Have you ever had the mulligrubs? | LOST WORDS

[@dahemac]

“Porpoises (/ˈpɔːrpəsɪz/) are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins.”

[@HotelPapa100]

Which brings us back to unicorns... (I love the binomial name of the Narwhal: Monodon monoceros, one tooth, one horn.)

[@stevelknievel4183]

And they are all more closely related to each other than to any other cetaceans. There's a cladogram showing the relationships between all of them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea

[@richdiddens4059]

And orcas are really not whales but giant dolphins.

[@GuanoLad]

@@richdiddens4059 Indeed. The misnomer "killer whale" is inverted as they were originally "whale killers".

[@JimCullen]

@@richdiddens4059 dolphins _are_ whales, which means that saying "orcas are not whales but...dolphins" is like saying "humans are not mammals but apes".

[@gcewing]

"Questmonger" sounds like one of those NPCs that sends you off on ridiculous errands.

[@sogghartha]

Quests! Fresh Quests, get your quests here! Freshly caught this morning, they're practically wriggling! Come get your quests!

[@agharries]

@@sogghartha Give it to us raw and wriggling, you keep nasty chips.

[@BrennanYoung]

before you save the princess... have you ever been involved in a accident from a clumsy squire? have you ever been injured while fighting an orc? You may be eligible for compensation...

[@draughtismycraft]

Raids, Quests and Missions! Alive, alive-O!

[@p1dru2art]

So how does the fact that porpoise is a mammal a dolphin is a fish.,..

[@SobriquetS]

I would totally subscribe to a Words Unraveled After Dark series. Poor Rob's abashedness was hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the definition of rantillion.

[@lokiva8540]

Cowgirl and "reverse cowgirl" sound far more innocuous, and less randy.... But what if the guy's name is Randolph? Jess might be able to travel locally, and find the special collection boxes at Cornell's library, with the topic of "pulp erotica". How would Rob's face and tone shift in discussion of the rather low reader level of "Sister's Canine Habit" by Paul Gable (alias), yes, about nuns with an affection for dogs, and reportedly housed in that special university collection but not openly shelved, as a result of specific requests as part of former linguistic graduate level research into that particular genre of books? I wonder if that research could then be traced to JStor, Academia edu, or peer reviewed journals?

[@InventorZahran]

@@lokiva8540The reverse of a cowgirl is a cowboy, right?

[@lokiva8540]

@@InventorZahran I think that involves rotating a cowgirl ON a cowboy, no?

[@_Super_Hans_]

You two are really great together, you let each other speak, you're interested in what the other person has to say - I love to see it. Someone needs to commission an etymology TV show and have you guys front it.

[@daveflood1555]

I see that Rob is easily "encrimsoned" by some of the words that Jess brings up.

[@richardvanholst]

Rob's family name is Watts, so it's no wonder his face lights up so brightly when he blushes!

[@rootkite]

"Bereddened" even :D

[@loisdungey3528]

​@@richardvanholst 😂

[@loisdungey3528]

Even Jess was looking a little reddened!

[@JohnTVMartin]

I've only been watching for a couple days and he does appear "blush" prone. He admitted as much. Love Jess' confidence and her willingness to yield Rob's observation when appropriate. That's takes a lot of self awareness.

[@eclipsa.monroe_]

"Also, another word is "Endday", that we don't use anymore, although you can kinda guess what it means😊" -Me: It's night, right? Because at the end of the day it's night? Why isn't that pleasant? Rob: "It is the day of your death😁" -Me: Oh☹️

[@corralescoyote]

Me too! I was super-letdown when Robb gave the actual definition of that word. I thought it would mean “night-time” also. 😉

[@katoptron6583]

My first guess was "evening" ... Following this line of thought, it matches lovely with the common (though wrong) interpretation of Ragnarök as "dusk of the gods".

[@WordsUnravelled]

I clearly have a more morbid mind than most. Rob

[@corralescoyote]

@@WordsUnravelled Applauding at the alliteration (apologies for misspelling your name) ✌️

[@ClintSprayberry]

😂 I literally had the same conversation with myself in my head 😂😂😂

[@troyagane8220]

My friend from Glasgow,she called a scarecrow a 'tattybogle'.Great word.

[@loisdungey3528]

❤. Makes sense. They are normally made with old clothes (or rags - which are generally tatty).

[@JackKennedy-dx5jm]

I'm 59 and grew up in Cincinnati. As a young boy, my mom said as a warning "Woe betide you". I didn't understand, but it was clear as a bell.

[@patrickbenthamradley]

My dear old Yorkshire mum said exactly the same thing to us if we had done something stupid or mischievous...and we were thus in for a roasting ! Basically, I think : you will regret it !

