This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zotsman, receive languages message in a bottle,

but probably too late to do anything about it now, right time it takes for a message

in a bottle to get there, a little bit back into the same, maybe a crab can deal with it.

In today's show, three letters, nine sounds, or one abbersong, or one reanorsong, S-O-S.

By the way, if you're curious about how this show is made, how does this magic happen,

then you can get tantalising glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes if you become

a patron at patreon.com slash illusionist for as little as two dollars a month, and you're

helping to fund your independent creator friend that lives in your brain.

Just to warn you, there are a couple of category B swears in this episode.

One with the show.

If you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you'll have encountered Zotsman's

first rule of etymology.

It's almost never an acronym, especially if the word is pre-20th century.

Another rule, maybe Zotsman's fourth or fifth haven't written them all out, is that if

people say a term originated on a ship, it quite possibly did not.

There is overlap in these rules, such as, posh does not stand for port out starboard home,

shit doesn't stand for ship high in transit, backronim look backronim face more like.

The term S-O-S did originate for maritime reasons, and people will tell you that it stands

for save our ship, or save our souls.

However I am suspicious of such, seems obviously curious, smells of shit.

But before we get on to what it means, why does S-O-S exist?

It is a morse code signal, did, did, did, dada, dada, dada, did, did, did, three short,

...