Ologies with Alie Ward - Etymology (WORD ORIGINS) Encore with Helen Zaltzman

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

The brilliant and dazzling Helen Zaltzman pops in with some new asides in this encore episode of Ologies. Helen, host of the podcasts The Allusionist, Veronica Mars Investigations and Answer Me This, and a person who technically for a living researches the origins of language and thus is an etymologist, visits Alie's apartment to chat about various word origins, gender in language, the Bible a.k.a. The Oxford English Dictionary, origins of the filthiest slang, emoji decoding, mediocrity, step parents, babies wearing glasses, Greek kimonos, the romance of languages and the fundamental truth that language is always changing whether you want it to or not. Also tomatoes, pliable boobs, avocados, and fish trails.Follow Helen on Twitter & InstagramListen to episodes of The Allusionist mentioned in the show: No Title and SorryThis week's donation was made to POPS the ClubMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media, Steven Ray Morris and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's that feeling you get when you put on a jacket you haven't worn since last year and find a ten dollar pill in the pocket. Elation coupled with the anticipatory disappointment that it won't happen every time you put on a jacket. Helen's ultimate of the illusionist podcast about language and a lump of the oligee's episode about etymology, which is the study of the origins of words. Ali and I recorded it together in February 2019. And that came about thanks to the website formerly known as Twitter. So did used to be this nice time on it when, for instance, podcasters could make friends with each other over there. I think this case, someone asked Ali if she could invite me on an episode which was the easy yes for me. So thank you most sincerely to that person because I got to be on this loveliest of podcasts and become offline friends with Ali. I hope you'd have to verify with her, of course. Also as a result of me being onology, some of you started listening to my show The Illusionist.

So thank you very much for that and to Ali, of course. At the time we recorded, IE was only seven months out from my own podcast-induced health crisis, which we do talk about in this episode. I landed in hospital in Pasmania for three and a half weeks because podcasting is a dangerous business. And then I went back to work almost immediately after. In retrospect, it took me three more years to get to a point where work didn't have me on the brink of a perpetual physical and mental collapse, but well worth the wait. But hopefully it will take you less long, Ali. So as much as we all miss you, don't come back to scene. When you think you're ready, go on vacation followed by a second vacation, then you can maybe consider coming back to work, but perhaps

you could just lie on the couch gazing at clouds or learn to play the harp. Maybe you can already play the harp, I don't know, in which case a base clarinet or McCrawmey. Anyway, since we recorded, I started and completed a whole other podcast, Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping the entirety of the TV show, movie, canonical novels and reboot of Veronica Mars. And you can find that in the usual pod places and at vmipod.com. I also finished my very long running podcast, aren't some of these. There are 400 episodes of that, looking online, if you'd like.

I toured the Illusionist live show. I toured Australia twice more without ending up in hospital, as well as several other countries, then sat around during COVID unsuccessfully growing tomatoes. What else? In the last year, my dad died, and I moved to Vancouver, Canada. And the illusionist has carried on all the while recently I've been making various bits of work about things being renamed, especially things that were named after bad guys, like

Asperg is syndrome and Schrodinger's equation. There have been some episodes about death and fatness and complex PTSD and the Eurovision Song Contest and anxiety and the name Fiona, which if you can check out any of the episodes of the show, maybe you could start with the pair about the name Fiona. I don't want to spoil it. It's just special stuff. Anyway, let us return to the relatively innocent time of 2019 to talk about etymology with Oble Loverd Alleywood. to the relatively innocent time of 2019 to talk about etymology with Opel over Dali Wood.

Oh hey, it's the ghost of the succulent plant you somehow killed. Just... incredulously staring at you like how? How? I'm a cactus. Dali Wood, back with another episode of Oligies. Okay, so don't galaxy brain too hard, but each word I'm saying has a history and a lifespan and a backstory and was probably born out of a grunt and then went through pubescence in another language, spelled with too many vowels. And if you sat down and listened to its biography, you'd likely love it even more. But before we get into backstories and etymologies, a few complex words of thanks.

Thanks to everyone supporting on Patreon, this show, and these audio files you've downloaded for free would not exist without the folks giving as little as a buck a month on patreon.com slash allergies. Thank you to everyone buying merch at oligiesmerch.com. Thanks to everyone who checks to make sure you're subscribed and for spending an actual nanosecond just rating the podcast and a minute or two or three leaving reviews for me to creepily enjoy when I'm feeling like a bucket of old oatmeal with a mouth.

Which happens? This week, Smacks More She's Mamm says, this podcast is fantastic for getting myself through boring car rides and long days at work. The host, my father, Alli Ward is captivating and asks her guests all of the right questions. Now for some reason, the host, my father, Alli Ward, had me actually cackling out loud when I read it. Also, DJ Liz Thirteen, I creeped your review about your late father and it got me teary and I'm sending you hugs. Okay, etymology. Oh, I've wanted to cover this topic since the day I first laid eyes on a list of allergies back in 2002.

So strong as my thirst. I include some etymology in every episode. You know that. But what's the etymology of etymology? This is like your mirror image staring at your real face or one hand washing the other. Okay, so etymology comes from the Greek etymos, meaning truth. So this ologist studied English and language at St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford, England, and went on to become a writer, co-host of the long-running comedy podcast Answer Me This, and then began a linguistics and etymology podcast called The Illusionist in 2015. She's known as the etymological lodger, and I had so many people sent drool feverish messages

that I should interview her about word origins, and I said to myself, and then, sure, right, how about if I also interview Beyonce, well, I'm at it? I can't get her, but somehow I was able to get her attention via Twitter, and convince her to come to my home, AKA my apartment, and hang out on my couch for an hour and talk language, and to say I like her would be a gross understatement. I'm so into her, she's the best.

So we talk about the fundamental truth that language is always, always changing, whether you want it or not, and about, of course, various word origins, Latin, gender in languages, the Bible, AKA the Oxford English Dictionary, slang, emojis, the pliability of boobs, mediocrity, step parents, babies and glasses, Greek, the romance languages, and more, with host of the Illusionist podcast,

and person who technically for a living researches the origins of language and thus is an etymologist Helen Salzman. Do people put an extra L in there a lot? No, actually, that is not one of the regular spelling mistakes, but they see the Z's and they panic. Do you say Z is in Z or Zebra? Well, I say Z when I'm in Z saying countries, but I'm on your turf, so I've translated it. Look at that. Do you say zebra?

