"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 08/03/18 (the whole nine yards)

I have a big ethymological mystery. It's a phrase or expression, that's attracted more conjecture, possibly, than almost any other - apart from "cloud nine" - any other idiom that I can find. And that's "the whole nine yards". So many theories abound for this one. I thought I would whizz through a few of them, and then maybe point to one that could be the best explanation of it, although we're still not completely sure. One is that the whole nine yardswas a rubbush required to fill a whole dustbin lorry, or that it was the standard amount of cloth needed.  Now, cloth certainly was made originally in multiples of three. So the whole nine yards was said to be a standard measurement, perhaps to make a three-piece suit. So that is sounds quite plausible. The volume or size required for a rich man's grave, which is quite an interesting one. There are some records showing that, if you were wealthy, you might be able to afford nine yards of earth around you, or at least of space around you, which is a little bit morbid. So many. One of the most plausibe ones, actually, is because it came about pretty much in print after World War II, is that, during World War II, the 50-calibre machinegun ammunition belts could be let our exactly nine yards. So it's said that each soldiers would say to each other, "Give them a full nine yards," for the enemy. So that one is definitely close to the top of plausible ones. But, intriguingly, fairly recently, some new evidence has come to light, and that's about some jargon in the space programme in the 1960s. And there was the article "How To Talk Rocket". So it was a glossary of, as I say, jargon that was spoken by astronauts, and its defined the whole nine yards as an item-by-item report on a new project. And the conjecture is that that the report would have been written on folded stacks of perforated printer paper that could be let out the whole nine yards. But who knows? Perhaps it did originated with NASA. Only time will tell. I won't say, "Watch this space", and use a very bad pun. But that could be the origin of it. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 02/03/18 (talk of the devil)

I have a look behind the phrase "talk of the devil, which we bandy aroung these days. Talk of the devil is said when someone arrives at a scene just as they are being spoken of. Nothing sinister about it, as I say, we tend to use it fairly playfully these days. And, yet, if you look back over its history you will see that it wasn't used light-heartedly at all. The full form, ans you are probably familiar with this too, was "speak of the devil and he will appear". And it originated in England. You will find it not just in Old English texts but in Latin texts as well. The firsr record that we have were in around the 1666, which is quite appropriate. The English say, "talk of the devil and he is presently at your elbow", and a book of proverbs from the same time was, "talk of the devil and see his horns". Now, around this time you could still refer to the devil. Shakespeare did it lots, for example. So, in The Comedy Of  Errors you will find, "Marry, he must have a long spoon, that must eat with the devil". But, for the most part, there was an incredibly strong superstitious belief that it was really dangerous to mention the devil by name. And, even the clergy got in on the act too. The Dean of Westminster, 1856, a man called Richard Trench, wrote, "talk of the devil and he is bound to appear containts a very needful warning about curiosity of evil". So lots and lots of warnings there. And it was rather like mentioning God in public. You did everything you could to avoid it, which is why we have so many minced oaths which I often talk about on the programme. Things like gadzooks for God's hooks, the hails of crucifix, Gordon Bennet, cor blimey, Jiminy Cricket for Jesus Christ, etc. We have a lot of those. We also brought in quite a lot of euphenisms for the devil too, so "what the dickens" has nothing to do with Charles Dickens and everything to do with the devil. It goes back to the 16th century, probably the play on a popular surename of the times, Dickens, but it was used as a substitute for the devil. We have The Prince of Darkness, of course. We have the horned one and we have old Nick. And old Nick, there are two theories about this. One is that it goes back to the word "iniquity", and it is a shortening of that, inequity meaning evil. Or, that it comes from the first name of Machiavelli, Niccolo. Machiavelli, of course, wrote The Prince in which he said that some, in order to gain power some unethical methods were just about all right but people exaggerated this claim and saw it as justification for evil. So it's possible that Old Nick comes from that too. Yes, when you say talk of the devil these days, just have a think about how serious it was many, many centuries ago when you did absolutely everything you could, not just to avoid the devil but also his name. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/03/18 (People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones)

