"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.