I do say zebra. Is it zebra here? Yeah. So, okay, so here's my re-brick for when I'm in the states. If it's a different word, like Z, Z, or Coriander, cilantro, I'll say the different word, but it is harder for me to use the correct American pronunciation if it's the same word. So it's hard for me to say tomato because it sounds just wrong when I say it, like I can't do it properly. Like my mouth won't form a proper American shape to do the word properly. Tomato, tomato, all let's call the whole thing off. Tomato, tomato. tomato sounds so much fancier. I don't know I think it does. It does. It's not even in English words. Got it from South America. Quick aside, the word tomato comes from the nawhitol, a language of what's known historically as the Aztec Empire, for the swelling fruit. And thus a tomato is what people call the hot girl in the 1920s.

Language experts think this is due to plump, juicy connotations. Now as long as we're just starting this out on the horneous foot, another fun, produce aisle conversation you can have loudly is that avocado comes from the nawhitol for testicle. Now how long have you been interested in language? I remember first becoming interested in language when I was fairly small. I was, I think, seven and I started, I went to very old fashioned schools, so I started learning French and Latin at a very young age. And I was like, oh, that word seemed similar to this word in English.

And it was a bit like when you see a homeland or something where someone's got a wall with lots of newspaper clippings joined together with string. You understand. It's a timeline. So I was like, ah, I wonder if these would have got things in common. And also I grew up in quite a verbose household.

So I was the youngest, I was an accident. Oh, see. So there's quite a bit of time between me and my elder brothers who are both very witty and good at talking. And I just thought, if I'm going to say anything, then I really have to bring my A game. So it's just a form of survival to be verbally deft from a young age. Did you talk early? I don't know because I don't think anyone

was paying attention. But apparently, I was an early reader. My mom says I was an early reader, but I remember her teaching me to read. So I think before that, I was just looking at books with the appearance of reading. You just had a, they're like, why is she wearing bifurcals? She's too. I did have glasses from one and a half.

How did you know? You do really? Yeah, not bifocals till I was 14. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you started losing that. Neurosyidant. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, but there were not many pictures of my childhood. Really? Yeah, they sort of it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it Glasses styles have improved. No, they're always babies and glasses are always cute.

Is it like babies that look like angry little old men? Like who look like all coaches? Yes, exactly. That's a good fun. They're a kindergarten. Yeah. Or like a baby wearing a tiny bow tie. Yes, I guess like an old man in like a diaper with a pacifier isn't as cute.

But when you reverse it, it's good, you know? Oh, I'm fair. So now when did you start making language you're living? When did you start writing professionally? When did you start getting into etymology as a career? Well, I studied some university. I did an English degree, but I did this special course that only 15 people did in the whole university,

and it stopped at 1,400. Again, she took an English language course that stopped at the year 1,400. I just imagine the vellum, the ancient diphthongs, the deteriorated antiquities. Why did it stop at 1,400? You're never going to find anything original to say about Shakespeare. And there's much less to read, which frees up more time for two extra curricula, but also there was a lot of emphasis on older middle English, which I always found very interesting

and there's certain clarity in the literature. They got to the point. They're like, it's a religious allegory, it's a body limerick. And we're gonna die at 35, so you just stick to the point. It's oversimplifying in yet this there's a little kind of truth there. So I was very interested at university,

and then just afterwards a dream etymology job came up at the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh my God. And so I applied for it, and I only got to the second round. I didn't get very far in, because now I know what's involved in being a dictionary otomologist. I realize that I would have been extremely el suited because that is a job that requires a lot of precision, a lot of dispassion. You're supposed

to write dictionary entries with very little character in, they're supposed to be kind of authoritative but not ta jaunty, not funny. And you have to be so methodicalitative, but not jaunty, not funny. Yeah. And you have to be so methodical, and I'm not methodical at all. So not a lot of room for pizzazz. No, except for the entry for pizzazz, if they have enough written citations for pizzazz. Pizzazz, of course, meaning style or flair, vitality.

Now this word emerged in the 1930s, etymologists think from showbiz slang, but for me, Pazaz will forever be tied to the Mexican pizza at Taco Bell, which was first introduced decades ago as yes, a Pazaz pizza. I will always remember my mom having to hang her head out the car window and scream into the order box. When they changed the name to Mexican pizza, I something inside me died. I've been sad about it for decades. I mourned. Okay, also Helen studied English at Oxford, so word, origins, language, etc. And then she said she didn't really do anything with that for about another 12 years when she started the illusionist. But on Answer Me This,

they got a lot of word, origin, questions throughout the year. So she was always kind of flexing that proverbial muscle all along. Did you know when you were studying, when you were getting your degree that you wanted to go into historical language, did you know that etymology may be what something you wanted to do? It just didn't seem like a plausible thing to do, but also I'm very proud at thinking ahead, so I wasn't really thinking much beyond it. When I was little, I was like, I just want to get to university,

because it felt like freedom. And then when I was there, I was just very much enjoying being there, because it was like freedom. And I was like, you just still with the job stuff afterwards, and then that took a decade. So an etymologist may be a linguist, a dictionary writer, a podcaster about language, and also even a murderer, as detailed in Simon Winchester's book, The Professor in the Matt Man,

which is about the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary that began in 1857. And it was led by a professor by the name of James Murray, and the overseeing committee was like, man, one person, Dr. W.C. Minor, has submitted over 10,000 entries and etymologies. We should send him like a muffin basket or a thank you. What a badass! Then they found out Dr. Minor was a civil war doctor who became an inmate in a Nis a asylum for the criminally insane. And then they were like, mmm, still gonna use these definitions of that school. So one of the the very important compilers of the Oxford English

dictionary was a guy who was in prison for murder, but he had a lot of time to sort through written citations of words because they still have to go off written citations of words, because they still have to go off written citations of things to prove that the word existed and the time that it existed and that it's, it means the things that you think it means and they can demonstrate that, they just have to be able to demonstrate everything with written citations, so they collect loads and loads of written examples for words. And also they have to prove that it's important enough and in sustained usage for long enough. So it's not like you could provide 100 written citations

for a word you've just made up. And it would immediately catch on. That is so fetched. But if you could get it to catch on and enough other people to use it could get it in the dictionary, Ali. Little project. Okay, so some of the OEDs added words this year by the by were TGIF,

Burkini, and Haydorade. Some interesting choices. Do you keep up with the OED each year with the new words added? No, because I think that's usually a press release bit of game. Don't you? Because they just want to annoy people with that. That's a good point. They're usually the most annoying words. Yes, exactly. Yeah, they know they're trolling people.