I am going to look at the strange story behind a proverb, and that proverb is, "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". In other words, beware of criticing someone if you youself to exactly the same criticism. It makes transparent sense, if you excuse the pun, but there is actually an interesting story behind it. First of all, it started off as something a little bit different. It warned against throwing stones atan enemy whose head was made of glass. That's how in was in Chaucer's day, and then it crossed over to houses, when the use of glass in domestic architecture was really increasing. This is around the 17th century, when it is really came to the fore, when the rich were afforded the luxury of fully glazed houses and windows. The poor still had to make do with no windows at all or wooden shutters, etc. But it was a real indicator of wealth if you could afford glass. Thomas More in his Utopia wrote of a land where windows are made of glass to allow light in an the wind with it. Worth remembering that "window" goes back to "vindauga", which is a very old word, meaning the eye of the wind, which I always think is quite beautiful. Anyway, in Elizabethan England, glass window were still a luxury, so much so if you look at the wills of the time, you'll find  that windows were bequeathed to heirs, cos glass was seen as being so valuable. That gives you a little background to the story, to the proverb, but it doesn't tell you the whole story. The reason why its began to involve glass houses may lie in the exploits of the Duke of Buckingham. He was a favourite and possible lover of James I, and James I call hin Steenie, after St Stephen, who had the face of an angel, so he was very enamoured of him, and when the Scottish-born king acceded to the throne in Britain... in England in 1603, it's said that London was flooded with Scotsmen, and at this time, JAmes I didn't have a very good relationship whith the Scotich nobility. He thought they were always trying to do him down, and he wanted to ingratiate himself with the English nobility. So the Duke of Buckingham, on his behalf, really, mounted a campaign of harassment against all these Scots who'd arriver in the capital city, and that included hiring mobs to go and throw objects at their windows at night, causing a complete havoc. Unsurprisingly, the Scots retaliated and it was completely chaos, but they went to the duke's house, which was known as the Glass House cos it had so many windows, and they did exactly the same thing. They threw stones, anything they coulf find, at the windows and smashed them in the process, and it's said that ehen Buckingham then complaine to the king, His Majesty is said to have uttered the lines, "Steenie, Steenie, those lived in glass houses, should be careful how they fling stones". 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 28/02/18 (literally, enormity, mediocre)

I'm going to talk about words which have almost completely lost their original meaning. So pedants would say, and I use pedant in a neutral sense, possibly, would say that we're using them in the wrong way but English, as we know, moves very quickly. So we can't always have what we want. "Literally" - our floor manager was saying how much he hates the use of literally to mean figuratively, so the complete opposite. Unfortunately, that version is now in the dictionary, much to a lot of people's disgust. not the primary meaning but one that is  used in informal speach. Enormity is another one that we use in a wrong way. I say it wrong in inverted commas. Enormity first meant something that was really wicked or vicious in some way. That's because a norma was a carpenter's square. So anything that was normal confirmed to absolutely perfect angles. It was correct, it was stright and it followed convention, if you like. Enormous then started to mean something that was abnormal and because it was abnormal, as I say, it was wicked and completely wrong. It's only much, much later that it began to mean something that was large in size but enormity has kept that bad meaning. So, strictly speaking, we should talk about enormousness if we are talking about the greatness of size of something. But the one I was going to concentrate on was mediocre. Because, mediocre, if we talk about the quiality of something being mediocre at best, it's never going to be very good. It's become byword for shoddy. But actually simply meant originally something that was of moderate quality. So it was neither all the way p, hor all the way down. It was borrowed from Latin, it came over with the Norman conquerors. It meant at a middle height. The "medi" meant medium and "ocris" meant actually ragged mountain, which means, in fact, that mediocre is linked ethymologically to a whole host of English words. We've got Acacia tree with its sharp thorns. Acerbic acid. Acme, the summit of something. Acne - spots which look perhaps like a little mountains on the skin. Acrobat, acropolis, acronym. Aglet, the tip of a shoelace. But if we were to stay true to the heart with mediocre, we would be using that for something that's OK. It's just your standerd quality - neinter good, nor bad. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 27/02/18 (flower names: anemone, hyacinth, cowslip, foxglove, iris, marigold-calendula, pansy)

