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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 186 Ravels transcript

December 12, 2023 The Allusionist

MIRIAM FELTON: No; I think, as with most of these things, they're just named after people. The people themselves don't really have much association with it. Like the Earl of Cardigan didn't ever wear a cardigan as far as we know.
HZ: What? What?? I assumed that he was out there on the battlefields in a cardigan.
MIRIAM FELTON: Like a nice fair isle one with all the stranded colour work? That would have been awesome.
HZ: Just some kind of frontally divided knitted garment. But no?
MIRIAM FELTON: No. 
HZ: What?!
MIRIAM FELTON: Not as far as we have any evidence.

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In transcript, Telling Other Stories Tags etymology, vocabulary, history, denaming, renaming, Telling Other Stories, Miriam Felton, Canada, Canadian, Canadian history, UK, British, Britain, British history, wars, war, battles, Second Boer War, Africa, South Africa, concentration camps, Crimean War, Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Battle of Balaclava, World War One, First World War, WW1, 19th century, 20th century, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, knitting, knitwear, knit, terminology, crafts, stitches, graft, grafting, Lord Kitchener, Lord Cardigan, Lord Raglan, Ceredigion, eponyms, Ontario, Russell, towns, military, army, conflict, campaigns, yachts, horse, cardigan, socks, raglan sleeve, seams, balaclava, Ravelry, King County, German, Germany, Berlin, House of Windsor, royals, monarchy, dachshunds, buns, lawsuits, schisms, criminal conversation, duels, referendums, politics, patriotism, garments, innovation, baseball, codes, spies, espionage, Vogue, knitting patterns, namesakes, Martin Luther King Jr, cachalot

Allusionist 151 The Bee's Knees transcript

March 19, 2022 The Allusionist

“There's a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, which apparently has the Guinness World Record for most exclamation marks in a town name. Which is two.”

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, phrases, idioms, slang, Shedunnit, Caroline Crampton, murder mysteries, novels, fiction, writing, writers, authors, detectives, Golden Age, codes, war, spelling alphabets, phonetic, military, diets, dieting, eponyms, William Banting, undertakers, flappers, canary’s tusks, flea’s eyebrows, creature, Frankenstein, monster, whiskey, refrigeration, ditches, Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, exclamation marks, courtship, sex, Mae West, royalty, opossums, animals, bunt

Allusionist 135 SOS transcript

May 13, 2021 The Allusionist
A135 SOS logo small.jpeg

PAUL TYREMAN: Three dots, three dashes, three dots. It's fairly easy to remember, it's easy to key, and it's difficult to confuse with other things.

CHRISTIAN OSTERSEHLTE: Maritime communication, especially in distress case, has to be distinctive, clear, and not subject to misunderstanding.

HZ: The main misunderstanding with SOS is that it stands for ‘Save Our Souls’ or ‘Save Our Ship’ or ‘Send Out Succour’. As if when your ship was sinking, your emergency message would be ‘send out succour’, cmon.

PAUL TYREMAN: It wasn't introduced because it meant anything.

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In transcript Tags Christian Ostersehlte, Paul Tyreman, SOS, CQD, CQ, mayday, codes, calls, distress, emergency, ships, shipping, maritime, boats, vessels, sea travel, sea, sailors, signals, communication, telegraphy, radio, wireless, technology, history, Titanic, acronyms, backronyms, false etymology, Germany, UK, Britain, Italy, Marconi, flags, Samuel Morse, Morse code
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.