Oh, God, that's so sinister and wonderful. Yeah, I like the relish with which a lot of the dictionaries have taken to the social media age. A lot of them have very salty Twitter accounts. Oh, God, yes. And you learn some good words. But also, the print edition of dictionaries, there's a limit to the number of words they can put in there. So some have to go, it's difficult for words to enter, but there's a lot of room on the internet so they can

they can track those words and something that may only be briefly useful, like on fleek. That can enter the dictionary quickly, but it doesn't necessarily have to stay there if it was just a few years of omfleekness. Omfleek sounds so much better coming with a British accent. I don't even ever say it in quotation marks. Right. I go omfleek. I've never managed to say it in an actually descriptive way.

I don't think anyone other than the original Vine Poster. Abrazzon Fleek, Peach's Mom Row. Is that what her name? Yeah. Good job. How do you know that? Well, I have first studied the Smollinger of Olfling. That's why you're the best.

Oh gosh. But yeah, I'm too old to say it without the quotation marks. Yeah, we all are. No. What point did you get the idea for the illusionist? How did that develop? Right. Well, around 2014, I just had the idea

of doing a show that was called Word Detective. And I was like, what does that mean? So I worked back a bit. And then my friend Roman Mars, who makes 99% invisible just founded radio topia and I knew that he was interested in getting me to do some stuff and he came to stay with me in London in the summer of 2014 and so while he was jet lagged and vulnerable I was walking him around the park and I said I've had an idea for a show it's a bit like your show but for language instead of architecture and design and he was like I've had an idea for a show. It's a bit like your show, but for language,

instead of architecture and design. And he was like, okay. So they dug around for the financing because she wouldn't have been able to do, answer me this, plus the illusionist, plus handle extra time of a day job. And as someone who hasn't mailed her Christmas presents yet in March, I get this.

Podcasting for the first many years was financially rather painful. Oh, sure get this. Like podcasting for the first many years was financially rather painful. Oh, sure. It was cute. Yeah, so that was how it started, who was like, okay, we can make this financially viable. And also it was just a slightly quieter time than podcasting then.

Yeah, it is quite a dear of different shows. Yes, certainly very noisy. So, in a sense, we were then now there are 10 times the number of podcasts. And now, you must have had a bit of a field day when you're first coming up with words that you wanted to explore. I mean, how did you decide which words get in? Well, there's a long Google doc with potential ideas that I've had since before the show began and I have done not that many of those ideas because a lot of it is just what can I actually get done? How can I think to pursue this?

Who can I talk with about it, who will agree to be on the show, or knows about it, what's an angle that is not just going to be really dry? So a lot of it is what am I curious about and what don't I know about, because if I feel like I know where something's going to go, I'm not very interested in making an episode about it, or if it's very familiar, but if, yeah, it's patching up my own ignorance, and I am a team of one, and so actually, although it was pitched as an etymology show, it hasn't really been a lot about that because what it turns out and far more interested in is

human behaviour and how things are applicable now, like what's resonant to people now. So rather than being a historian, Helen prefers to look into the current usage of words in terms and how they kind of roll around our brains and out of our face. And then it's finding bits of information to give to people. And so yeah, it's gone in a very different direction to what I thought. But sometimes it's like, I'll have insomnia. I remember I had insomnia and often what I do is I wonder whether this word comes from where I think it does. And then if it didn't, I think, oh, that's

worth making a note of it, it's surprising. So I remember in the first few months of the illusionist, I thought, I wonder, I'll just check in the night whether, whether step as in, um, step parent just means you're a step away from the biological lineage and it doesn't. It means grief. I thought, ah, and if I didn't know that, then a lot of listeners are not going to know that. And so I firstly was trying to get someone to speak, who was from a museum of orphans and abandoned children in London. So I thought they would be interesting on the history of the family in that respect, and they would not speak to me.

Really? Yeah, and then I thought, I'll do it differently, because you have a lot of wicked stepmothers in folklore, and Aaron Mankey from the podcast Law, we were kind of internet friends, and I thought, wouldn't you be interested? And it was just before his show was really too big for him to be way too busy to do this. And he came with a lot of fascinating research about how you didn't really have a step-parent unless someone had died because divorce was uncommon and therefore step-parents got a pretty bad rap. I also put a Facebook

post saying if you've got feelings about step in your own family existence just record yourself talking about them. I've got a somewhat complicated family and have several step periods. Although I never really call them that, I've always just known them as their first name. It could be a bit jarring to explain how you related to this person you refused to call your dad. And that was very compelling. So a lot of people said, you know what, I'd never consciously thought about it and now I have, I think I hate it. Really?

Yeah. So it's just a very interesting montage to me of how people dealt with this word as children or as step parents or step siblings or the different words that they use. I think it's Sweden bonus is the term, which I felt was much more positive. That is more positive. Yeah. It's my bonus, dad. Right. Right. Right.

Yeah, you don't think of someone who's getting angry at your tea ball games and secretly hates you. You know, right. Yeah. Who's just trying to take all of your parents' money and then leave. Yeah, tell them and leave. Like when you look at a house and there's a bonus room

and you're like so much possibility, right, more than expected. Yes, because it's a bonus. It's a bonus room and you're like so much possibility. Right. More than expected. Yes. Because it's a bonus. It's a bonus. Yeah. So side note, the word bonus comes from the Latin for bone for a good thing. The word bonus comes from the Latin for bon, a good thing.

So somewhere there is a sweet, nice stepdad driving carpool or a stepmom working her ass off to put together a cool birthday party and y'all it's okay to shed a tear about this bonus folks. You're good. And now is there something about the elasticity of language? I feel like that's kind of what we all love about etymology but is that rooted? Is your interest rooted in human behavior and how we keep morphing things? Yes, my interest very much in human behavior and how we keep morphing things? Yes, my interest very much in human behavior. And I think that's what partly got me interested in etymology in the first place, was just a lot of it is a little idiosyncratic and you can see these signs of how people would have behaved several hundred years ago.

So there's a lot of mistakes in how words have evolved. It's not necessarily logical. And I think that was appealing, It's not these straight parts. Another thing I learned about doing the show was that I'm not a language prescriptivist. I was such a pedant when I was a child. It was so nightmare, particularly to my mom. And now that... But it's unsustainable. When you know anything about how language behaves, you can't keep it up because there's just so many things contradicting it.