I'm going round some flowers today and it was prompted by Charlotte Littlefair from Newcastle upon Tyne. She says she's a keen gardener and she says, "Please, could you shed some lights on the origin of common flower nemes? I once stumbled across the French for dandelion, "pissenlit" and was reminded of the old wives' tale that they make people wet the bed". And it's true, they are diuretics. She says, "Dandelion sounds like "dans le lit", in the bed. Is there a connection?" Um, sadly, not. It comes from "dent de lion", a lion's tooth,because the leaves of the dandeloin a shaped a little bit like a lion's tooth - at least that's what they thought in the Middle Ages. Um, flowers themselves, an antology was originally a bouquet of flowers. I'm going to give you a little bit of anthology of names of flowers, very quickly. Adonis was a Greek youth who was so handsome that even Aphrodite, who was the goddes of love, fell madly in love with him. And he was kiled in a boar hunt. She was so stricken with grief that the gods of the lower world allowed him to come up and share part of the year, each year with her. And from his blood, from Adonis' blood, sprang an anemone which is Greek for wind, which is a very beautiful story. I think I told before the story of Hayacinthus, who was loved by Apollo but killed accidentally by a discus, and from his blood Apollo caused a hyacinth to spring each yaer. So, two beautiful myths that lie buhind two flower names. The other extreme, the cowslip, Old English this time, very unromantic. It means cow slime or dung because the cowslip grows especially well in pastures. Apologies for that one. The foxglove is quite nice one, used for heart disease. But the blossomes look a little like the empty fingers of a glove, and the "fox" might be a refference to folk, fairy folk, because it was believed that these were the gloves of fairies, which is quite sweet. Iris - named after the Greek goddes of the rainbow. Marigold - named after Virgin Mary and the colour gold. And the botanical name of marygold, I should just say, is calendula. That comes from the Roman kalends, the first of the month. So named because like a little calendar, they bloom each month, which is quite pretty. And, finally, pansy, which Charlotte also mentioned in her e-mail, which is very pretty. A poetic mind once fancied that the dainty flowers had a thoughtful, pensive face. It gies back to the French pensee, meaning thought. And Ophelia, of course, famously said, that. She said, "Rosemary for rememberance, pancies for thought". So, beautiful, beautiful stories lies behind so many things in our garden. There are hundreds and hundreds more, but I hope I've satisfied some of Charlotte questions. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 26/02/18 (talking cold turkey)

We had a nice e-mail in from Mike and Liza, or Lee-za, I'm not sure which, but Lewin, so thank you to them. They say, "We are regular whatchers and were wondering the other day where going cold turkey comes from. Why turkey and not, say, broccoli?" The most popular suggestion that you will find  if you go looking for this is that it derives from the combination of goose bumps and what William Burroughs caled the cold burn that drug addicts suffer when they try to give up their habit. It sort of is linked in with the idea that there is a cold, clammy feel to the skin, really, rather like a turkey that's been plucked or even been refrigerated, so, all in all, very, very unpleasant. But there is a problem, slightly, with this theory, and that's because it ignores the fact that cold turkey was around quite for a few decades before this drug addiction sense came in. So if you look to a  cartoon in 1920, you will find someone saying, "Now, tell me on the square - can I get by with this for the wedding? Don't string me tell me cold turkey". And another one goes back earlier still to 1910, when somebody lost 5 000$ cold turkey, and it's use there in the sense of loosing it absolutely outright, so a sort of similar sense, if you like, to the way we use it today. But why turkey, which is Mike and Liza's question? Well, there is one theory attached to this, and it's quite a nice one, that it goes back to much a older idiom, 1800s we're talking now, in North America, and talking turkey. And to talk turkey you might thing is a bit like gobbledegook, as in talking is absolute rubbish, but it's the exact opposite - it means to talk frankly and directly. And there's a tale attached to it which invilves a Native American and a white American who went hunting together and desoded to divide the game. The white man was said to say, "I'll take the turkey and you take the buzzard, or you take the buzzard and I'll take the turkey", so trying to trick the Native American. And the Native American looked at him apparently very sternly and said, "Talk turkey to me", in other words, tell me straight. And that's possible that from that story, whether or not it's actually happened, the idea of talking frankly and plainly then went into talking cold turkey and than the idea that we have with drug addict today, so to follow a course with absolute directness, whatever the consequences. It's a very, very convoluted story but it might just be behind the idea of giving something upand the horrible consequences that come with it. It's worth it in the end, but it's not nice doing it. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 23/02/18 (being in stitches, to stitch someone up)