[@MorrisTart]

You have solved a mystery. In the Mummers Play (a traditional Christmastide street theatre) that I've performed many times, the quack Doctor character, when asked what he can cure says this: "All kinds of diseases, just as my little physic pleases. The ips, pips, pops, palsy and the gout. The pains within and the pains without. The mollygrubs, the gollygrubs and all kinds of rantantiorious little things you can think of. " [Herga Mummers Play, based on several collected frafments of old plays from the Harrow, Middx, area]

[@tomobedlam297]

"Hold off, unhand me grey-beard loon! Eftsoons his hand dropt he.." Rime of the Ancient Mariner

[@WordsUnravelled]

"And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I."

[@clareomarfran]

The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.

[@justforplaylists]

I think he was intentionally using language that was already old fashioned at the time he was writing.

[@cbjones2212]

Mulligrubs was a kids show on tv here in Australia about 25 years 🤔 ago. As soon as I saw the title of this episode the theme song jumped into my head.

[@AdamYukaWilsonSmith]

I came here to say the same. For anyone not indoctrinated the odd floating head with a big grinning mouth must be very confronting 😂

[@AdamYukaWilsonSmith]

It was broadcast from 1988 so we're showing our age

[@ian2593]

It's also used in Oz to indicate a ball rolled along the ground in games where said ball should be thrown in the air. A " mulligrubber."

[@carolynjtoday]

Perhaps then this also explains calling kids mulligrubbers which I remember as a child in Australia

[@deannearmaya8090]

Yes, I thought it was a commonly known cricket term. I had forgotten the TV show.

[@mudgetheexpendable]

"Rantallion" has enriched my life quite out of proportion to its length.

[@centrasseptyni8277]

To bad I cant unlearn this word. Hopefully I'll forget in few weeks

[@maxberan3897]

I'd come across calathumpian as someone whose Scrotum doesn't have a seam.

[@loisdungey3528]

​@@maxberan3897 😢😂

[@langdalepaul]

I don’t think quickmonth derives from being fast or nimble, but rather being alive, or growing, it being the first real month of spring.

[@pierreabbat6157]

Finnish has elokuu and marraskuu, literally livemoon and deadmoon. Finnish doesn't use three-letter abbreviations for months, but if it did, mar would be a quite different month than it is in English, French, and Spanish.

[@TonyNaggs]

When quickmonth was mentioned the film Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) came to mind.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

As in the saying: the quick and the dead.

[@megb9700]

When a baby first is felt moving in the mother’s stomach it’s called “the quickening.”

[@sandradermark8463]

The quick and the dead, from Hamlet

[@pmbrig]

How about an episode discussing the multitude of words meaning "a random assortment?" For instance: gallimaufry, salmagundi, hodgepodge, mishmash, charivari, melange, olio, potpourri, farrago, congeries, bricolage, goulash, pastiche, collage, slumgullion, succotash, gumbo, ragbag, dog's breakfast. The list is in itself a gallimaufry of strange words ("gallimaufry" being my favorite). The etymology of some of them is obvious (with food references prominent), but others are very obscure.

[@rikkichunn8856]

A salmagundi is a meat salad. Not the kind where the meat is made into salad, like chicken salad, but the easier kind where larger pieces of recently cooked meat are laid on top of the lettuce. By extension (or derision?) salmagundi came to mean a mess.

[@kaloarepo288]

farrago as well

[@agharries]

In the UK the technical term for a clock maker is still an horologist.

[@cynicaldodgyknees6248]

As is a watchmaker, or any manufacturer of timepieces.

[@BrennanYoung]

@@cynicaldodgyknees6248 that was my dad's profession. He had it on his business card and letterhead.

[@cynicaldodgyknees6248]

@@BrennanYoungDid you follow in his footsteps?

[@BrennanYoung]

@@cynicaldodgyknees6248 no, he actively discouraged me against it. Cheap quartz was happening, keeping better time than those marvellous old machines, and he decided that the future for mechanical timepieces was looking very bleak. It's a shame, but he wasn't wrong: Almost everyone uses their phone as a watch these days, and public clocks (that are kept maintained) scarcely exist any more. I love public clocks! Every major city should have a signature chime IMO.

[@cynicaldodgyknees6248]

@@BrennanYoungI understand his advice. Such a shame though.

[@TheBunzinator]

Surely a milliard would be 1/1000th of a duck?

[@karlkutac1800]

We need more episodes like this! Obscure words and old and disused words are so fascinating

[@chrischagnon5955]

Giraffe is one of my favorite animal names in Chinese - it’s 长颈鹿 (chang jing lu) which literally means “long neck deer”. I was a Chinese major in my undergrad (and lived in China for many years), and I just love Chinese animal names because they’re just very visually descriptive. Of course you have the pandas - xiong mao (literally “bear cat”), and because the giant panda (da xiong mao - big bear cat) and red/small/lesser panda (xiao xiong mao - small bear cat) have similar coloring, they are both given the same name. Then a raccoon (cousin of the red panda) is a huan xiong - washing bear. Or a moose is a tuo lu (camel deer), which is also very apt. Anyway, I know it’s an English podcast, but thought you might enjoy these in case you see this comment! Also, love the podcast!

[@markrossow6303]

Nice

[@dlwiii3]

A stound? That is astounding.