And there's a lot of cognitive dissonance if you want to keep up your pedantry but also after a while I was like you're carrying around a lot of pointless anger, it's just not necessary. So that was a positive surprise I think. It was just being amenable to how language is going to change and has always changed, particularly the English language that has evolved in much more rapidly than a lot of other languages that are deliberately kept the same. But if you know about English, you're like, okay, this is what happens. People use it the ways that they need it to be used. So if there is a gap, then people will fill it with either a word that they've decided to use it in a different way, or they will invent one. Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen.

And, you know, a lot of it is driven by that kind of necessity. You can't control it. And even if it doesn't necessarily make sense, it's never made sense. And so, you might not like it, but you have to understand that this is a linguistic process. Now, what is it about English that has made it evolve so rapidly? And also, we're having studied Latin. Where do you see we grab the roots from Latin, from Greek? Oh, yeah. English is such a lot of a language, which is why it's so fascinating. It's a problem as well, which is more to do with its later history. So English kind of came about originally

from a bunch of invasions. So there were native languages in the British Isles, but then there was the Roman invasion, which I think was 50 BC to about 400 AD, and then Germanic forces invaded around 500 AD and then Vikings and then 1066 the Normans, so you get a lot of French influence but also a lot of Latin through French. And so at that point you had the language of governance being Latin but then the language of posh people being French but then like kind of normal people still speaking

Anglo-Saxon, which is like quite a Germanic version of Anglo-Saxon. And then that kind of coalesces into middle English that then becomes modern English. So I think about 70% of English words have some Latin roots, but a lot of those Latin roots would have come from Greek, or they didn't come directly from the Romans. and then you've got what I call you, domestically, Britain's enthusiastic foreign policy. So it's not only people coming in and invading the country, it's also us going to other parts of

the world, a lot of other parts of the world and sticking our dicks in them. And so Englishes happened in lots of different places, but also we found words in those places and brought them back, or we brought back things we found like potatoes and thus the word with them. So that happens a ton. So you've got like this very idiosyncratic thing. Whereas French, you've got an academy keeping French the same. So they decide on whether you're allowed gender-neutral pronouns or whatever. They don't like this. It's a very gendered language. Whereas English doesn't have that kind of control and is resisted that kind of control. They've tried and it hasn't really taken off. By the way, if you hear something that sounds like vacuuming, it's because there's someone outside my door vacuuming. I run a very professional podcast studio here. It's just vacuuming.

People have heard it before. You've heard it before. Yeah. So why did Latin steal from Greek so much? That is a really good question. I think because you had a lot of Greek power before you had ancient Roman Empire power. And also there is a lot of cultural crossover. So just a lot of, there's basically like three parents for most languages.

And so again, it's just going back to the root word and then it being in different locations evolved into slightly different versions of the words. And so again, it's just going back to the root word and then it being in different locations, evolved into slightly different versions of the words. And when it comes to finding the root word of something, what's been one of the more surprising entries or what are some of your favorite etymologies? Because there's a story behind every all of them. Yes, although frustrating often the story is like, we don't know. Yeah. The pathway doesn't go very far, particularly with slangs, because they don't have the written citations,

so they can't prove where a slang came from, because it's using people's mouths way before it's written down. I really like the etymology of the word mediocre, and I don't know why it is, but it means halfway up a jagged hill. Really? Yeah.

What an evocative thing. God, I never knew that one. And does that, because I would have thought to get halfway up a jagged hill, you have to be really quite good. Yeah, that doesn't seem like an easy path or just like the absence of any particular quality. It seems like a hard climb.

Yeah, how many jagged hills were these people climbing? I don't know. Must be quite a lot. And you can only get halfway up was hard climb. Yeah, how many jagged hills were these people climbing? I don't know. Must be quite a lot. And you can only get halfway up was a burn. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we just scampered right to the top before breakfast. Yeah, so I find that very fascinating.

And I don't understand why it is. It seems like quite the story. Yeah, I didn't know that. Another fun, recent, etymology discovery of mine, not of anyone other people already knew about it, is the word explode, which meant to drive someone off stage using applause. So if the audience didn't like an act, they would clap to drive them off the stage.

I know it doesn't seem that intuitive from the etymology, but some clapping can really hurt. Intent is everything. Sim the law. Have you ever heard the etymology for Bucksum? No, that sounds fun. Such a good one. This is one of my favorite etymologies. It comes from pliable and then compliant and then friendly and then beautiful and then sexy and then boobs. Wow. So it wasn't that the boobs were pliable. No. So that the person was pliable,

not to sexy trait to some. Evidently, yeah. Wow. So which is one of those weird twists and turns that you're just thinking about it having to morph at every stage of the way. Yeah. Googling Bucks and Woman will not side note

get you any returns of pliable branches. Now speaking of searches Where does Helen go to first uncover a word's history? She says and to monline and dictionary.com are her preferred sources as She's constantly traveling with her husband and she can't haul around a shelf full of dusty reference books. Come on And you're kind of wandering about, which is what a life you and your husband. Or a ridiculous. A scientist, physicist. Yeah. You guys are, I would say that you're traipsing about.

Yeah, traipsing. Yeah. Gating about. And so you're about. So you bob around. Yeah, we bob around to different countries. And so you're a wandering etymologist. That's so romantic.

A wandering audio-tainer. If you would have thought as a college student, that you would get to travel the world while doing etymology. I know, right? bananas. And getting paid. Living the dream. Living the absolute dream.

Well, can you even allow myself to have that dream because I thought you don't want to be just pointed? Well, and podcasts didn't dream. Well, I can't even allow myself to have that dream because I thought you don't be just pointed. Well, and podcasts didn't exist. No, they didn't. When it comes to like a goal with etymology, do you feel like with language, you can use your platform to have people see each other differently? Do you ever feel like you can fix some ills of the world with language? Yeah, when I'm feeling evangelical. I think so it is an entertainment show first and foremost, and it's supposed to distract people on a commute or when they can't sleep or when they're feeling

anxious or whatever. But then it's just when you get into language and you're thinking about all the different ways it can be used. I think a lot of it is about empathy because the more sensitive you become to all that, you become more aware of your own usage and how other people might interpret it and the various things they might mean with their usage. So it forces you to think about other people more on their communication and the endless variety there of. And also just if you get into your hang-ups, you can often realise that a lot of them are about snobbery or a way of controlling people almost by telling them that they're saying something in a way you disagree with. And so removing yourself from that or encouraging other people just