I havr to thank a Rowena Smith, who sent me a tweet saying, "Stitches normally refer to sewing, so why, when we're in fits of laughter, do we talk about being in stitches?" And it's a really good question. Obviously, stitshes are normally linked to sewing, but that's actually a pretty late development when you look back over the history of the word. So to go right back to the beginning, it's a Germanic origin, like so many words in English, thanks to our Germanic invaders. And its first meaning was a thrust or a stub, which makes sense when you realise that stitch is actually related to the English verb to stick. And so very first sense of stitch for our purposes today is a sudden, sharp pain back in those days caused, probably, by being stubbed or by being thrilled because, of course, the first meaning of thrill as well was to be a pierced. So this sense of stitch, in terms of the stabbing pain, is around 1 000 years old. And several meanings than derived from that idea of pain, if you like, one of which was conversely, if you think about it, a fit of laughter which has you in stitches, and that's because you were laughing so hard that you sides phisically hurt. Shakespeare, unsurprisingly, was one of the first to mention  a stitch brought on by laughing so, in Twelfth Night, Maria invites her fellow conspirators to observe Malvolio, and she says, "If you will laugh youselves into stitches, follow me". The stitch that we have when we run follows again this sense of a sharp pain in the side, so it goes back to that stabbing related to stick. The sewing use that we know today, the sort of loops, if you like, loops of thread, came along in the Middle Ages and, again, there is that idea there of puncturing a piece of cloth, if you like, with a needle and then sewing a piece of fabric that way. Not to have a stitch on follows from that idea of clothing, obviously. And there is one other idiom, if you like, in all of this which is to stitch someone up, to frame them or to betray them in some way. Stitching as in swindling has been around in criminal slang for quite a long time. you can find it in, I think, as far back as Victorian times. But to stich up, we only have a records of it from the 1970s. Lots of theories to this one. We talk about being stitched up like a kipper, which might mean the fish that was cut and gutted and then hung up to dry. Or it may be even refer to the kipper tie, in fact, which was very famous in the 1960s, looked a bit like a kipper. It may be an idea of being a sort of confined as if you've being sewn in to your kipper tie. But it's got a long, long trailing history, but wounding someone and puncturing their skin is at the heart of stitch and every single sense that's come after. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 22/02/18 (time: o'clock, am, pm, noon)

I had a tweet from Janice Scott, who asked why we started telling time in terms of o'clock and when we started doing it. And it's nice question. The original form of the expression, you probably won't be surprised to know, was of the clock and it goes back centuries to at least Chaucer's Day, so you'll find of the clock in the 14th century. Right up until Victorian times, you might still find a formal invintation being issued that eould give a certain time to arrive of the clock. English speakers tried lots and lots of different forms over the years. You might have heard two of clock, two a'clock, three at clock or simply three clock, which I quite like, but our standard form, o'clock, is first recorded in about the 18th century. And the use of 'o to mean of was well known, particularly at that time, and had been around ainse Middle Ages, so you'll find it in things like will-'o-the-wisp, jack-'o-lantern, that kind of thing, so it wasn't a greate push to come up with two o'clock, for example. And like two o'clock, most of the forms have been used with whole numbers only, so you won't find three thirty o'clock, we've never used that. But indication of morning and afternoon was a little bit more complicated, s othe expression was extended further. So it would be six o'clock at night, nine o'clock in the morning, and we still use that sometimes, but of course now we've graduated to am and pm. And am's short from ante meridiem, and pm's short from post meridiem - before and after noon. They were introduced the second half of the 18th century, so again they've been around for quite some time, they've made things a lot easier. But just while we're on time, it's worth just reminding that noon actually comes from the Latin, the Roman nona hora, which meant the ninth hour. Which seems a litte bit confusing, really, but they started counting not from midnight but from the hours of daylight, so nona hora was the ninth hour from daylight. So their noon was around three o'clock in the afternoon. And that nona, meaning ninth, has absolutely no relevance today, but it's just a bit of relic from ancient times, from ancient Roman times, that we still refer to nine when we talk about noon. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 21/02/18 (parsimonious, skinflints)

