Spoof, Travesty, and Vaudeville Jokes

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We're clowning around with jests, jokes, satire, and spoofs on this comedic episode of Words Unraveled. Welcome to another Words Unraveled. I'm Rob Watts from the YouTube channel Rob Words. And I'm Jess Seferis, author of etymology books, including useless etymology , and today we are talking about one of my favorite topics, comedy. Humans love to laugh, and down the centuries we've coined all kinds of words for laughing and the things that make us laugh. We get to explore some of those words and their origins and I tell you what there's some some really good juicy stuff in this one. I'm I'm excited to get into it. We should start with the etymology of comedy though. It's not the most exciting etymology we'll get into, but we we sho shoulduld give it a mention. Yeah, I mean of all the words in here, I think I think most of them have more story to them, but but comedy is is from the Greek comodios, which means an actor or a singer or a poet who performed at festivals and revelries and they would put on Como idea, an amusing spectacle that everyone could enjoy. Yeah, there's a sort of rowdiness to the thing, to the revelry. It's someone who's performing when everyone else is having a is having a good time. That's a comedy. It doesn't necessarily have to be funny, but it it should be fun. Tragedy is funnily enough a more fun word, isn't it? Because it's thought that the Tragos that makes the traj in tragedy, uh means goat . So with the a D at the end also meaning the same as it does in comedy, which is essentially a song. Tragedy is a goat song. Mm-hmm. And that's probably because they were it's a reference to like Seder stor Yeah, I again this is one of those things I don't really know. I the the source I read said that it was perhaps that because the the original tragedies were competitions for composing odes and they thought that maybe a goat was the prize. That's why they were calling them goat songs, which is which I think is a conceivable idea. Yeah, maybe it's that. There is a probably apocryphal tale that Thespis, for whom Thespians are named, earned a goat as a prize for winning an acting competition. But goats also come into play with the Dithoram, which is a hymn sung to Dionysus. The Dith aram was a predecessor of tragedy and usually included a chorus made of people dressed as sat yrs. Right, but we should talk about satyrs, because they both are and are not connected with comedy, aren't they? So we have the comic genre of satire. But down the centuries, and including in antiquity, that word was confused with the Greek satirs satires, not the same thing. The words don't come from the same place. The idea of you know mocking the prevailing morals of the day, or you know, uh as it is today mocking current affairs, does not come from the Greek satyrs, even though you could have s you know satiric drama back in the day. It instead comes from a Latin word satura , which is actually um related to s to saturate and also words like satisfy and sate. But the original uh satires are collections of works. It's it's a miscellany, basically. It's it's saturated with a with all kinds of different genre, be it ode or prose, etc. And then it it shifted under, as you said, the influence of the Latin sat yr because it was sort of mistakenly connected with the satire that appeared in Greek satyr drama. But we know better now and that these have come from different different sources. But you got us there very elegantly with that um with that theory about the the goats in the tragedy I feel like we need with goat song we need one of those screaming goats to appear on screen. That's taken us to a place that I we could explore a little bit more, though, satire and parody , and you know, lampooning and stuff. These are all words that have got stories behind them as well. I've got lampoon actually on my list here. Lampoon from the French lamp on, which is from a verb lampon , which is to uh to drink, it's to booze, it's to guzzle. So lamp with an S at the end of it, lampons, you would see it written in English, uh, means let's drink, essentially. It's the it's the it's the version of the verb you would use with we, so lampon, nu lampon we would be drink. I recall reading that it's related sort of to the word like lap, as in like lapping up something, which would make sense. That does make a lot of sense, doesn't it? Yeah. You're definitely you're drinking something but more effusively than just a you know a gentle cat lapping at its water. Um I mentioned parody as well. The oddity at the end of there is the same as the endings on tragedy and and comedy. It's a reference to odes from Greek and then the para , so parro, but para is is what we expect para to be, which is besides as in like in parallel or something like that. But the original parodies were well, they were parodies. They were parodies of other genres. There were burlesque imitations. And burlesque itself is also an imitation , a grotesque imitation of other art forms. Burlesque first entered English as an adjective, and it means it meant like drool or odd or grotesque, kind of either way. But it comes from the French burlesque, which was coined in the sixteenth century from the Italian burlesque meaning ludicrous. And the root here is the Italian burla, meaning joke or fun, or ridicule or mockery. And the esque is is in the style of and in the same way that we like tack that onto other things, right? The sort of sexy angle of burlesque is quite a new thing. That's like a nineteenth