Welcome to the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman's Woptulkow for five magic

linguistic beans coming up in the show, Word Games!

To warm up, here's some word history.

Here's a game word, game as in the genre of meat is so called because it was obtained

through the game or sport of hunting, and this history looks in venison, which evolved

from the Latin verb venare meaning to hunt, and came through English through the old

French venison, which meant the meat of a large game animal, usually deer or wild boar,

and that's the clue as to why the animal is called a deer until the point at which it

being eaten, where upon it becomes venison.

The same with pairings like cow and beef and pig and pork and sheep and mutton, the words

for the creatures in their living state are the Anglo-Saxon ones, whereas the meat

words originated from French, after the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, there came

a few hundred years in which the aristocracy was speaking French, and they were the ones

who could afford to eat the meat, and also they were usually the ones whose words were

being recorded in writing for posterity.

So there you go, meat words, on with the show.

Gather round children, Grand Mars got a story about how we had to make our own fun on

long-boring journeys before we had iPads, or indeed any equipment at all beyond the

cablery, because who hasn't had to while away hours stuck in a car or on a bus or a train

playing word games?

Such fun!

I spy where you're listing boring things, or the Minister's cat where you're listing

...