I have an e-mail from Anne Hunter in County of Durham, who says "parsimonious" is a greate word, but why are parsimonious people sometimes known as "skinflints"? I always think of Scrooge when I think of skinflints. It has slightly Dickensian feel to it, but actually it goes back a little bit earlier than that. I'll start with parsimonious. It is indeed a nice word. That goes back to the Romans, who gave us "parsitas", which meant sparing or thrifty or restrained, and if you look in the historical thesaurus which is nested with the wonderful Oxford English Dictionary, you'ii find lots of brilliant synonyms. So, tight-fisted speak for itself. Husbandly used to be an adjective meaning miserly, because a husband was the male of the houshold, in control of the finances. Scrimpy, and also squeezy, which is quite fun, or a pinchpenny, a skinflint also could be also a pinchpenny. But I'll go back to skinflint, and the idea of skinning a flint or a whittling down a flint stone for starting your fire until it was as thin as skin had, understandably, a lot more resonance in the 17th century than it does today. To skin a flint would be a very difficult task and would only be undertaken by somebody who really didn't want to go to the trouble of trying to find a new flint for their fire to keep warm. But it's been used as a metaphor for extrem miserliness for centuries, so at least the 1600s, when the first dictionaries of criminal slang were collected and published around that time. One of them defines a skinflint as "a gripping, close-feasted fellow". And it was popularised iby many works of drama and fiction. Not by Dickens, actually, but in the 18th century, a Skinflint with a capital S was a name of many stock characters that you'll find in dramas, plays, etc, who showed extreme greed. Lots of other phrases doing the same qualities, actually, and one of them was to skin a flea for its hide and tallow, so quite a similar idea. And in French they talk of "tender sur un oeuf", which is quite fun, which means to shave an egg. So again, it's almost... It's a near-impossible task, but if you were that miserly, it might just be one that you'd do. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 20/02/18 (X for kiss, 0 for hug)

I had an e-mail in from Darren Smith in Kenley and he said, "Can you ask Susie to explain why X replesent a kiss. Has it anything to do with Spanish "equis"? Keep up a good stuff, you be sure of it", says Darren for you, Nick. It is a very good quiestion. Where does these symbols come from? We do sprinkle them absolutely everywhere in our correspondence these days. Unsurprisingly, lots and lots of theories as to where they come from. Not definitive answer but we can make a good guess. There are visual explanations. Some people think that X is a character, looks like two pairs of lips come together, while the 0 which we use to mean a hug looks like an embrace, and X0X0 is like a kiss on the face. Some people try to interpret it in that way. Other people looks to the ear, sort of auditory explanation and think that there is a similarity in the pronunciation between X ans kiss. I haven't heard "equis" before, Darren's theory, which, of course, means the letter X in Spanish but we can add that one to the list of the many suggestions. As I say, no definitive answer, but we can get a good guessand it's mostly to come from a written tradition. When Christianity came along, X was used unsurprisingly to represent a cross. X means Christ, as in Xmas we have today, and because of that it meant faith and fidelity, so that might explain why it was used in the correspondence. It certanly became a signature of choice. In the Middle Ages, when few people could write, documents were signed and sealed indeeed with an X embossed in wax, and you'll find letters between kings and subject, all letters between ordinary peopre sealed with a kiss, and with that literal symbol of the X. The Oxford English Dictionary has the first record of X as a liss from letter in 1763, and it was the British curate and naturalist called Gilbert White, and he wrote a letter which ended, "I am with a many XXXX and many a Pater noster and Ave Maria, Gil White". So the X in his letter could mean kisses but it also could mean blessings, given that he also calls upon some, you know, religious refereces there. But by the time Winston Chulchill was writting a letter to his mother, you know, many years later, we knew what it meant. He said. "Please excuse bad writing as I am in an awful hurry, XXX (many kisses), WSC". Come to the zero, the nought we use for a hug and finally that probably came from a completely non-religious source and the linguist Ben Zimmer, who was wonderful on these things, thinks that it stems from the game of nought and crosses which sounds completely ludicrous until you know that actaully that was ariund since Egyptian times and Roman times as well. It is calles tic-tac-toe in America. Lots and lots of different names all over the world. It was played with pebbles and coins, whatever was available, but it was very much in the popular imagination. That's possibly why X and zero became used together. X meaning a kiss and zero became a hug. So a long explanation. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 19/02/18 (prom)