century, late nineteenth century American thing where they start working in a strip tease into these grotesque performances. They're not grotesque, they're just extravagant, really. Aaron Powell Burla was a like a comic interlude or a practical joke that was inserted into a performance, um, often in the masks of Commedia dell'arte, which we'll get into, it was sort of this um staged mockery, you might say, just to lighten the mood, keep things lively and going. And then it developed this other theatrical meaning from minstrel show structure, which we can also get into minstrel shows. Um, but it became this variety show format that drew from a bunch of different music hall cabaret type enter entertainment and it had things like dances and boxing matches and spectacles and slapstick and music and chorus numbers and of course people wearing fewer clothes and singing at the same time . Aaron Powell And you were talking about it being sort of an interlude, is that right? Originally, the the the Italian burla was. The reason I I trying to steer us in that direction is that the word farce essentially means an interl ude as well. I don't know if we talked about this before. I definitely put it in my newsletter. The Latin verb far quire means to to stuff. The original far ces were a sort of silly interlude before two other performances, more normally more dramatic performances. So it was called it was just called a stuffing. Particularly compared to like food stuffing, right? Yeah, and and uh and if you eat uh a French dish that it In France, farce was this comic material that was inserted into like religious dramas and things. Yeah, you gotta lighten the mood while people were getting their I don't know, eighteenth century ice cream. The distinction here, I believe, is that it's I've I've seen it described that far ce uses these broadly stylized characters. It's difference with between the distinction between satire and parody and burlesque and slapstick kind of come down to for farce situation. Like satire targets vice and hypocrisy and parody. Parody is an imitation. Slapstick is uh literally the slapstick noise when you pretend to punch someone and uh and find it. Oh yeah, yeah, we shouldn't we shouldn't slapstick. That's quite a fun one, isn't it? As well, because we're back with the Italians. Uh the Italians that invent this device, these two bits of wood that are sort of Or for for clowns and the like when they they whack someone with it, it makes a much louder noise than the hit justifies. And just to finish the thought, farce uses Yeah, sorry. Oh no, no, no worries. We can get back to that. Um I would love to to talk about clowns, but uh farce uses basically a bunch of improbable circumstances and escalating chaos and confusion to create this like big, ter tottering, stuffed up cupboard full of plates that's about to crash down, figuratively speaking. Yeah, it's farce is still like that. If you do it if you go to the theatre to see a farce, you're guaranteed a laugh. It won't necessarily be highbrow, but you're guaranteed a laugh. It won't tell you much about society ne necessarily. But there will be lots of entrances Escalating absurdity. Clowns. Tell us about clowns. The word clown is a little bit like the word villain in the sense that it literally means a or it originally meant a person from the countryside, especially a peasant, sort of a a coarse, clumsy, poorly educated person. So this is very classist, much in the same way that villain is. It means like a person from the the countryside or a peasant farmer. And then later that was associated with moral virtue, affiliated with wealth, exact or so to speak. We don't know exactly what the root of this is, but it's a it's a Germanic word and it probably means something like lump or clot or ball or just a clumsy person. So definitely something heavy and awkward. That's interesting. It's a Germanic word. I because I've never looked this one up, but I I think I'd always assumed that we got it from or maybe we still I mean we still may have done got it from French. Is that right? Some of the proposed relatives they're they're all Germ Germanic. So like Dutch has a word, I don't know how to pronounce it, but it means an uncouth person and it looks about the same. There's also a word for peasant or country bumpkin that's very similar. It is entirely possible that it is related to the word clue, which is a ball of thread, and it's that ball lump sense that we've talked about The OED does does say that there was an older suggestion that clown had to do with colonists, which also meant farmer, but they ultimately reject that because it just the chronology doesn't quite line up. Yeah, and the idea is that they' coreuntry bumpkins, who's more hilarious than you know, a poor person? Right, right . There were in particular a number of like clown-like characters in who who inspired our modern clowns in Italian Commedia Dellarte. And I think we should get into that next because there's a lot there. So many of our words surrounding comedy go back to Italian, and it is because of this tradition of Commedia dell'Arte. In case you are unfamiliar, it is this early form of professional theater that begins in Italy and it's very popular throughout all of Europe. It is characterized by having improvised formul aic scenes that are that use repeating archetypes and patterns, both in terms of the characters themselves, who often wore distinctive and recognizable masks, and then also the many of scenarios repeated in a in a familiar way. The scenarios are called uh lazi or uh and an individual