1:33

Diffuse

4:00

is the adjective form. So it's diffuse,

4:03

it's spread out over a large area, it's

4:05

not concentrated. And also

4:07

about an argument, it's lacking clarity.

4:10

Diffuse argument, it's a wordy,

4:13

unclear argument. Disparage,

4:16

that meant to regard or represent

4:18

something as being of little

4:20

worth to belittle something. Magnate,

4:25

that is a extremely wealthy businessman

4:27

or businesswoman. And

4:29

finally we have solipsism, which

4:32

is the quality of being selfish

4:34

or self-centered or the philosophical

4:37

view that the self is

4:39

all that can be known to exist. Okay,

4:43

cool. So now

4:45

to the new words. And

4:47

the first word today is insinuate,

4:50

insinuate, spelled I-N-S-I-N-U-A-T-E.

4:56

And to insinuate something, because

4:59

this is a verb, means to hint

5:02

something or to suggest something

5:05

in a subtle and indirect way. But

5:07

when you're insinuating something, you're

5:10

almost always hinting

5:12

something that is bad or unpleasant.

5:16

So you could imagine a situation

5:19

like you're at dinner with

5:21

friends and it's come

5:24

to the time to pay the bill and

5:26

someone makes a joke about one of the other people

5:29

that their wallet has spiders

5:31

and cobwebs in it because they're

5:34

kind of tight or mean with their money.

5:37

They're not generous. And so their wallet never

5:39

gets opened. So they're hinting

5:41

that that person is stingy,

5:44

for example. So it's suggesting something

5:47

in a kind of indirect and unpleasant

5:49

way. Some synonyms

5:51

of insinuate are imply,

5:54

suggest, hint, intimate

5:58

or indicate. Now,

6:00

we do have a second meaning for

6:03

insinuate. It's also a verb,

6:05

and that means to slide something slowly

6:08

and smoothly into a certain

6:11

or particular place. So you could

6:13

say, I insinuated

6:17

myself into the gap in the wall,

6:19

or I insinuated

6:21

my wallet into a hidden pocket

6:23

in my jacket. Etymology-wise,

6:27

this is kind of an interesting word because

6:30

if you look at the word insinuate, it

6:32

has a lot in common with the word sinuous,

6:35

sinuous adjective, meaning

6:37

having many curves or turns, like

6:40

a sinuous snake or a sinuous river.

6:43

Well,

6:43

this comes from the word sinus, meaning

6:46

a bend in Latin. So

6:49

sinuous, you can see how that comes from sinus,

6:51

meaning a bend, because sinuous means many bends

6:54

or turns. And then you end

6:56

up with this word insinuit

6:59

in Latin, meaning introduced

7:02

tortuously. And tortuous

7:04

itself means twisting. So

7:08

insinuit in Latin means introduced

7:10

in a twisting way, which

7:13

if you think about it is

7:15

insinuating. When you insinuate

7:17

something, you are saying something in a

7:20

curved way, almost like a curveball

7:22

in baseball or a curveball comment.

7:26

So yes, that is insinuate

7:29

to suggest or hint something slyly,

7:33

usually something unpleasant and

7:35

in an indirect way. You're not saying it outright,

7:38

but you're making this unpleasant hint

7:40

about someone. And this

7:42

secondary meaning about sliding

7:45

something could be a person

7:48

or an actual object slowly

7:50

and smoothly into a certain or

7:52

specific place. Our

7:55

second word today is sycophant, spelled

7:59

S-Y. C-O-P-H-A-N-T,

8:03

sycophant. It's a noun and

8:06

it sounds like a complicated word but it's

8:08

a fairly easy meaning that we all understand

8:12

and sycophant

8:14

is a person who acts obsequiously

8:18

to someone important in

8:20

order to gain advantage. So

8:24

for those of you with good memories we

8:26

have actually covered obsequious before

8:28

in the 72nd

8:31

podcast I think and so

8:33

hopefully you remember what it means but

8:36

if you don't what it means

8:39

is being super

8:42

attentive, overly

8:44

nice, overly complimentary

8:47

to someone and so someone

8:49

who is a sycophant is doing these things

8:53

towards someone who's got some authority

8:55

or some importance in order to gain some

8:58

advantage. What's

9:01

kind of funny is when I was a child at school

9:03

we used to say this was butchering up the

9:06

teacher so this

9:08

boy is butchering up the teacher to

9:10

try and get some advantage which I presume

9:13

was higher marks or a good report at the end

9:15

of the semester or term which

9:18

is kind of funny but actual

9:20

synonyms not butchering up I'm

9:22

sure some people still say it though in the UK but

9:25

other synonyms are toady,

9:27

creep,

9:28

crawler, fauna, flatterer,

9:31

flunky and also truckler

9:34

which I didn't know this one

9:36

actually I think this is a really uncommon one so

9:39

yes I think everyone in every

9:41

society in every language probably

9:43

has a lot of words for this because

9:46

I think it's something that's been around since time

9:48

immemorial so you

9:51

can imagine in ancient Greece and

9:54

there's characters like Socrates and Plato though

9:56

I'm sure there were sycophants that hung around

9:59

these characters and tried to

10:02

gain their attention by, you

10:04

know, talking up to Socrates all the time, like,

10:06

you're so smart Socrates, you're amazing,

10:08

we love you. And

10:09

I'm sure it was the same with Marcus Aurelius too.