to not focus on that. I think that is quite important because it's just more compassionate. And the etymology of compassionate? It's late Latin for calm plus patty so to suffer together. And yes, the root of passion is to suffer, but compassion is to feel the pain of others, which is terribly moving. So I'd say that is the more serious thing. And you mentioned a live show you did recently was about gender pronouns and preferred usage. Yeah, yeah, I've been doing a lot of work about gender in language. That's all festering into something, not quite sure what form it all emerging yet. I told that show throughout 2019,

and now you can hear it on the Illusionist Pod Feed, look for the episode called No Title, and also go to theillusionist.org slash No Title for a few additional visuals as well. So it's about things like titles, like, Mr. and Mrs. and Muz, and, yeah, and gender pronouns, and just how, to me, and gender pronouns, and just how to me having gender in the English language doesn't really make much sense, I don't think it's necessary. And some languages have far

less gender in, like there are a lot of languages that have no gender pronouns at all, languages where they don't use titles. And I'm curious to know whether the absence of those things has any effect on the way that people communicate with each other or relate to each other. And it's certainly not the case that languages that have no gender pronouns don't have gender imbalance, but I'm just thinking why don't we default to gender neutrality and then people can always opt in to a gendered pronoun if they want. But I feel like it would save a lot of bother if it was just default. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think that there is resistance to that? That's a really good question. I think some people fear

change and change can constantly or unconsciously to people just be almost insulting because it's like you're wrong rather than just you do a thing and it's not necessarily wrong but it's not necessarily the permanent way and I think also some people are just not comfortable with the idea of a different kind of society. And I think, I mean, I say this even in myself, like when you've been raised in this sort of very binary gender way, and there's certain limits and so on, I felt like I kind of molded a lot of myself to working around the constraints of that,

just to kind of optimize the way that I could exist in this thing I didn't really agree with and make it as irrelevant to myself as possible, but I couldn't possibly escape it. But then if that crumbles, who am I? There are some people who've adjusted themselves a lot more to living in the patriarchy or whatever and take advantage of that, male and female. And then if it's taken away, some people are like, yes, like I feel so freed. And other people are like,

yeah, who am I and what am I supposed to do and how am I supposed to benefit? Like they don't know what the benefit is to them of the Pharaoh society, because it's not, they might think it's not. So I think that is scary to people. And some people want neat categorization of everything. But I have a lot of arguments as to why, you know,

it's very easy to give people the right pronoun. It doesn't really affect, it doesn't really affect you. But also you was originally a plural pronoun that we also use in the singular. Oh. Yeah. And people have adjusted to that because they've had a few hundred years to deal with it.

And so that's- Was it before? Oh, so you was the plural form, and thou was the singular form, and the informal form, and you would use you to be polite, and then people were so polite, you just became the dominant form. Really?

Yeah. And people can handle that. So they, I mean, it's not such a leap. People use they as a kind of general pronoun anyway, like when they're not sure who they're referring to. So if I said, oh, I'm going to stay with my cousin and you might say, oh, where do they live? Yeah. Without it being a political thing. But as soon as you introduce the politics to it, some people are their fuses lit. I wonder if part of it is just a resentment that in newer, maybe generation gets a benefit of something that we didn't, you know.

Yes. I think about what my life would have been like if I weren't gendered so much and I wonder if anyone just just pissed that they're like, you get that? I didn't get that. Right. Yes. I definitely think that's some part of that, which is the worst reason to withhold something

from someone, the absolutely worst, most petty bitchy. Yeah. I'm very interested in how languages used to manipulate, and in positive and negative ways, it can be used for that a lot. And so I was reading this, like, 80s, classic of business schools, kind of manual, which is about the language of persuasion and it was talking about just how It's much easier to double down on something that seems like a bad decision than to admit that it was bad

Do something different. Oh my god. No, you're starting that in just all sorts of things. That was in an instructional book Yeah, that's horrifying. I know. That explains a lot of our apologists. No, it really does, doesn't it? You start seeing it everywhere. I keep wanting to do an episode just called Apologies with someone who was a good mediator who can just explain the best way to apologize. Yeah, that could just be a whole mini series in itself. There's so much to apologize for. I have actually since we recorded done an episode interviewing some apologyologists, dissecting apologies is so interesting and so useful because it makes you realise how many apologies,

particularly public apologies, are actually not apologising at all. You can hear that episode at theillusionist.org slash sorry. Can we do some Patreon questions? Oh yeah, okay. This is rapid fire. It's lightning round. We'll get to as many as we can. So before listening to questions from Patreon, there may be some Info on some items and services

that I use and like and who support the show. Also each week a portion of the proceeds from ads goes to a charity of theologist choosing. And this week, Helen shows popstheclub.com. And their mission is to transform the lives of teens who have loved ones in prison or in jail. Pop stands for pain of the prison system. And they establish these high school clubs

for these kids to gather, they can be empowered through creative expression, writing, poetry, emotional support, and they also publish a book full of the student's creative work writing and poetry. So it's pops theclub.com is who hell impact. Okay, Peter on questions. And I'm going to go in order received. So I didn't categorize these. It's very fair. It's very fair. Adrienne Van Halem asks,

what's the origin of the phrase red herring? Oh, crap. I did know this from on to me this. But I can't remember. Okay, I'll answer the other side. Okay, I look this up. And supposedly it's from smoked herrings turning red when they're cured and fugitives

leaving trails of them to fool and confuse bloodhounds. So a red herring is like a gross trail of fish that a dog thinks is you. This episode started off so horny. I don't know what happened. What's happening? Christina Choi says, do you have a favorite word in history of?

Other than mediocre. Yeah, mediocre was good. Christina Choi says, do you have a favorite word in history of? I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think.

I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think.

I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. I don't think. What was the last word that you learned? Do you remember? Oh. There were words that I have to look up every time, like, like, LaCuna. I just cannot remember what LaCuna means.

It's a great, great word. You know how I learned that word? Did you ever see eternal sunshine? I did. And that was how I learned off the word, but I still haven't the best. A LaCuna, are you ready for this? It's a book binding term, meaning a chunk of the glued pages that have detached from

the spine and are missing. And in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mine, which was written by the genius, Charlie Kaufman, the company that can wipe away specific memories is called lacuna incorporated. But why remember a destructive love affair? Here at Lecuna, we have perfected a safe, effective technique for the focused erasure of troubling memories. Just can't, it just won't fix in my mind. Well, there's a blank spot where Lecuna should be. Yeah, there's a Lecuna.