I'm going to talk about Proms today. Not just the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, but also prom culture seems to have come to British schools. They're very much... At the end of exams now, schools will hold formal dances for pupils. If it's a single-sex school they invite another school along, and it's a big deal and definetely an import from North America, you would think, and it is in some way, but actually prom, if you go back over its history, has crossed the Atlantic and also other seas quite a few times. It's a shortener from "promenade", which is the word of French origin and that was used as early at the 1500s to mean a leisure walk. In later years it was a public space in which such leisure walks took place. About three centures later, so it took a little while, promenade has begun to be used as the shorteningof its own, stanting in for things like a promenade deck on board a ship, where people who were taking a cruise, for example, could go up and take a leasure stroll and take in some sea air. And indeed there was a promenade concert, which was a concert place without seating, and that is where the Prom in the Royal Albert Hall come in, probably the most famous of all promenade concerts. But promenade also had quite strong link with dance, and in ballet it's a slow turn made on one leg. It's got a different meaning in country dance. It's like a formation really of couples moving forward. And in ballroom dancing it's called an open position for promenading, which the partner face in the same direction again, as if they're about to take a walk. But the proms we know today that are creeping into schools, that all goes back to Ivy League universities in the USA, but it's gone all the way around the world and, as I say, it's settled in the Royal Albert Hall, and long may it continue. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 16/02/18 (irony)

There are some words which if, as a linguist or a lexicographer, you are asked for definition, you freeze inside, because some of them are notoriously difficelt to define. An one of the ones that I personally dread is irony. When people ask me about irony or ironic, it's really, really difficult. It goes back to the Greek eiron, which meant to dissemble. Mostly when we talk about irony these days, we're talking about a situational irony. And back in the '96, the singer Alanis Morissette caused a real stir with her song Ironic. I'm sure lots of people remember it. It includes a list of things, so, there's a rain on your wedding day, the good advice that you just didn't take, a free ride when you've already paid, a death-row pardon two minutes later. And to those who took a sort of keen interest in the English language, whether or not you want to call them pedants, they said, "This is rubbish, this isn't irony, these are just sort of unfortunate events. This doesn't fulfil the definition of irony". So, true situational irony, I suppose, would be things like fire station burned down or a police station gets robbed. You post a tweet saying what a waste of time social media is, for example. That sort of situational irony. And so critics would say ironic doesn't, as I say, involve odd or coincidental events, but - and this is a reason why it's so difficult - irony has been used vaguely and fuzzily for about 150 years. So, if you look up in the Oxford English Dictionary, there's a quote from 1906. "The gentlemen who add to their advertisments for coachman or gardeners the ironic phrase, 'no scholar need apply'". You could take that as a bit of verbal irony, a bit of sarcasm, but it's not completely clear. And it's very likely that in the course of time - in fact, probably already in some dictionaries - ironic can be used simply to describe a curious or a surprising event, just as Alanis Morissette used it in her song, because it has been used that way pretty much since the 19th century. And so, as I say, only a matter of time before they go with that way. And whether or not you say that itself, the new dictionary definitions are a classic case of a situational irony. the jury's out, but personally please don't ask me what it means in meantime. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 15/02/18 (favourite words: defenistration, kerfuffle)

