, and cutting in that sense is the same is, "she cuts a fine figure". So although it seems strange, "cutting the mustard", it's actually quite simple when you analyse it. The outstanding thing may be "peachy", that's simply play on words on something sweet or juicy. Or in the olden days, it could also be a carbuncle, something that was great was a carbuncle. And that's very strange to us today, because we associate carbuncles with something entirely negative. But it originally described a large precious stone of blazing, fierly red colour, and it was a mythical gem, it was believed to give out the light in the dark. And the lesions of the skin that we associate with carbuncles today are so-called simply because they are flamming red, they are very inflamed. More obviously wonderful superlatives are "a corker" - something so fizzy, it pops - and a "rip snorter" - originally a dashing, riotous fellow. And you had a "screamer" too - a "screamer" was actually also once a term for an exclamation mark, believe it or not. But perhaps the most enduring term of approval of all, which has lasted for such a long time and can be used by any generation, is "cool". Ans that may well go all the way back to the late 1800s and have started off in British public schools, but it really was propelled into the mainstream in the jazz era of the '30s and '40s by Charlie Parker and his ilk. So, the lexicon of superlavives goes on and on and on, and let's keep selebrating them, because there are so many out of there we could use. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 19/01/18 (police terms: rozzer, peeler, bobby, copper, Scotland Yard)

I have to thank Omar Nour. He e-mailed in to ask about the origin of the term rozzer for a policeman and various other terms for the police, cos they have attracted many epithets over the years,  not all of them, obviously, very pleasant ones. But I'll start with rozzer. It's a bit of a mystery. If you look up in most dictionaries, it eill say, "ethymology unknown". But the most plausible suggestion is that it's the... A take, if you like, on the name of Sir Robert Peel, who of course was Home Secretary when the new Metropolitan Police Act was passed in 1828. Sir Robert Peel was the person who gave us both peeler, as an old term of policeman, and also bobby, a riff on Robbert. A Bow Street runner was a precursor to the modern police officer, and this is a reference to Bow Street in Covent Garden, in London, in which the most famous police magistrates' court was situated. And it's got a really lovely history, because the second magistrate to take a residence there was non other than novelist and the playwright Henry Fielding. And he was appointed, as I say, as magistrate for the City of Westminster, and this was at the time when gin consumption in London was at its absolute height, and Fielding reported that every foorth house in Covent Garden was a gin shop. And as a result of too much gin, there was just a lot of drunkeness about, a lot of lewd, debauched riotous behaviour, and something needed to be done. So Fielding brought together eight relaible constables, he brought together these people, and they were known as Mr. Fielding's people, and then eventually they became Bow Street runners. But I have ro mentioned a copper, as well. That comes from the slang verb cop, which itself is a variant of cap, and all goes all the way back to the Roman times and the word capere, means to seize or take. It's the same root as capture. So a copper is simple somebody who seize a criminal and then take them off to prison, and that's the same copper that you'll find in "it's a fair cop". And finally I'll just mentioned a Scotland Yard, where the name of that comes from. The pople who organised the new police force after Sir Robert Peel introduced his act were Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne. They occupied the place at 4 Whitehall Place, and the back of that opened up onto a courtyard called the Great Scotland Yard, so-called because there was once a medieval palace there which housed Scottish riyalty on their visits to London. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 18/01/18 (taboo, tattoo)

I often talk about how English hoovers up words and expressions from almost every tongue it encounters, and it has done since its very beginning. It's estimated 60% of the words we use come from Greek or Latin. Only 10% of those directly, the others have com via French or other Romance languages, particularly. Germanic accounts for about 25%, if not more. French, when you take into account those Latin words, at least 25%, possibly even as much as 40%. So much of our language made up of words that we take from other people. But we don't often talk about words from Tongan. And Tongan is a language spoken in Tonga, in the south Pacific, and it's given us two words that we use very, very often. They were both brought to us by Captain Cook. I'll begin with taboo. Taboo cames over from the Polynesian islands. It was introduced, as I say, into English by Captain James Cook in 1777. And he wrote these wonderful narratives of his voyages. And he wrote, "not one of them", talking about the people he had met on his travels, "Not one of them would sit down or eat a bit og anything, it was all taboo". And he goes on to explain that the word was generally used to mean "forbidden". The other one is tattoo, the tattoo on the skin. Again. that came into English from the Pacific Islands and was first recorded onboard HMS Endeavour. But Cook wasn't the first one to use it, because it has been found in the diaries of the naturalist and explorer Josef Banks, who also wrote a very, very detailed journals about their trip. And he recorded, "I shall now mentioned the way they mark themselves indelibly. Each of them is so markes by their humour or disposition"/ In other words, their art was a reflection of their personality, just as we have tattoos today. Cook themself recorded the same word a little bit later. "Both sexes paint their bodies. "Tataw" - spelld with a W at the end -  as it is called in their language. This is done by inlying the colour of black under their skins". As for its meaning, it comes from Tongan word from to write, very simply. Not the same as military tattoo, I'll just explain that onevery briefly. That's the drum or the bugle call to recall a soldiers to their quarters in the evening. That comes from Dutch - "doe den tap toe", which is literally meant " close the tap". And it was an instruction to close the tap on the cask full of rum or beer or whatever the alcohol was at the time, because drinking time was over and it was time to go back to the quarters. So, very different tattoo, but the tattoo on our skin and taboo both go back to Tongan.