[@draughtismycraft]

Susie Dent taught me the lost word that I most want to bring back: overmorrow. I find is much less clunky than "the day after tomorrow".

[@heymikeyh9577]

…and while we’re at it, complete the set with “foreyester” for the day before yesterday…

[@kaloarepo288]

@@heymikeyh9577 yestreen in Shakepeare

[@Buriaku]

Both are related to the German words "übermorgen" and "vorgestern". They are commonly extended by adding another prefix per day like "überübermorgen" and "vorvorgestern". You could thus say "overovermorrow" instead of "two days after tomorrow".

[@draughtismycraft]

@@Buriaku While it is fun, at some point, I imagine I would find it less tiring to figure out what day of the week it is, and say, "Friday"😉.

[@PixelatedIoooIo5]

It is good to see that we have purple people here. Hello

[@HolmesMartialArts]

I didn’t realize what a “word nerd” I am! But I cannot get enough of this channel!! 😊

[@JimCullen]

You really brushed past this, but I think it's a really interesting point that a lot of people don't understand. I think it was only earlier this year...maybe late last year, that I learnt the real reason behind the months having the wrong numbers. Most people seem to believe it's because of the _addition_ of July and August for Julius and Augustus Caesar. But in actuality July and August are just _renamings_ of existing months that were _correctly_ numbered after 5 and 6, and the numbers are wrong because, as you say, they moved the start of the year back from March to January.

[@WaterShowsProd]

It wasn't that long ago that the new year was moved to January in European countries, and not all countries moved it at the same time.

[@BrennanYoung]

I was under that *exact* misapprehension, and was curious when Jan/Feb came up in the video as the late additions. Thank you for explaining it.

[@f1mbultyr]

The year still ended in December, what we now call January and February was just the time between the years. Nobody was doing anything, so you didn't need to be able to name specific dates. I wish we could bring that back!

[@foamheart]

15:30 In the past, beer brewing was predominantly carried out by women, so there were more brewsters than brewers.

[@tammyblack2747]

17:00 The Norwegian word for spider is “etterkopp!”

[@garyw3070]

So Spider-man would be Etterkopp-Man in Norway 😆

[@mascot4950]

*edderkopp

[@MorderElg]

@@garyw3070 In the literal translation, true. However we do call him Spiderman here too though. Same with Batman (since 1987).

[@DoVisenya]

Welcome back, it's great to see you again! I'm pretty certain most of European countries are still using Miliard as 1 000 000 000, it's only English speakers who use Bilion for it :)

[@WordsUnravelled]

Yes, we're now the oddity!

[@gentoid]

Meconfirms. Many/(all?) Slavic languages use the word miliard for 10^9

[@gustru2078]

@@WordsUnravelled "Milliard used to be called "billion" in french in the past. Maybe that's why? Now, billion means what you call "trillion" in english.

[@berlindude75]

@Ellie-wl3rw Simple to derive these: After each such word ending in "-ion" (million, billion, trillion, ...) you insert an extra level word where you replace the "-ion" ending with "-iard" (milliard, billiard, trilliard, ...). All of these are spelled the same in German but will be capitalized (like all German nouns) and -- as a little hint -- they are all of the feminine gender (thus "die Million", "die Milliarde", "die Billion", ...). But you will rarely use these words beyond "Milliarde" (billion/milliard) in everyday language.

[@j.rinker4609]

Not a particularly old word, but "voluntold" is one I recently became aware of. When you've been voluntold, someone has either volunteered your services without your consent or assigned you a task themselves. It's generally used in a humorous fashion.

[@nat1XP]

One of my favourite moments in your videos is when one of you says "do you know ...?" And the other replies "yes". I watch on like "aw thats nice. Cant wait to catch up." I love this show thank you ☺️

[@mikeyhau]

Back in the 1970's, I met the Queensland Railways horologist. Keeping trains on time was very important, and there were super-accurate pendulum clocks located in Brisbane, suburban railway stations and in main stations throughout the state. Keeping them running accurately was vital.

[@allangibson8494]

The master pendulum clocks sent a master signal over the telegraph lines to each station to synchronise the clocks at all the stations. GPS eliminated the need for the wired signals by providing a millisecond accurate reference.

[@blshouse]

The Woodwrights's Shop was a popular Public Television show that ran for 37 years. A master carpenter named Roy Underhill demonstrated traditional (pre-electric) tools and methods of crafting all sorts of wooden products. Still available on the internet, highly recommended.

[@rebeccamay6420]

I loved that TV show! Before electric power tools, people used tools that were powered by manually generated motion (such as Roy's wood-turning lathe), water wheel, windmill, or animal-drawn turnstile (bull, donkey, horse).

[@TalLikesThat]

You're back! I'm so happy!

[@colincreedtattoomachines]

As a 70's Aussie teenager growing up in Melbourne, there was a slang term called "Ball-tearer" we all used for something good, great or exceptional & it could be applied equally to someone, an object or an occurrence, "He's a ball-tearer of a bloke", "That was a ball-tearer of a dance", The latest song from AC/DC is a ball-tearer", etc...all of which sounded just a bit like the old term "Balter"...I've no idea if there's any form of relationship between the two but when I heard "Balter" it immediately reminded me of the slang term from my youth.

