harangue

If you harangue someone, you verbally attack them in a confrontational way, usually for quite a long time. Harangue is also a noun, so you can ‘deliver a harangue’ (think Trump, immigrants and pets).

People have been haranguing each other about all sorts since the late 16th century, when this word first appeared in English. It comes from an Old Italian term ‘aringo’, meaning ‘public assembly’ or ‘a place for public speaking’. This word is from a Medieval Latin word ‘harenga’, which referred to a speech delivered in a public setting. And for a time, a ‘harangue’ was a term for any formal, impassioned speech, often by a political or military leader. Figures like Napoleon and General Patton were known for delivering harangues – impassioned, sometimes aggressive addresses to inspire and rally their troops.

In the late 17th century ‘harangue’s meaning gradually shifted to the one it has today of a long, aggressive or scolding lecture or rant. This might simply be because there was a cultural shift in the way we perceive speeches – things that used to be motivational or persuasive were now seen as tiresome or irritating.

The official Guinness World Record for the longest lecture marathon belongs to Arvind Mishra of India. Mishra delivered a lecture on scientific computation at Graphic Era University in Dehradun, India, which lasted 139 hours, 42 minutes and 56 seconds in March 2014. Numb bums all round, I’m sure.

slapstick

Personally, I’m not a fan of slapstick comedy. That whole brand of wackiness just doesn’t really do it for me. But, I have always wondered why it’s called that. Thank god for the internet.

Harlequin – that’s a natty outfit

To find the answer, we have to travel to 16th-century Italy, and the commedia dell’arte (which literally translates as ‘comedy of the profession’ – sounds hilarious, right?), an early form of improvised bawdy theatre performed by a troupe of professional actors, often in marketplaces and town squares. Commedia dell’arte uses stock characters, or ‘masks’, each of which always wear the same costumes and make-up, and use the same physical gestures. The most recognisable of these to you and me is probably Harlequin (also known as the scheming servant Arlecchino), who was accompanied by Scaramouche (still don’t know if he can do the fandango), Pierrot (a sad clown), and star-crossed lovers Isabella and Flavio (who I think are on Strictly Come Dancing), among others. The plays themselves were largely improvised, with the actors using their knowledge of these stock characters and their relationships with each another to create comedic situations and dialogue.

There was often lots of physical comedy in the commedia dell’arte, which is where our slapstick comes in. Actors used a club-like object made of two pieces of wood to produce a loud smacking noise. Originally called a ‘batacchio’ or ‘bataccio’, the Italian word for a knocker on a door, the English gave it the rather more obvious name of ‘slapstick’. Due to the fact that you could hit people with it very gently and still make a loud comedy noise that sounds like you’ve proper walloped them, it was actually one of the earliest theatrical special effects. It wasn’t long before the slapstick became a symbol of any type of highly physical comedy, and the word was then used to refer to that type of comedy itself.

The OG slapstick (still looks quite painful to me)

While you aren’t likely to see anyone perfoming commedia dell’arte in your local market square these days, it’s had a significant influence on the development of modern theatre. Lots of the stock characters and comedic situations continue to be adapted and reused in TV, film and literature. Most recently Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith used it in the Inside No. 9 episode ‘Wuthering Heist’ (with added Tarantino).

Slapsticks themselves aren’t all that common anymore either, except in (super-sinister) Punch and Judy shows – the thing Punch uses to hit everyone (including some casual wife-beating) is a slapstick. And percussionists use them to imitate the sound of slaps, whip cracks, gunshots and so on, too.

capricious

If you’re feeling capricious, it means you’re full of caprice, AKA a sudden and seemingly unmotivated notion or action. So it basically means you’re feeling impulsive or unpredictable, or you’re a bit fickle (we use it to describe weather quite a lot). I decided to look into the backstory of ‘capricious’ because I heard somewhere that it comes from the Italian word ‘capro’ for ‘goat’, and referred to the way goats are all frisky and unpredictable (and eat just about anything). But a little bit of research revealed that it actually has nothing to do with goats at all. It does involve another, much smaller animal though…

Try to contain your excitement.

Caprice came to us via French from an Italian word, capriccio. This originally referred to someone suddenly shuddering with fear rather than being all unpredictable. It’s a smooshing together of two other Italian words: capo, which means ‘head’, and riccio, which is their word for ‘hedgehog’. That’s because when you shudder in fear your hair stands on end, making you a ‘hedgehog head’. Nice, right? But absolutely nowt to do with goats, sorry.

Hedgehog facts:

• The average adult hedgehog has between 5,000 and 7,000 spines.

• Hedgehogs are nocturnal, and one of only three animals that hibernate in the United Kingdom (the other two are bats, and the hazel dormouse which I suggest you google immediately because it’s SOOOOOOO cute).

• They’re surprisingly fast – a hedgehog can run over six feet per second and walk over two miles in a night.

• Baby hedgehogs are called ‘hoglets’ while a group of hedgehogs is called an ‘array’.

(You probably shouldn’t actually put a hedgehog in a cup.)