Very often a marketing company or even a dictionary publisher will ask the nation for their favourite words. There are regularly polls to see wich words we like best. I don't know what yours is. But I having a guess that it's not going to this one, which is surprisingly near the top very, very often and it's a very curious word. It's defenstration. Very strange. A lot of people seem to love it and it means throwing someone out of the window, so I'm not sure what it tell us about the British psyche. It's an odd word, on the face of it, but its story is even odder. You have to go back to 1609 and the city of Prague when the Emperor of Bohemia granted freedom of religious expression to the Protestants in the city. Eight years later, his very Catholis cousin gained control of Bohemia and he instructed his officials, his people, to stop any construction of new Protestant churches on royal land. Now, as you can imagine, this caused a right kerfuffle. Kerfuffle - another word that regularly comes near the top. The Protestants were incredibly disgruntled about this and in 1618, a gorup of people of Protestant faith tried in court two peoplewho were said to have aided Catholic officials in stopping the construction of teo very specific churches. They were found guilty of violating the earlier decree and their punishment was to be thrown out of the window of Prague Castle. They apparently fell 100 feet but they were unharmed, but politically it had a really siesmic effect because it started the Thirty Years' War, and, as with any news event, it needed an epithet. It needed a nickname really and so defenistration was born and it comes from the Latin "di" meaning out and "fenestra" meaning window. So really quite a grisly beginnings. Thirty Years' War was a pretty horible time, a pretty horrible military campaign if you like. So far a word that people seem to love today, as I say, it didn't have a very nice beginning. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 14/02/18 (St Valentine's Day and love)

I'm realising now that that this may only appeal to 13% of our viewers, given the stats that you were giving about Valentine's Day at the beginning. Just going to talk a little bit about Valentines and love as well. There were two early Italian martyrs whose feasts was celebrated on St. Valentine's Day, and love didn't became associated with either of them until the Middle Ages. And two possible reasons for this. One is that there was a very old belief that birds mated on exactly this day, so they would find their life mate on St Valentine's Day, the feast of St Valemtine, which is very sweet. Another is that it's linked to a pagan fertility festival. Now, that was called Lupercalia, and it was held in honour of the fertility god, the Roman fertility god, Lupercus. So those are the two reasons possibly why we  associate love with - because it was a fertility day - with St Valentine's Day. But to take love itself, unsurprisingly, it's a very, very ancient word. It's existed as long as humankind has existed. And if you go back to the most ancient language that we've traced, which is an Inddo-European language, you will find it there. And it's shared by a Sanskrit word, lubhyati, which meant desire, and that incidentally also give us libido and the Latin word, libet, meaning "it's pleasing". It's related to other words in English, including lief, an old-fashioned word, my lief, which means dear of pleasant, but also very appropriately, love is linked to life itself. It shares the same ancient root, which I think is quite lovely. And just to flick briefly to tennis, because I think you love tennis. Love in tennis - a lot of people think that it's got everything to do with the shape of l'oeuf, the egg in French. It's actually not. We think it goes back to the idea of playing for love rather than for money, which is behind one of the ancient rules of the game. So there you go, a quick wirlwind tour of love, and apologies to anybody who actually really hates St Valentine's Day. I'll stop now. 

"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 13/02/18 (Carnival Day, Shrove Tuesday, deadpan expression)

Erm, and a Carnival Day has come round again. Today is Carnival Day. In Roman catholic countries, it's the period before Lent, it's a time of public merrrimaking and a great feasting and festivities. It comes from medieval Latin carnelevamen, which meant to put away meat, which is exactly of course what you do when you begin fasting. A lot of people think it's carnevale, so goodbye to meat, that is not quite right, it is to put it away. And there are many other flesh related words which are linked strangely to carnival and you wouldn't always put them together. Carnivorous, because you have got the meat connection, carnage, carnation from the flower's fleshy colour and carrion and incarnation, as well. So lots of bedmates, if you like, in English. But today of course is Shrove Tuesday, as we say, it's Pancake Day and Shrove Tuesday is linked to giving somebody short shrift which is to treat them in a really curt and a very dismissive way. That phrase originally referred to the short time that a condemned criminal was allowed to make penance before he or she was executed. So they would be shriven, absolved of their sins by a priest. It's the day before the start of Lent, it's marked by feasting and celebration, and of course, we mostly call it Pancake Day but other countries celebrate it as Mardi Gras which meant Fat Tuesday. Again, that link to feasting and eating a lot. While we are on pancakes, pancake make-up often used as stage make-up, the very, very heavy make-up that you use. Nothing do with the flat things that we eat today and everything to do with pan and slang for the face. It's because of the round shape, it's where we get deadpan from. If we have a deadpan expression, it's a dead expression on your face. So lots and lots strange links there, sort of a little whirl around pancakes but whatever I hope everyone eats lots and make merry.