[@Woeschhuesli]

lol as I read the first line, I was thinking AC/DC, Bon Scott... amazing they haven't yet used it as a song title ;)

[@Zetimenvec]

The clockmaker being called an horologer reminds me of something my sister and I have been doing for a long while as an in-joke where we'll be discussing some random topic and arrive at a point or factoid about it where we've reached the limits of our knowledge of the topic, so we'll take the topic and tack on "-ologist" to the end and say either we're not one of those, or you need to talk to someone who is. "I dunno- talk to an ice-ologist" or "But what do I know, I'm not an dogologist."

[@loisdungey3528]

I remember something similar in my late teens. We 'made up' an -ologist word. Some years later, I found that some actually existed!😂

[@rebeccamay6420]

I remember using the "I'm not a __-ologist" line recently for humor effect, though I don't recall what the topic was.

[@PoopaPapaPalpatine]

I've actually incorporated "overmorrow" and "ereyester" into my vocabulary since catching the episode that brought them up.

[@emdiar6588]

In Dutch, "overmorgen" and "eergisteren", are still very much in everyday use. In fact, every time I watch videos like this I realise how much closer English and Dutch used to be.

[@WayneKitching]

​​@@emdiar6588Afrikaans changed them to oormôre and eergister.

[@HALberdier17]

In Swedish there is övermorgon and Förrgår.

[@sandradermark8463]

In Swedish a porpoise is tumlare. In Norwegian spider is edderkop. Porpoise in German is Schweinswal, pig whale, and the Norwegian/Danish marsvin, sea pig. That old word for squirrel sounds like Swedish ekorre, as in the song "Ekorren satt i granen", the squirrel sat in the Christmas tree

[@bullfidde]

Äldre stavning av ekorre har varit ekorne vilket antyder på manlig gris .

[@marcusblackbird3603]

In the Christmas tree??? Ekorrn satt i julgranen?

[@patrickbenthamradley]

Swedish 'Marsvin' = Guinea pig. Granen = Fir tree :-)

[@WagnerGimenes]

I could listen to you both all day long. I actually listened to the audio podcast earlier today and now watched the video and the video makes the words seem clearer (for a non-native speaker). Thanks for the content.

[@WordsUnravelled]

Thank you for listening AND watching!

[@davewalter1216]

'afterblismed' - Perfect: I needed a word for a native passionflower (Passiflora aurantia) here in Queensland where the petals change from a virginal white when it first opens to red after pollination as the seed capsule swells, and afterblismed (after blossomed?) is more elegant than preggers. Also, on the Monoceros front, there is a very ordinary 'winery' here called 'Old Fat Unicorn' with an image of a rhinoceros on the label. As the rhinoceros pictured is of the two-horned variety, the marketeer who dreamt it up seems to have been rather oblivious.

[@taniahunt1327]

Stertorous and eructation are words very commonly used in veterinary medicine. Many of the brachycephalic breeds (think English and French bulldogs) have stertorous breathing due to their short and narrow noses. And eructation is what ruminants do by belching up a small bolus of food (or cud) to chew it before swallowing it again.

[@WordsUnravelled]

Wow!

[@PythagorasHyperborea]

Jess looks like Princess Leia. And so does Rob.

[@Evan490BC]

Rob looks like Princess Leia? 🤔

[@Simon-fg8iz]

@@Evan490BC Hint: headphones

[@kencory2476]

She has one of the most beautiful faces on KZbin.

[@Evan490BC]

@@Simon-fg8iz 😁

[@tmcmurdo826]

Just sprayed coca-cola through my nose, thank you very much! You made my day. 😂

[@ericnull3470]

I legit love this channel. You guys are so infectious with your genuine interest and wholesome personas. I have yet to see a video from you guys where I didn't learn something totally new and interesting.

[@johnfenn3188]

For Rob: I think the German word Eichhörnchen is fairly easy to explain. Eiche is an oak tree, as you said. =chen is a diminutive ending and as always with =chen endings makes the word neuter. Horn means lots of things amongst which is, well, horn. Consider then a red squirrel (the grey ones are American invaders and can be disregarded). They have tufts around their ears which look a bit like wispy horns. So Eichhörnchen is a little horned thing that lives in an oak tree. Simples!

[@Woeschhuesli]

...which brings to mind the Bavarian "Oachkatzerlschwoaf".... (oak kitten tail...) as squirrels are known as Oachkatzerl (oak kittens) there. Something of a tongue twister. We have also (in our family!) helvetisized squirrel to "Squirrli" after a family member had difficulty with the word! (adding the Swiss-German diminutive "-li"). One of the reasons I like this particular part is that as a very young child growing up bilingually, I told British people around me that squirrel was too hard to say and that Eichhörnchen was easier... I think they begged to differ LOL

[@johnfenn3188]

@@Woeschhuesli good! There is another Hochdeutsch equivalent - Eichkätzchen - an oak kitten, because of the tail. So the Schweizerdeutsch term is akin to that - with the other diminutive of course.