10:12

So because these kind of people,

10:14

these toadies and crawlers have always been

10:16

around, so in the modern age we

10:18

end up with ten different words meaning

10:20

that thing, because I think this character

10:23

is so immediately obvious to

10:25

us when we see them. Now

10:27

moving on to our third word, which

10:29

is another of those rare

10:31

words that don't come from Latin, and

10:34

it is jingoism. Jingoism,

10:36

spelled J-I-N-G-O-I-S-M.

10:41

It's a noun, and it

10:43

means extreme

10:46

patriotism,

10:48

and especially in

10:50

the form of aggressive or warlike

10:52

foreign policy. You could

10:54

also see jingoism as an

10:57

extreme type of nationalism. It's

10:59

not just being really proud of your country,

11:02

it is extreme

11:04

patriotism combined

11:06

with this sort of aggressive

11:09

or threatening

11:11

warlike

11:12

ideas towards other countries. So

11:16

instead of making peaceful relations

11:18

with other countries, instead

11:20

you're using threats or

11:23

actual force. Synonyms

11:26

of jingoism are extreme

11:29

patriotism or extreme

11:31

nationalism. And I

11:33

am going to cover the etymology here because

11:36

it really has one of the most interesting

11:38

etymologies of words I've

11:41

seen. It's actually a very recent

11:43

word, so this word was first used

11:46

in the UK around 1877, and this word jingo

11:52

was used in the lyrics to a song. This

11:55

song was about the

11:58

Russia-Turkish War. and

12:01

the song seemed to be encouraging men in the

12:03

UK to fight on the side

12:05

of Turkey in this Russo-Turkish

12:08

war. So the lyrics to this song go,

12:10

We don't want to fight, but by

12:12

jingo if we do, We've got

12:15

the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money

12:17

too. We fought the bear before,

12:19

and while we're Britons true, the Russians

12:22

shall not have Constantinople. So

12:26

it was just used in this form by jingo

12:29

in this song. And so jingoism

12:32

became known at the time as

12:34

a term for those people who were

12:36

pro-going to war, basically.

12:40

So that was jingoism, meaning

12:42

extreme patriotism, especially

12:45

in the form of aggressive foreign

12:48

policy. And on to

12:50

our final word for today, which

12:52

is paucity. Paucity.

12:55

P-A-U-C-I-T-Y.

12:58

And it's a noun. And paucity

13:01

means the presence of something

13:04

in only small amounts, and

13:06

especially insufficient quantities.

13:10

So there was a paucity

13:13

of ingredients like sugar

13:15

and butter during the war. Also,

13:18

it doesn't need to be something physical.

13:21

You could say we had a paucity of data,

13:24

so we couldn't make a good decision. Some

13:27

synonyms are dearth,

13:30

sparsity, scarcity,

13:33

shortage, or rarity.

13:36

Okay, those were the words for

13:38

today. Insinuate, sycophant,

13:42

jingoism, and paucity. Now

13:45

let's do our test sentences.

13:49

Jill hinted to me that

13:51

Jack had only got the promotion due

13:53

to his friendship with our manager.

13:57

The theme of the parade seemed to be a very interesting

13:59

thing. less about celebrating our own country

14:02

and more about attacking other countries instead.

14:07

The billionaire CEO seemed

14:10

always to be surrounded by people singing

14:12

his praises and lording

14:14

even his most mediocre ideas.

14:18

At the end of a harsh winter, the

14:20

squirrel family was suffering due

14:22

to a shortage of nuts. So

14:26

there we had Jill insinuating

14:29

to me that Jack had gotten promotion due

14:31

to his friendship with the manager. We

14:34

had our jingoistic

14:36

parade, more about attacking other

14:38

countries than celebrating our own country.

14:42

We have CEOs being surrounded

14:45

by sycophants, praising

14:47

even their crappy ideas. And

14:51

we had the paucity of

14:53

nuts which was affecting

14:56

the squirrel family in an adverse

14:58

way. Okay, so that's

15:01

our words for today. Insinuate

15:03

sycophant jingoism and paucity.

15:05

I hope you have a

15:08

lovely rest of your week with a paucity of sycophants

15:10

in it, ideally. This

15:12

is Sam, as always, and

15:15

thanks for listening. Please, if you

15:17

can, leave a review or

15:21

share the podcast with someone if you like it

15:23

and you think it would help them. And

15:26

you can always email me if you want at

15:28

sam.fold at gmail.com

15:31

just to say hello or to pass on

15:33

any comments. Thanks so much for listening

15:35

and I'll probably speak to you tomorrow.

15:38

Bye bye.