Ah! Where there's a Lecuna. That's how to remember it. Thank you. Boom. I really guided me through that. Erica Smith asked, do you have a favorite website to research the etymology of words or phrases? Etym online. Strongly recommend. Boom. I really guided me through that. Erica Smith asked, do you have a favorite website to research the etymology of words or phrases? Etym online. Strongly recommend.

Awesome. Bob White. Hi Bob. Just says, this is an imperative, not even an inquisitive. Explain Q. Q-U-E-U-E. Well, it's where you stand in line with people. In French, we got the word from French. In French, Q is pronounced Q and means tail. So that's very Q, isn't it? Like a dog's, a little Q.

Oh, that's adorable. Yeah, I do love that having context for all these words. It's like seeing someone's face and being like, okay, and then getting to know them as a person. Do you know? Yeah. I love it. Katie Cobb.

Why is the F word so versatile? It's a great word, isn't it? A lot of the swears are very flexible, but particularly that one, because it can be noun, verb, affectionate, sexual insult. Yeah, it's very handy. Yeah, what is the fucking etymology of that word? Oh, that is a hard one to know because it's old, but also because it's kind of slangy. So when people make up an acronym for it, it's definitely not an acronym.

It's like hundreds of years older than that. But a lot of the etymologies of swears are just a bit unsatisfactory because they don't really know. But it wasn't such a rude word as it is now, like the sea bomb wasn't such a rude word as it is now, like religious swears were more rude in like 14th century when these swears were around and body parts and sexual ones, not so much as the religious ones. But yeah, I think when people are down on swearing, you just think, well, what word can you use? And as many varied ways as the F-bomb. It is the Swiss Army knife, I'm cussing.

There's nothing it can't do. That is a wonderful way to describe it. I still can't say the C-word. That's not a word that comes... I mean, I think that's more of a British word, but... Yeah, I didn't realize... That's been very educational to me making this show about language just I knew that there were differences in American vocabularies versus English but I was less aware of the nuances of usage because I hadn't spent as much time in the state and there were certain things that don't realize until they pointed out and yes so I think the fourth episode, the illusionist, was about the sea bum.

And in Britain, it is a strong swear. It's one of the strongest, but you still get people who kind of, it can be an affectionate one. I, are you old sea bum? In context, you wouldn't say that to someone you weren't very confident, would understand the intent. Of course, yeah. This almost uptails, but Daniel Rivera asked, what is your biggest word related pet peeve?

Oh, I have a lot, but I'm always trying to confront my prejudices and some of them I think will never leave, but I can just not give them more room. And then others have really dissipated over the years. But at the moment, I am really keeping an eye on the word community. And I think that people using it should think, is there another word I can use? Because I think it's being used thoughtlessly. And so when people say the black community, or the gay community, that sounds like it's 40 people that meet in a village hall, and

they all have the same viewpoint. And I can understand why something might be quite specific. So you might have the gay community in a particular city, but when you're talking about millions of people, it's too small a word for that. And I heard someone say the female community and I was like, that is half the world, that is not appropriate. So if you're using community, I think there are different nouns you could use or different ways to reframe like the adjective that you're using. Like science community, you could say scientists. So part of it to me is an efficiency thing, but partly also there's a kind of condescension in it sometimes. And I'm always thinking, why is that there? What's it kind of covering over?

Well, four and a half years on, I still feel the same, but I do accept that this is what the word means now. So you won, people, you won. What would be a better word in the context of the black or the gay community? I could give you completely. Yeah, often it's people. People. Yeah, film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, people, gay people. You know, but then it's like what you're trying to say with such a big generalization Should you break that down a bit more? Mm-hmm. So Indicative perhaps what you're saying doesn't reflect the thoughts of everyone, right? Just be careful of the generalizations. Yeah Okay, that's a great note

Danielle Rivera also wants to know how many people assume that you study insects or that you have a podcast about it. Quite a lot. And confusingly, right behind your head, some beautiful insects, I have a big gross dead bug collection on one wall of my apartment and I'm just realizing how creepy that must be for visitors. But Helen is very wonderful and she's compassionate. But yes, etymology and entomology. But I can understand why people would mix them up because they're not exactly words you need

in your everyday vocabulary. No. And yeah, I wouldn't necessarily remember if I didn't particularly care about either. Oh sure, yeah, they're not, they don't roll off tongue often. So when people get it wrong, I think at least they tried. They tried they tried. They're so close. They busted out a tricky word. So close. I'd be like, if someone bought you a shoe and it was a seven and a half, not a me. You'd be like, fully looking out close in it. But if I had a dollar for every time someone has told me

the following joke, people who can't tell entomology from etymology bug me in ways I can't put into words, well, I wouldn't be talking to you right now because I would have had enough money to buy a hot air balloon made of solid gold, which was so heavy, it didn't take off and in fact plunged to the ground crushing me beneath it. Which is actually an upside to me, not having received payments for tolerating the joke.

People who can't tell entomology from etymology, bug me in ways I can't put into words. But yes, if you're wondering, I have heard the joke. Yeah, you have heard the joke. IV Cratchfield wants to know, can you ask the origin of coxix? Well, that's a really interesting one. I can look it up. Sure. I don't keep all the words in my brain. A coxix, side note, is a tailbone. So technically, there were two

present, while recording this. Also present present next to us on the coffee table is a hulking 5 pound dictionary of etymology that I've had for 20 years. It's one of the first things I'd rescue should all of my belongings become threatened by fire. And that's not true. I'd probably run out of the house without pants and then just order a new book online with the insurance money. But anyway, we looked after you Ivy.

Oh, this is good actually. It's from the Greek word, cuckoo. Woo! Supposedly called by the ancient Greek physician, Galen, who was very influential in the history of medicine, because the bone in human supposedly resembles a cuckoo's beak. Wow. Your butt bones are bird beak.

Ah! Wasn't that nice in the literative? Oh, well, there you go. I'm so glad they're asked. Thanks, Ivy. Lovely question. Mads Clement wants to know, what's the best way to take down linguistic prescriptivists?

Every time someone's like, that's a made up word. I want to do murder. Yeah, well, all the words are made up, ultimately. There you go. Yeah, language evolves and you can't stop it. But you can be swept away by the tide if you just stand there, not moving. I like that idea once again. Language evolves and you can't stop it but you can be swept away by the tide if you just stand there

not moving. Katie Spino wants to know can you do the thing that the dad and my big fec reek wedding did and trace any word back to Greece. The etymology of kimono is Japanese. The key means where. The mono means thing. So kimono is a thing you wear. M-Maur wants to know, what is your opinion on starting essays with? Webster's dictionary defines excess. That is desperate.