[@Woeschhuesli]

@@johnfenn3188 Yes, Oachkatzerl in Bavarian dialect, as I said, not Swiss German, no doubt refers to Eichkätzchen… In Swiss-German it‘s usually just the typical diminutive Eichhörnli.

[@Woeschhuesli]

(Bavaria is a German state, not a Swiss one!)

[@johnfenn3188]

@@Woeschhuesli Entschuldigung! I realised at once that I had muddled two things up, but you can’t correct KZbin posts!

[@Jefada]

I grew up with the word catarrh. We would use this word in our family when we had sinus issues. We would say "I have that catarrh taste or catarrh smell." My grandma was born in 1889, my parents were born in 1915 and 1918 and I was born in 1963. I so go out in the world, and no one has heard of this word. A coworker a few years ago found it in Wikipedia and it has to do with sinus which the term they used back then. I finally felt validated. My family also used the term schlech or schleck which meant we didn't eat properly. But I can't find any evidence of it. BTW it was fun watching Rob turn red. As if he was getting sunburned before our eyes.

[@taniahunt1327]

Catarrhal fever is a disease of cattle that causes a severe upper respiratory infection and LOTS of mucous nasal discharge. I believe the catarrh refers to the mucous and discharge.

[@doratheexplorer1184]

I grew up with catarrh as well. Suffered from it a lot in my childhood. Turns out I have a lactose intolerance. After I was weaned from the bottle 🍼 I wouldn't drink milk for my mother, then later I wouldn't eat butter. So naturally, as a baby I was avoiding things that would cause symptoms.

[@sailingayoyo]

Oh so that is why Bilbo shouted “Attercop Attercop!” At the spiders of Mirkwood.

[@sailingayoyo]

I paused it to write that and then you mentioned it too 😂

[@DusanPavlicek78]

This episode was so charming! I'm really happy that you released a new episode, I was a bit restless when there had been no updates recently.

[@jaromluker]

You corrected some misinformation for me. I had been told that the reason that *Sept*ember through *Dec*ember seemed to be incorrectly numbered was that Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus inserted months for themselves in the middle of the calendar, offsetting the subsequent four months. I had to look it up, because I had never heard an alternate explanation. Yours is, of course, correct. I'm definitely embarrassed not to have known this before, since some of my master's work was on the history of the calendar (though I was admittedly focused on the astronomical phenomena measured and not on the actual names).

[@HotelPapa100]

Cesar and Augustus arguably added days to their months, but that seems to be a matter of legend as well.

[@ernestcline2868]

July and August might not have been renamed had Quintilus and Sextilus been called Quintember and Sextember instead. On other hand it's probably for the best as otherwise Rob would be blushing the whole next month if it weren't named August.

[@loisdungey3528]

​@@ernestcline2868😂

[@Carrie15Joy]

You guys make learning so much fun…I am blushing with you Rob!

[@tomobedlam297]

"palter" is an archaic word worth an etymological probe. As in Macbeth's: "And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense"

[@notumbusbumbus3871]

What a delightful channel! So glad I've floundered upon you

[@joknaepkens]

In Dutch we still use miljard as a thousand million. Old English was a lot closer to Dutch before the French influence (thx William :p) made it what it is today.

[@nicomarti13]

But... so do we in French! :D

[@Woeschhuesli]

In German, there is also a "Milliarde" for a thousand million...

[@Thewholetree]

​@@Woeschhuesliyes, I was just coming to say this as well. I've been living in Germany for decades and when I was learning the language the difference between million milliard billion billiard etc really threw me. Interestingly enough English language voice to text doesn't know the word milliard or trilliard, only billiard as the pool ball game.

[@greenelmstation7930]

The Danish word for “billion” is milliard,

[@patrickbenthamradley]

It's the same in Swedish too!

[@GuanoLad]

Welcome back! This was one of your best episodes. I think you're visibly relaxing into the format.

[@WordsUnravelled]

Thank you!

[@frankhooper7871]

As recently as 1975, Steeleye Span were singing "all around my hat I shall wear the green willow...for a twelvemonth and a day ". Nice to see Rob mention that there is an actual numerical quantity (10,000) for"myriad" - meseems not many people realise that. On older job titles, many of my ancestors were listed on census forms as cordwainers. It's interesting that -ster tends to denote a feminine form, but "sempster" is the masculine form of "seamstress"

[@N1inSK]

Oh, right! That song popped into my head immediately upon hearing the word Twelvemonth. I was too busy listening to Jess and Rob to follow my bewildered brain to the roots of the song in which that line occurs.

[@SylviaKift]

I so enjoy listening to your banter as you discuss these archaic words! And because I balter rather than dance gracefully, I generally latibulate at parties.

[@kringle7586]

These vids are great, please keep them coming!

[@robertfolker1130]

On the word conspue, in Australia to vomit is sometimes called having a spew or spewing ,mainly after having to many alcoholic drinks.

