"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.