Yeah, don't do it. And also, don't start anything with, it is a truth universally acknowledged in a private and prejudice riff, because I see a lot of journalists starting articles with that and I'm like, you're out of ideas. What happens in the next paragraph, if you're trying to do that, beginning? What happens next?

And then you can work back to opening with something more relevant. So that's tired, played out, done. It's rather tired and played out, but also it's what, what is it you're trying to say by citing that? It feels like, you know, that's your training wheels and you're not ready to take them off your bike.

Annothamsen, oh, mentioned that unnecessary use and someone else answered that about back in the day when you took out an ad in a paper, are they charged by the letter of the neighbors? Oh, unfortunately that is made up, but it's a really wonderful story that I appreciate. It is just that American English is somewhat more streamlined than British English, which I appreciate.

So British English might have the use because it's like, oh, a lot of those words came from French. And in American English, you're like, why do we need it? Because you can't hear it. It doesn't add anything. Get rid of it. Or like theatre, you know,

ER rather than we have it still, RE, and it doesn't make sense that we still have that. But I think we're in England still attached to the past and have resisted attempts to make the language more logical whereas in the States you're less fetted by that history. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. I totally bought the thing that it was. It's a great story. A lot of the really attractive stories unfortunately are false because easier to make up a great story than to actually have one in life. Well, then you've just debunked some flim flam. Oh, shit. I have loved that. Hunkering dreams, that's me. No, I loved it. Ray Cash wants to know, did all language evolved

from an origin language? There's like three origin languages, but then I think it's not even that straightforward because there are some where they don't really act like any other languages Like Basque in northern Spain. It's not like Spanish, but it's also not really like anything It's exciting. It finished. That's very unusual. Oh, yeah about that Yeah, dad from my big fat Greek wedding. Good luck tracing Finnish words back to Greek. So they think three origin languages perhaps? Yeah, okay.

Yes. I was surprised by what are Romance languages. I thought I knew them and then is English not a Romance language? It's sort of, Romance languages is broadly languages that were heavily influenced by Latin. So Spanish, Italian, French, English, 60-80%. Yeah, I didn't know that. I thought it totally that it was.

Carrie Streder wants to know, are there any synonyms for the most hated word moist? Moist. Do you hate the word moist? I'm at this point. It's an underdog. Right. You know what I mean? Like, can moist live? can it just do its business?

I don't hate it. It's fine. I don't hate it. I tend to think of, like, do or grass more than I think of. Well, that's a lovely, that's a lovely form of moisture. I suppose people who hate it may be thinking of bodily crevices. I think. And that's their prejudice showing.

Yes it is. Yeah. Because other words as well like damp, I mean if you're moist from the rain like a raincoat damp, is that better? Is that worse? A bodily crevice could also be damp. Sure. I feel like moist has a certain heat to it that damp lacks.

Stimulus, right? Yes. Chilliness. It's good that we're figuring these things out. Anyone who hates that word, hopefully, you hate it more now. Christopher and Barbara Wastner, how do you feel about people using emojis instead of words? Which emoji are you?

Well, grandma here knows that she's outmoded and not, I don't speak emoji. I don't use them. My mom sent me one the other day. I was a shock. Because she's on board. People don't even send them to you. They do, but I don't necessarily interpret them in the way they're supposed to be interpreted. Because I don't understand how you're supposed to use them

and how they affect what has been said. Because my assumption years ago was, they're just reiterating what's in the words. But I don't know. Is that case? They're influencing how the words are supposed to be interpreted but that is the part that I don't know so it's a bit of a problem I think that I don't speak emoji. Emoji do provide some of the tone and facial expressions that are otherwise hard to convey in writing compared to when you're

speaking with someone and last my stay, I do find myself often using the grimmer, so the half molten head. But what I don't like is that the visuals are controlled by someone else. So if you were handwriting, you couldn't, you probably wouldn't do your own emoji. There's like hundreds of them and it would take a long time. So I find that a bit prescriptive by Unico deciding what can be expressed. So we may only have 26 letters in the English language and some punctuation, but they there's a lot of combinations mathematically.

Do you have any emojis that really urquire? I think it would be unfair to pick on someone I don't understand like what the nail Von Escher means or the dancing one. Helen, I got you. So does emojipedia.com. So according to them, the nail polish emoji is often used to display an era of non-shelence or indifference. And the dancing emoji is used to represent a sense of fun or as a positive affirmation, like saying, great. Also, the study of pictures representing thoughts is called curiology. And I do have an emoji expert lined up. Should I do it? Are y'all nail polish or dancing about it? In terms of speaking in gifs too, how do you feel about that? I, again, I don't fully understand, but I do enjoy,

I do enjoy that, that more. It seems inventive. But I think it's also because there you often get a facial expression, a moving facial expression, that means more to me than a kind get a facial expression, a moving facial expression. That means more to me than a cartoon facial expression or someone who's like sticking their tongue out and there's a dollar bill on it. In emoji. I don't know that one either. Well, I painted a picture of me. If I put a dollar bill on my tongue now, you'll understand what the emoji is doing. Dollar, dollar, bills, y'all.

But actually, this brings up the point of GIF versus GIF. Yeah, right. And you pronounce it the way that the person who coined it says, it should be. Exactly. But I say GIF because then people know what you're talking about. Well, which is it? I, well, it's a, it's a, it's a recently made up word.

I, I think that if they wanted it to be pronounced GIF, they probably should have gone with a j instead of a g. All right. I'm, I know I'm rebelling against the originator, but I'm on gif because it's less equivocal comp mix up with the lemons. Oh, well, what do you think is gonna win out over time? Gif, gif, gif, gif.

All right, I am a shock that we say different things. I thought it'd be like if someone says your name is Helene. Yeah, right. And then, but then again, if enough people call you Helene, your name is Helene. Right, yeah. When I'm tweaked the pronunciation of the last name, so... That's what it is.

Right, that's what it is now. I don't even know what it was two generations ago, because immigrant names, they mutate. Do you know what it means? It's like salt, salt, vendor, something like that, probably. Oh, yeah. Well salt was currency, so it's a useful condiment. This dollar bill on my tongue emoji.

That's what that means. If people started doing that in real life where they acted a lot more like emoji and they carried the props around with them. Then maybe I could get on board. All you really need to know is that if you get an eggplant text, right, it's a lascivious answer. Yeah, better be from your husband. Oh, Tyler Q says first off, huge illusionist fan, come back to Melbourne.