[@kevinmcqueenie7420]

This is such a joyous podcast. Always brings a smile to my face. Thank you Rob and Jess!

[@toddverbeek5113]

I remember being entertained as a child by a performance of "Taradiddle Tales", an anthology of amusing sketches with a peculiar name... which I now understand meant that they were *untrue* stories.

[@WordsUnravelled]

Oh that's delightful!

[@OldmanNix]

I shall not remain silent as Rob gives us his facial expression regarding making an episode about gaming lingo. Pardon me but that would be an excellent episode.

[@theoryaminute]

There may be an official ruling somewhere and I'm just plain wrong, but I would consider squirrelled to be two syllables; either squirr-elled or perhaps squir-relled.

[@joeldcanfield_spinhead]

most dictionaries of American English show the schwa sound before the ell as optional/occasional, making it speaker's choice how many sillybulls you make it.

[@SabinJBB]

Bilbowright > Bilbo = a type of sworth made with metal from the Basque city of BILBO (in the Basque language) or Bilbao (in the Spanish language). It's the city where I'm from. And near by there used to be some iron mines with the strongest iron in Europe (because it has hematite) which was the reason why British engineers made a Steel factory in the city, thus bringing along the way with them the first football (soccer) team of the Basque Country and even of the Iberian peninsula: Athletic Club of the city of Bilbo-Bilbao.

[@ryklatortuga4146]

Gah- first time I ever heard of Bilbao was back in 1982 - when England played a World Cup game there... Bryan Robson scored a super fast goal - against The France) - Had an Naranjito mug as a kid too. Well done in the Euros by the way!

[@SabinJBB]

Nice, thanks. Ironically, many Basques that use the name of Bilbo don't consider themselves as French nor Spanish , and claim for their Basque national Football team to be able to play in international competitions, like Wales, Scotlan and a such, but the EU state of Spain keeps vetoing it. 😂😂

[@MichaelMatthys-p2m]

But also, I believe - bilboes - were leg-irons on the poop decks of sailing ships (in about the 17th century) for locking up (and punishing) miscreant ship's officers.

[@rootkite]

Re: Tolkien and spiders, Shelob literally means "female spider" 🕸🕷 Thanks for a fun and fascinating episode! ❤

[@_SLKK]

Funny in English Gabber means who never stops talking. In the Netherlands it's know for style of electronic music hardcore techno from the 90's. But the word gabber comes from an Amsterdam Yiddish slang, based on the Hebrew chaver meaning "mate" or "friend".

[@tomhorsley6566]

Squir-El is Kal-El's timid brother.

[@WordsUnravelled]

Super squirrely of him!

[@BKPrice]

"A butcher, a lawyer, and a chandler." You came so close to an alternate version of saying "A butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker."

[@JeeWeeD]

The word 'jawsmith' reminds me of the Dutch 'smoelsmid', facesmith -> the dentist.

[@jayarrington240]

Thank you so much - you two. I absolutely loved this episode ! Thanks for sharing your wonderful fun expertise.

[@joknaepkens]

Fun fact: a seamstress was also slang for a prostitute. In Dutch seamstress is naaister. Naaien is slang for 'doing the deed'. There has to be a link here.

[@WayneKitching]

We have the same in Afrikaans, but the word is naai for both sewing and doing the deed. I have a CD from a band called Die Naaimasjiene which literally means The Sewing Machines, but there is an obvious double entendre.

[@KusacUK]

And of course the Seamstresses’ Guild in Ankh Morpork, usually mentioned with an embarrassed clearing of the throat - “they call themselves seamstresses (hem, hem)”.

[@WordsUnravelled]

I love what Sir Terry Pratchett does with this in the Discworld novels! - Jess

[@KusacUK]

@@WordsUnravelled Especially Sandra Battye, who provides special services for men who’ve lost their wives…

[@Thewholetree]

​@@WayneKitchingI find Afrikaans to be a very fascinating language, almost like a Time Capsule of Old Dutch, of course well it basically is, but it's so interesting to compare how the languages have changed and also remained identical over centuries

[@AIGuys-Online]

Amongst the vagaries, vicissitudes and verisimilitude’s of life, you illuminate new pathways to perambulate.

[@I_Thought_You_Had_It]

What a come back episode! 😂😂😂

[@holden2gether]

🤣🤣 After 28 minutes into it and Rob's side of the screen just turned a vivid shade of red. Brilliant, keep it up Jess, I love watching Rob's English sensibilities get the better of him. Sorry Rob, I'm of English origin myself but have lived out in the colonies (NZ) long enough now that that 'uncomfortableness' has been bred out of me.😉 Balter = Dad dancing in modern vocab.

[@Safetysealed]

Ettercap is still used as a name for spider in Northeastern Scotland, but unfortunately is now completely out of use among anybody younger than maybe 70-80 years old.

