Call My Bluff - Transcript
Below is the text of Peter's bluffs.
"Yonnie"
Peter: Yonnie. A lovely example of Darwinian selection in
words. Back in the Victorian times, the fogs in London — the
thick pea-soupers — made it a difficult, dangerous time for
everyone but particularly for boatmen on the Thames. Because they
have no sonar, they have no radar, they have no powerful light to
warn other people that their boat is there. So, the obvious thing
is to have someone calling out from the front of the boat. And what
they called out was, naturally enough, "boat."
The thing about the word boat, the sound of the B and also the
T — they're very swallowed sounds whereas the O carries quite
well. But "boat" as a word through very thick dense fog just didn't
carry. So they started to call out "boat yonder." And "yonder" was
so much better a word — the "yon," the "de" — that they
completely dropped the word "boat" and just called "yonder," and
that gradually, through a process of evolution, became "yonnie."
So "yonnie" was a warning cry from a boat in a fog in Victorian
London.
"Neatery"
Peter: Neatery is finery in a fashion sense. It is the accessories
that you wear to keep yourself neat. Yep, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
it's cuff links which you wear to keep your cuffs out of the soup
when you're dining at the Palace. It's a belt which has the dual
purpose of holding your trousers up and also keeping your shirt
tucked in. It's suspenders to stop you getting those wrinkles on
your socks. It's a cap to keep unruly hair in place. It is sadly
just how it sounds. In the 18th century you would have found a neatery
department in your local high-class gentelmen's outfitters.
"Pohutukawa"
Announcer: [summarizing] So, pohutukawa: a Maori word for
an evergreen Christmas tree, an intimate Hawaiian meal shared by
lovers, or a type of scaffolding for Native Americans when death
occured. Peter...
Peter: Maori Christmas tree which has a Latin translation?
I'm terribly worried about that. Okay, I've got no idea whether
that's true or not but you did an awful lot of looking around on
that one. You did an awful lot of looking up there and looking over
here. I think you're lying; it's no more subtle than that. I don't
know what the word means. It's not John.
Sue... Scaffolding... scavenging animals taking away... what were
they doing with the bodies then? They'd take them up the slope and
they leave them there? They leave the bodies of their dead ancestors
there? Nah, they wouldn't leave them to be eaten by scavenging animals.
No way at all.
So, Alan, I remember Hawaii Five-O, book it!
[Wrong! John was right — it's the Maori world for Christmas
tree.]
"Ubykh"
Peter: Ubykh actually isn't a language, it's a word from
a foreign language, from the language of the Plains Indians, from
the Mohawks, along with other words such as "winnebago" which means
"dwellers by the filthy water," "Saskatchewan" which means —
it's the name of a river — it means "you fish your side, we'll
fish our side, no one fishes in the middle." Ubykh is a sling put
behind a horse which carried elderly or infirm sick people. It means
"horse who has six legs."
[What a whopper, Peter! Mohawks weren't Plains Indians and the
word for that sling behind a horse is "travois." I never knew my
grade eight history class would come in so handy someday... ;-)
]
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