216. Four Letter Words: Terisk
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Watching the film Legally Blonde one day with the subtitles on, numerous perfectly innocuous words were partially asterisked out, because of a technological problem I can't name here lest this episode be blocked from your podfeed, thus becoming an example of the problem itself.
Who's to blame? A 900-year-old man from Lincolnshire. Although he didn't ask for this either.
Content note: this episode contains SWEARS. Educational though!
Visit theallusionist.org/terisk for more information about today's topics, plus a transcript of the episode.
Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes info about every episode; livestreams with me, Martin and my ever-growing collection of dictionaries, and the charming and nurturing Allusioverse Discord community, where we're watching the current seasons of Great British Sewing Bee and Great British Bake Off, and our previous watchalong of Legally Blonde begat this episode.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Martin Austwick sings and composed the music. Download his own songs at palebirdmusic.com and on Bandcamp, and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, hit language's snooze button, |
| 0:09.6 | and language screams back, I will not be snoozed! |
| 0:14.5 | It's the season finale of four-letter word season, |
| 0:18.1 | and I am sad not to have covered every four-letter word in existence, |
| 0:22.2 | but I've had a great time, beginning with the F-swear and going via dinosaurs, poisonous plants, |
| 0:28.6 | the Ban Marie, a quiz, the Scandal Suffolix Gate, to several vocal parks. And this episode |
| 0:35.9 | returns to one of the strongest of the four-letter words we have |
| 0:40.3 | covered because there is still more to say about it. Content note this episode contains many |
| 0:47.6 | category A swears and some category B swears. It's all educational though, not gratuitous or angry swearing, I promise. |
| 0:57.3 | Oh, and sometimes I hear from listeners asking, what are these swear categories? |
| 1:01.6 | You can hear all about them back in the very early episode detonating the C-bomb, |
| 1:07.3 | which also contains information that is related to this episode. |
| 1:11.9 | I will be performing at Nerd Night at the Fox Cabaret in Vancouver on 10th of September 2025. |
| 1:19.4 | I've linked to tickets at the illusionist.org slash events. |
| 1:23.1 | I'll be doing a new piece about some mysterious Scandinavian translations of Dracula. |
| 1:29.3 | I've been to Nerd Night before, and it was a very good evening of infatement, I recommend. |
| 1:34.0 | Now, as I said, brace yourself for swears. On with the show. |
| 2:02.6 | In the Illusiaverse Discord community, we sometimes watch films and TV together, and a little while ago we were watching Legally Blonde, the tale of rich young white woman Elwoods overcoming the adversity of being too femme presenting for people to believe she could possibly study law. |
| 2:05.9 | And as we were watching Legally Blonde, we noticed something happening repeatedly in the subtitles. |
| 2:12.8 | Three letters kept being asterisked out, in lines like,, actually I wasn't aware we had an alignment. |
| 2:21.6 | You will get to exist on actual cases. |
| 2:25.1 | Again and again and again. |
... |
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