[@tinkerstrade3553]

I'm mid 70s, and I too have noticed not only words dying while unfamiliar vernacular arise, but subtle drifts in the pronunciation of even the familiar. The emphasis on what 'feels' like the wrong syllables. Also, I was never fond of contractions, as I was taught these should be confined to those times when abbreviations were used. I can scarce tolerate the new fad of the feebleminded in not bothering to even use the apostrophe to inform the reader that you are hurrying to the point. Soon we will return to that path already trodden, and confine ourselves to grunts and gestures. And I have a finger for that!

[@AdDewaard-hu3xk]

Attercop in Tolkien.

[@ralphvercauteren9267]

One of the funniest episodes. Especially because rob is blushing. ;)

[@theeastman9136]

Interesting! "Messeems" is the exact equivalent of the Quebec french "me semble" pronounced "messemb'" when the French expression is: "Il me semble". Archaic probably as are many of our expressions.

[@mightaswellbe]

Foofaraw, amongst the Mountain men of the American West, was a reference to the cheap trinkets that they wore to fancy up their clothing or bought for their women. Pins, necklaces and such, also called Geejaws (sp?).

[@ChristopherBrink]

Jactitation of marriage is still a legal term of art. If not, I at least remember reading about it in law school 15 years ago. It describes the "false declaration that one is married to a specified person."

[@IanMarshall79]

I'm a big Skyrim fan Jess, as much as I am of this podcast. I recently got your book Words from Hell and I am really enjoying it

[@WordsUnravelled]

Thank you, Ian! May you never take an arrow to the knee. - Jess

[@tomcavanagh2643]

I have come across several Pseudologist on the internet, so this word has to be brought back into common usage

[@allendracabal0819]

Only several?

[@tinkerstrade3553]

Political pseudology is out of control in America! 🤣

[@tedblack2288]

Please do a segment exclusively on Old English job titles. Not only are they fascinating of themselves, but are used by genealogists to differentiate between people with the same name. I have used words like: cordwainer (leather finisher), hosier (stocking maker), hellier (tile roofer) and whitesmith (metal worker specializing in pewter) to prove I had the correct person.

[@paulwilson269]

Rhinos are just bodybuilder unicorns... 😁

[@colincreedtattoomachines]

...just Unicorns on the "roids"... 😂

[@hive_indicator318]

No, they're fat unicorns. Haven't y'all seen Nimona?

[@IanUniacke]

Hooray you're back! :D (No, I haven't been furiously updating youtube for the last two months, why would you even think that???)

[@corralescoyote]

Yeah, I haven’t been looking for new uploads from these two, either. 😉

[@tmcmurdo826]

This was a particularly glorious episode. Thank you! Is there a term for the made up words that run in families?

[@nordianabaruzzi2407]

Very good episode. Love all the info Some off the words you mentioned look like Italian sounding to me A billion is un miliardo in Italian, clock is orologio, clockmaker is orologiaio Out on a tangent here, a questmonger in Italian is un leguleio or Azzeccagarbugli. The latter comes from a character in Manzoni's Promessi sposi while the former means opportunistic hypocrite cowtowing to the powerful

[@tammyblack2747]

We still use mulligrub as a verb. Meaning pouting or sulking and complaining.

[@grandam195]

I have mulligrubs used a lot in Appalachia in recent times. I have also used "hullabaloo" a lot. I had a interactive fantasy bed time tale called the land of Hullaballoo. I encouraged the kids to use their imagination of things they could do and adventures they can have in dreamland. You mentioning the word reminded me of the ongoing tale. It would get more fanciful as time went on. Trish who was fond of sweets to a fault usually imagined some adventure she could go on to consume as many as possible. Harold imagined adventures with dinosaurs and I can't recall what the other two imagined. Hullabaloo is the magical world of dreams, where anything is possible. There is a place for hullabaloo, it is in your dreams.

[@alexdoerofthings]

My daughter coined the word tomorning, when she was wee, which of course means “tomorrow morning”.

[@WordsUnravelled]

What a marvelous portmanteau!

[@alexdoerofthings]

Thank you. Great pair of shows

[@LymanPhillips]

So glad to see you all back. I'm going to have to watch this again and take some notes. I want to work monoceros into my speech. And I can't wait to meet someone with the last name Baxter.

[@damonwilliams5033]

'My Welsh grandparents in the 1970s still said'A Twelvemonth' in their everyday speech in addition to 'A year'.

[@loisdungey3528]

My grandparents (whose grandparents haled from Cornwall) would say, " it must be twelve month or more ....", not "a year or more as is usual now.

[@corralescoyote]

This is by far my favorite KZbin channel! I always learn a ton from you both. Recently, I’ve had occasion to mention St Alban’s list of collective nouns, and invented a couple myself in conversation. I’ve also had fun discussions with a few folks about how saying “ax” for “ask”, and “a whole nother”, are perfectly fine to use. You two have reaffirmed my confidence in the evolutionary aspect of English. (P.S. This comments section is the only place I proofread extra carefully before I post, just because I don’t wanna flub my verbiage, so to speak. 😉)

[@CyrilleParis]

Porposie is of latin origin via the old French word "pourpois" (porcopiscus, pig-fish). But strangely the French name of this animal nowadays, "marsouin", have an old Norse origin (via the Normans or via Dutch) which used to mean... sea-pig

[@OzSteve9801]

A mulligrubber in cricket is a ball that rolls along the ground when bowled, rather than the more normal bouncing. Also, as someone in their 60's I love it when one of you says "Now that I'm older ...".