I promise we won't poison you again. It's not your fault. It's not your fault I got in Australia. It's my fault. Was it? It's not your fault. It's not your fault I got in Australia. It's my fault. Was it? It's not my fault. A lot of Australians were self-blaming. It's not their fault.

And also a wonderful healthcare that's free for Brits. Appreciate it immensely. Helen had been working really, really hard. She was exhausted. She had tons of lightest and she woke up with a swollen neck. She had an infection in her neck. She needed surgery and she was in intensive care on a breathing tube, being monitored to make sure her blood wasn't poisoned.

Ah, trooper, she podcasted from her hospital bed, and she now has an awesome scar and a good story. I mean, if you have to get stuck anyway, my recommend tells my news, it's really beautiful. Food's amazing, the people are very sweet, and there's some magnificent wildlife. Good to know, I'll ask you all the surgery. Finns and cheeses, you don't have to have the surgery, you can just go.

But Tyler, thank you, does apologize. Thank you, Tyler. It's not your fault. He does ask, why are a lot of science-based words like Species Names said in Latin? Yeah, that's a really good question. Partly, I think because it's kind of an international language. So, scientists might not all speak English or French or German or whoever discovered a thing, but they might have all tapped into Latin.

I think the other thing is that Latin still has a lot of status, even though the Roman Empire kind of collapsed, sort of, 1600 years ago. So people associated it with study, intelligence. It was propagated by religion, like by Christianity, being performed in Latin and by kind of high level politics and stuff like that, that has helped propagate Latin for hundreds of years after the Roman Empire fell apart. For more on that, please enjoy the classical archaeology episode on Ancient Rome. Yeah, but it still has this reputation of things being classier and more intelligent, and that is a really good con to pull.

It's a long con. It's a long con. And it's still happening. People are still coining new Latin words. There's a radio station in Finland, I made an episode about that has done a news broadcast in Latin every week since 1989. Third news in June 2019. They stopped broadcasting the Latin news. And obviously words like aeroplane have no Latin equivalents. Yeah. They have to make those up and computer. But I interviewed a guy who coined words for that and he said, well, it's no different

really to how computer didn't exist in English. And then it had to be invented when people started having computers or internet. Yeah. So actually, it's fine. Props to Timo Pccannon, a Finnish Latin professor. And for more on this you can see the illusionist episode number five titled Latin Lives. Okay. Yeah, showed me. I mean, I remember learning Latin. We just learned so many words for kill. You could get you.

So that's bludgeoning. Yeah, there were so many like, but of course, it's useful. Yeah, I mean, in those times. Yeah, it's really indicative of what they were interested in. Yes. Yeah, we didn't learn anything that interesting. How disappointing. Oh, it was a very, I just remember being like, this is quite gory. Yeah.

There's another word for kill. Yeah, it's slightly different ways. There's so many inventive ways to destroy a person. What do you hate the most about your job? I hate myself. I'm having to spend this amount of time with my talking and my thoughts and how limited I feel in my mental capacity. So there's that.

Also sometimes it's quite lonely because you're on your own a lot producing stuff. So that, and I hate the technological technological side but I have to do it I do find it boring and often frustrating and often it's three in the morning I just really need to get an episode out and some things going wrong and I don't understand why. Do you work several weeks ahead or are you finishing an episode? Yeah because I finished an episode an hour before it goes. Oh yeah like no minutes. Yeah. Oh god that makes me feel so much better. Oh I think it's weird when people wear a head.

What if something changes? What if something comes up, do you think, well, now's the time to do that? Right, okay, that makes you feel so much better. I figured because you are so successful that you just have them lined up and they just come right up. No, I'm just the most tragically disorganized person.

And it's got worse as well. Like I was always bad at planning ahead. And now, since I got ill actually last year, I lost a lot of time that I would usually use at least banking some interviews to get ahead on the podcast. But also, I think what's happening in the back of my mind is, well, you could have planned ahead, but you might get stuck in hospital in Tasmania and never go there. Hmm.

So you're using it as an excuse. I think sob-consciously I am. That's fine. Yeah, just to be absolutely terrible at forward planning. That's great. We all do that ridiculous, and we just get my shit together. Yeah, this hasn't improved at all since we recorded this in 2019. It's bad. What is your favourite thing about your job or about word origins?

Oh, oh, learning is great. That's a real privilege in a job. The people I've met through, podcasting, that is delightful. And getting to spend time in listeners' brains. That's amazing. Yeah. Creepy. I've just made it sound creepy. Yeah, I guess. Goodbye, your internal monologue. I'm here now. Do you have a favorite thing about word origins?

Hmm, do I? Do I? Favorite thing. I like when someone has a rigid idea about how things should be and there's just so many examples in history of why they're not like that. That's useful to me. Disproving people. See if I can just transform society through the media of light entertainment. It's about words. I would say that you already are. And thank you for doing that. No, you're so welcome. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing so many words of me. It is so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, etymology. Yeah, etymology and entymology. And entymology, yes. Thanks for not being bugged by it. I know you hate ponsents. So Helen's ultimate, how much do you adore her? The answer is a lot. So keep asking smart people, stupid questions, even if you have an internet crush on them and they are in your apartment politely having to stare up at a wall of dead cicadas.

Now for more of Helen's wit and word wisdom, go just immediately subscribe to the illusionist. She is Helen Zaltzman on Twitter and Instagram and Illusionist Show on Twitter. More links are in the show notes. We are at Oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Allie Ward with one L on both. And for pins and hats and totes and shirts, go to Oligiesmerch.com. Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lipo for admonining the wonderful oligee's Facebook group.

Thank you interns Harry Kim and Kayla Patton. Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for Assistant Editing and some research this week and of course Steven Ray Morris of the podcast and C Jurassic Right for stitching all these elements together. Now at the end of each week I tell you a secret, this week's secret. I've been going down a little bit of an Instagram hole watching videos of bot fly removal. There's this fly, lays the neck in your skin and then there's like a worm the size of a baby carrot in there.

And they just pull it out, wriggling. And at first you just see the head, and then this thing comes out, oh boy. Rather pear-shaped, it gets bigger and bigger toward the end, and then it just pops out. Oh man. That's enough for the secret. Goodbye. Haccadermy College, Homiology, Cryptozoology, Lysology,

Danosingology, Meteorology, Neurology, Nephology, Seriology, Homology, The Lysology. The Lysology.

The Lysology. I saved Latin. What did you ever do? I saved Latin. What did you ever do?