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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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Allusionist 209. Four Letter Words: Serving C-bomb transcript

May 25, 2025 The Allusionist

Things have changed for a word that despite being around in written text for 900+ years, didn’t even get listed in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1972.

NICOLE HOLLIDAY: I never say this word.

HZ: No, I feel bad to force you.

NICOLE HOLLIDAY: No, it's funny. Well, I'll say it on podcast, this is professional environment; but in my normal daily life, I can't imagine that I would personally say it. And this might just be like, I'm kind of a prude and I was raised kind of religious, but it does sort of seem like beyond the pale for me personally. I wonder if were 20 if I wouldn’t feel that way, but I spent so much of my life like judiciously avoiding very strong taboos. And this one, just my gut reaction is that it overwhelms. So when you asked me to do this, I was like, “Oh, no! I have to say that word!”

HZ: I'm sorry. We could probably skirt around it and then people can spend the whole episode trying to guess which word we're talking about.

Allusionist 208. Four Letter Words: Four Letter Words: Ffff

May 11, 2025 The Allusionist

If you’re thinking, “How the fuck can you write a whole 500-page dictionary just about the word ‘fuck’?” consider, say, the many meanings of ‘ass fuck’, noun and verb - and that’s before you even add similar terms like ‘bumfuck’ and ‘buttfuck’. And there are so many less usual terms, like ‘fucksome’ or ‘fuckstrated’ or ‘fuckist’ or ‘fucktious’.

Allusionist 203. Flyting transcript

November 9, 2024 The Allusionist

ISHBEL McFARLANE: “You crap so much that you sunk a ship you were on.”
HZ: I’m gonna use that.

Allusionist 193 Word Play part 3: Lemon Demon transcript

April 23, 2024 The Allusionist

AJ JACOBS: Anagrams played a part in a trial, sort of a witch trial in the 1600s in the UK. And it was a woman who was put on trial for claiming that she was a prophet. Part of her proof was that if you rearrange the letters in her name - her name was Eleanor Davies - if you rearrange it, then it says, ‘Reveal, O Daniel’, as in the prophet Daniel. I don't believe that that was proof she was a prophet. They came down on her hard in the trial, so they said, “If you rearrange” - her married name was Dame Eleanor Davies - “and you rearrange those letters, it spells ‘Never So Mad A Lady;.” So like, “she's so crazy.” So that was how she was convicted. And by the way, that was when anagrams were easier, because there were so many spellings.

Allusionist 137 Dude transcript

June 10, 2021 The Allusionist

Till about the 1950s, ‘dude’ still had this connotation of someone out of place, a tourist trying to dress like a local and failing. And in that sense, it was gender neutral for a bit. Then, somehow, it became cool.