[@Khannesjo]

Feels perfectly fine to me to separate squir-relled into two syllables like that.

[@Ithirahad]

The D could even be its own syllable with a null vowel, though usually those aren't counted as such.

[@frankhooper7871]

To me it feels two-syllable

[@joeldcanfield_spinhead]

I've said it both ways depending on the weather and how hungry I am.

[@FaridTaba]

I was just re-watching the last episode and wondering when you guys would be back! 💜

[@RANDALLBRIGGS]

Per Wikipedia: Porpoises (/ˈpɔːrpəsɪz/) are small dolphin-like cetaceans classified under the family Phocoenidae. Although similar in appearance to dolphins, they are more closely related to narwhals and belugas than to the true dolphins. There are eight extant species of porpoise, all among the smallest of the toothed whales. Porpoises are distinguished from dolphins by their flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins, and lack of a pronounced beak, although some dolphins (e.g. Hector's dolphin) also lack a pronounced beak.

[@p1mason]

Growing up, we used the word "Vietmanese" for something similar to mumpsimus. It was, of course, in honour of that one friend who couldn't refer to a Bahn Mi without making this error, regardless how hard they tried.

[@DeanBatha]

In modern American English slang, "rantipole" is known as "reverse cowgirl."

[@NicholasHutchings]

I like the idea of Jawsmith being used for dentists. Imagine having to head off to the jawsmith after school for your braces to be tightened or a filling?

[@Blade_Daddy]

Growing up going to Catholic grade school, the nuns would teach us very short prayers to say aloud (like "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph"). The nuns would call those "ejaculations "!

[@gcewing]

Did they have to coece you into practising them, or did you do it selfwilly?

[@steelcrown7130]

Goodness I haven't thought about such ejaculations ("Glory Be!" was another) since about 1989. Thanks. I have, however, just read every novel of the crime writer Patricia Wentworth (d 1961), and a fair bit of Dame Ngaio Marsh (d 1982). Their characters are ejaculating at each other all the time - usually in ("Never! You cannot mean it!") surprise. One of my work colleagues (admittedly a pompous blowhard) would ask quite regularly at meetings in the 1990s: "May I interject with an ejaculation at this juncture?" We all got the joke, but it was a very tired one by the time I left that workplace.

[@randalmayeux8880]

"Ejaculation" refers to a spontaneous word or phrase. I, too, went to Catholic school in the late '50's and the 1960's and heard it used in that context. This was long before I heard it used in the biological sense.

[@helenedwards1468]

I can’t remember if it is Ngaio Marsh or Dorothy Sayers who is always ejaculating in their books.

[@davidberesford7009]

come! come! let's not get out of hand!

[@memyname1771]

Herbert Coleridge wrote at least two books. He also wrote "A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth Century".

[@schubertuk]

Re 'Squirrelled' being the longest single-syllable word in the English Language, could you perhaps touch on Halfpennysworth - which has an historic alternate pronunciation (despite the spelling) of 'Haipths' - a single syllable, where the spelling would be even longer than Squirrelled - as in 'May I have a "haipths" of boiled sweets?'. Admittedly since the death of the Halfpenny in 1983 and inflation, the need for the word and it's pronunciation has become somewhat archaic... But am I wrong?

[@WordsUnravelled]

What a revelation! I've heard haipeth with two syllables, but I bet some folk pronounced it as one. I reckon you're onto something. Rob

[@schubertuk]

@@WordsUnravelled What I am really curious about is examples of words where the spelling and pronunciations have diverged so much as to be practically unrecognisable, e.g. boatswain & the pronunciation 'bosun'. Or nounds like Greenwich pronounced "Gren'ich" -- of which there are literally dozens of place-name examples in London. Love the vidoes!

[@johnhockenhull2819]

@@schubertuk Isn't a lot of the reason for this that spelling was standardised with the invention of the printing press but the literacy of the people came much later and so the pronunciation continued to evolve after the spelling was fixed.

[@schubertuk]

@@johnhockenhull2819 possibly! I'm no expert! It may also be a factor of time (purely my curiosity at work here). I would be curious whether the US has developed any pronunciations that have started to significantly deviate from the spellings.

[@johnhockenhull2819]

@@schubertuk Two that immediately spring to mind are Connecticut and Arkansas.

[@davidmartin8211]

The issue with out-of-date or obscure words is If both sides or conversation do not understand the words then they might as well be speaking different languages. In essence, language conveys information.

[@SolarisWesson]

Jactation. Makes me think of the way that Jack Sparrow walks.

[@janepilson3636]

I had a friend in college who was rehearsing for a Shakespeare play and got so into it that she began a letter to her boyfriend, "Methinks I'm mad at you."