"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.