pariah

I always think this sounds like a fish name. It’s not, of course. A pariah is a social outcast – someone who’s rightly or wrongly rejected or shunned by society or a particular group, often due to their actions, beliefs or circumstances. We use ‘pariah’ in lots of different contexts, from politics to social circles. The kids would probably say it’s when someone gets cancelled.

Etymologically, ‘pariah’ actually has a bit of a dark history. It has its roots in the Tamil language of southern India. It comes from the word ‘paṛaiyar’, which referred to members of a lower caste group who played the ‘parai’, a large drum used at public ceremonies. Over time, the term became associated with those considered low status or outside the main social hierarchy.

‘Pariah’ was eventually adopted by Portuguese colonisers, entering English in the 17th century where it took on a much broader meaning. By the 19th century, it had lost the ‘caste’ connotations, and was commonly used to describe any individual or group that was socially or politically ostracised, regardless of their background.

Lots of figures we celebrate today were considered pariahs when they were alive (which is sad). Some examples:

• Vincent Van Gogh – reviled and ridiculed during his lifetime, and probably only ever sold one painting. Now we know he was suffering from mental illness (probably bipolar, maybe schizophrenia) which makes this doubly sad. His brother’s wife (Jo van Gogh-Bonger) promoted him when he passed as a way to survive, and it’s thanks to her efforts that he’s so appreciated today.

• Edgar Allen Poe – he died alone and miserable, probably with rabies. He did marry his 13-year-old cousin though…

• Alan Turing – despite playing a crucial role in breaking the Enigma code during World War II, helping to shorten the war and save countless lives, and laying the foundations for modern computer science, Turing was persecuted throughout his lifetime just for being gay.

If you can get through this without blubbing, then you must be a bit dead inside. Sorry.

spondulicks

‘Spondulicks’ (also spelled ‘spondoolicks’ or ‘spondulix’) is a slang term for money, which I’m almost certain Delboy Trotter used more than once. It first emerged in the United States in the mid-19th century, where it quickly gained popularity, even appearing in a New York Times article in 1857. Its exact origins are unknown, but there are a couple of theories about its etymology.

The first one, and the most widely accepted, is that it comes from the Greek word ‘spondylos’, meaning vertebra or a type of shell. What do shells have to do with money? Well, they were often used as currency in ancient times, and even as late as the early 20th century in some regions. (I read this in a fab book called ‘Spirals in Time: The Secret and Curious Afterlife of Seashells’ by marine biologist Helen Scales – nice bit of nominative determinism there.)

Cowrie shells were among the most widely used shells for currency across various cultures and regions, including West and Central Africa, India, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand and The Maldives. There’s even a cowrie shell called cypraea moneta or money cowrie. Why cowries? They’re hard and durable which makes them good for lots of handling, and they also come in relatively uniform sizes and shapes, so they’re easy to count and use as a standardised form of money. They’re also really pretty.

The second theory for ‘spondulicks’ is that it comes from the Latin word ‘spondere’, which means ‘to promise’ or ‘pledge’. This one’s less popular though.

When I asked ChatGPT for a list of slang words for money it gave me the usual suspects including ‘bucks’, ‘cash’, ‘dough’, ‘quid’ and ‘moolah’, but also some others I’ve never heard of. These included ‘cheddar’, ‘cabbage’, ‘simoleons’ and ‘bones’. Who knew?

Makes me laugh every single time.

yonic

I expect you know what ‘phallic’ means. But you’ve probably never heard of ‘yonic’, which is basically the female equivalent* (shakes fist at patriarchy) – an adjective that describes objects or symbols that resemble or represent the female genitalia, particularly the vulva.

‘Yonic’ is derived from a Sanskrit word, ‘yoni’ (योनि), which means ‘womb’, ‘uterus’ or ‘vulva’, as well as ‘source’. In various Eastern religions and spiritual traditions, the yoni is revered as a symbol of divine feminine energy and fertility, and the origin of life. The concept of the yoni is often associated with the goddess Shakti in Hinduism, representing the creative and nurturing aspects of the universe. Yoni and linga (the masculine version) iconography is found in Shiva temples and archaeological sites across the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia.

The yoni may well be the oldest spiritual icon not just in India but in many ancient cultures. It’s only here in the West that we’ve traditionally treated feminine sexual organs and sexuality as taboo – in Indic religions (i.e. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) and other similar ancient cultures, the yoni has long been seen as as a deep philosophical and cosmic truth that represents feminine power and potential. It’s closely linked with the natural cycles of the moon, earth and life itself. Take that, patriarchy.

Roses are often considered a yonic symbol, which seems a bit odd to me as men often give them to women as a romantic gesture. Maybe they should be giving us more phallic flowers. Like the phallus impudicus, for example, AKA the common stinkhorn, a fungus renowned for being shaped like a penis and for having an absolutely horrible smell. Hmmm, maybe this is why I’m single…

*Which presumably gets paid 13% less than her male counterpart.

juggernaut

A juggernaut is something huge and powerful, usually destructive, that can’t be stopped, either literally or metaphorically. Like a steam roller, or Donald Trump’s ego. In British English we also use it for a big old lorry. But it is a bit of a weird word. So what is a jugger, and why is it nauting?

