This is the allusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman, dive under the bonnet of language to

tinker with the engine.

Coming up in today's show will be a lot, a lot of profane language.

So this is your opportunity to clear the area of young children, linguistically fragile

elders, anyone within earshot who will be offended by all the potty mouth business.

The limber up to the code red swearing with a little light, swear word history, 2015

is the 100th anniversary of the first officially recorded instance of the word bullshit.

It was a century ago that T.S. Eliot submitted to Blast magazine his poem entitled The Triumph

of Bullshit.

Now the young T.S. probably didn't coin bullshit himself.

Usually words have been floating around for some time before they're committed to print

and thus considered official dictionary fodder.

And the dictionary doesn't even cite him as its first written source.

The poem was never published, but it was named in a letter that Blast's editor Wyndham

Lewis wrote to Ezra Pound, explaining that while he enjoyed the scholarly ribble tree

of the triumph of bullshit, he wasn't going to print it as he was determined to avoid

words ending in duck and and agar, and presumably bullshit.

So happy bullshit centenary everyone.

Okay, I wasn't kidding about the swearing in this episode, so if you want to avoid words

ending in duck and hunt, this is your last chance.

Ready?

On with the fucking show.

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