A slightly unimpressive photo of the temple

Well, the good news is that ‘juggernaut’ has some epic etymology. The bad news is that it’s a bit grim. It comes from Jagannāth, the Hindi word for ‘Lord of the World’. Jagannath is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and has an important temple in Puri, on the eastern coast of India. That’s not the grim bit, obviously. Each year the temple holds the Ratha Yatra, or chariot festival, when images of Jagannath and his brother (Balabhadra) and sister (Subhadra) are pulled on huge and elaborately decorated (you’ve guessed it) chariots. According to hopefully apocryphal (i.e. bullshit) reports going back to the 14th century, hardcore Vishnu fans would throw themselves in front of these to show their devotion by being crushed beneath the wheels of carriages. That. Is. Commitment. Colonial Brits supposedly saw this, then anglicised Jagannath as ‘juggernaut’ giving it the meaning of unstoppable force that we have today.

Jagannath and his siblings’ temple at Puri is freaking massive – it covers an area of over 400,000 square feet (37,000 square metres in new money). It was built in the 11th or 12th century (depending on which page of Wikipedia you look at) by king Anantavarman Chodaganga, a ruler of the Eastern Ganga dynasty who were in charge of the southern part of Kalinga in India. There’s a flag on the top of it which apparently defies science, and always flies in the opposite direction to the way the wind’s blowing. (Boringly, there is actually some science that explains this involving fluid dynamics and something called a Kármán vortex street, but that isn’t half as fun so let’s ignore it.) Every day since it was built, a priest has scrambled up the walls of the temple – the height of a 45-storey building – without any protective gear, to change this flag. Bagsie not me.

bezoar

You know when you come across a word you didn’t know, and then you keep seeing it everywhere? This is what happened to me with ‘bezoar’ this week (well, in two places – QI, and an episode of Audible’s excellent dramatisation of Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Sandman’). A bezoar is a solid mass of indigestible material that forms in the digestive tract. So far, so gross. But, for years many people have believed bezoars to have medicinal properties, and even that they’re full-on magical.

A ring made out of a bezoar. Why, WHY?

The word itself comes from the Persian language – specifically pād-zahr, which means ‘antidote’. In fact, if you were born in 11th-century Europe and were unfortunate enough to get poisoned, it’s likely you’d be presented with a bezoar in a glass of water by your friendly neighbourhood medicine person. That’s because they were believed to be universal antidotes that would cure any type of poison. This was proved to be utter bullshit in 1567 by a French surgeon called Ambroise Paré. He found a cook in the King’s court who’d been sentenced to death and chosen to be poisoned. He gave the unlucky chef a bezoar stone. As you can probably guess, the man died in agony seven hours after taking the poison. Merde.

It’s actually not all complete bunkum though – modern experiments have shown that bezoars can actually remove arsenic (I guess our French cook was poisoned with something other than arsenic – quel dommage).

There are lots of different types of bezoar. One of the most minging is a trichobezoar. That’s a bezoar made of undigested hair, often formed as a result of Rapunzel syndrome, a (thankfully) rare intestinal condition which comes about from eating too much of YOUR OWN HAIR. One of the largest trichobezoars I could find online was removed from the stomach of an 18-year-old woman in India and was a metre long, weighing in at 1.13kg (2.5lbs). If you’d like to feel a bit sick, you can check out the actual thing in this article. Wikipedia also lists a 4.5kg (9.9lbs) hairball which came out of a woman (ladies, what are you doing?!) in Chicago in 2006, but thankfully I couldn’t find a picture of that one (actually I didn’t look, as I didn’t think my stomach could handle it).

doolally

Photo by Mitchell Ng Liang an on Unsplash.

Doolally is a term for someone who’s a bit mad or eccentric, usually temporarily. It’s a shortened version of a British military slang expression, ‘doolally tap’. This basically means ‘camp fever’ (‘tap’ being an Urdu word for fever). The doolally part is a corruption of Deolali, the name of a military camp near Bombay (now Mumbai) in India.

Established in 1861, Deolali had a large barracks and was a chief staging point (i.e. a transit camp for troops or equipment), acting both as a training camp for soldiers who’d just arrived, and a place for British troops whose enlistments had expired to hang out while they waited for transport home. Because ships only sailed between November and March, this could mean some men stayed at Deolali for months waiting for repatriation. This is where we get the ‘losing your mind’ part from. Conditions in the camp were pretty awful – malaria was rife and soldiers were bored, driven nuts by sandflies and often afflicted with all the fun stuff you got from hanging out in the brothels and gin palaces that inevitably sprung up near to barracks (alcoholism, syphilis and other delightful venereal diseases). These men were described as being in ‘full doolally tap’, which we’ve since shortened to just ‘doolally’.

If you’re of a certain age then you might remember a 70s sitcom called ‘It Ain't Half Hot Mum’ which was set in Deolali. Like most British sitcoms from the 70s it’s since been accused of racism, homophobia and pandering to imperialism, meaning it’s now been assigned to the recycling bin of TV history.