one is a lazzo. And so they were these well-rehearsed jokes and stock physical gags, and sometimes on the spot improvised episodes and routines. But they there are some sort of recurring ones, and and people who know more about Commedia Delarte will probably be able to explain this better, but I looked up a few of them. So one of the one of the recurring Lazzi is the Lazzo of the Mirror, which it it they star the same stock characters every time . One of the this one is Pantalone and Dotore, and Pantalone and Dotore discover a mirror, and it's another character or characters mimicking them, and the reflections exaggerate their movements and grow more absurd over time and it and it turns into ridiculous comedy. And then there's uh there's the Lazzo of the food where Brig ella, I hope I said that right, cooks a meal uh and then continually tastes and adds ridiculous ingredients like shoes and books and in inedible objects. And then the other characters are are either tasting and and adding their own additions and reacting in horror. And the characters from these stories, these stock characters, end up making their way into other cultures around Europe, including in England. And we've we've definitely talked before about pantalone , one of the characters who's this well he's Venetian, isn't he? He's a sort of Venetian miser with a a high sex drive. And he's he's kind of he's grumpy and he's old and he wears these very distinctive red tights that end up becoming the namesake of Pantalutons, because his name is Pentalone. And then uh and then pants. And another of the characters is is Zani , right? From which we get the word Zani. Uh-huh. So Zani is again what Zani? Zani is a a servant, really, but quite a an arch servant, and one who's prone to playing tricks. So you know it became a thing to call someone Az ani or Az aney as English transformed it, and then eventually it just becomes Zaney, you are Zany, but the implication being that you are a zaney. You are this sort of quirky character. And then Harlequin is one of the characters as well, Arlechino . And that's both the character's name and the the name of the patterned costume, right? Yeah, it's a b a Burgamese manservant, I think, the Harlequin. That makes sense. Again, though, you can hear how the people that are being mocked are all like the the underlings a lot of the time. Oh yeah, of course. We've got Brig ella, who I mentioned a minute ago, is a is a masked servant who is clever and manipulative and cruel and Scapino is a servant figure who uses trickery and deception to help or hinder other people and a lot of them are are servants and and lower class people and and the characters who are m igher class are like the pantalone character who's an elderly merchant and ildotore who is a scholar or a doctor who talks and talks and talks and presents himself as highly educated, and Il Capitano is a soldier, things like that. But this ha Harlequin character, Ale chino, is quite an interesting one. Because obviously we we know the words Harlequin as something akin to a a jester, I suppose. But traditionally on stage Harlequin was sort of this invisible trickster that could n't be seen by Pantalone and or the the clown sort of characters. They couldn't see them, which meant that the Harlequin was able to get up to all kinds of mischief. I'm so I'm fascinated by how many words we have for the sort of jest er and joker tons and harlequin and fool. Yeah. And I found a new one the other day. I popped this one in my newsletter uh 'cause I hadn't come across it before. A Dizzard. Dizard.. Dizzy What's the I mean I know what the a the ending is. It's my favourite ending. But what is what is the first part? I think the spelling has been informed by the word dizzy, but it comes from a French word meaning to speak. So a dis ant would be someone who speaks. Ah so originally the dizzard was a person in court who spoke, so who entertained, who told stories, but then it becomes you know something akin to a fool. And then in English, you know, to be called a dizzard would be an insult to it. In exactly the same way that you get the idea of someone being an idiot from, you know, originally an entertaining fool to then just being, you know, you're a fool. The same happens with the word dizzard, but we've lost the word dizzard, unfortunately. We've still got the word fool. We've lost dizzard. But um buffoon's a good one. Buff buffoon again goes to to Italian, buffone , but comes to us from from French, from Buffon. And it's thought that it's sort of almost um onomatopea , the first syllable of that, the buff being sort of the idea of puffing your cheeks to get a laugh really, sort of , you know, so it's like a puffer. That oon ending is interesting. We've seen it on Lampoon and Buffoon, and it's a little bit of a moving target. It's usually an interpretation of either the French en or the Italian One ending, just O N E or O N. And uh in English, it gets tacked onto all kinds of things. And it's in this weird form in Middle English where it's usually it it goes from the French en to the English un usually spelled like O U N, isn't it? Words that have come I don't know if that a a sort of an Anglo Norman hangover. I think it perhaps is that the the dialect of French that is being spoken in England has un sounds where the French that we're more used to now has en sounds. I suppose it probably did. You tend to find it on sometimes pejorative words, but then it also ends up on as sort of an agent ending as well. Like you'll see it on chaberoon and spittoon, but then you have to see it on quadroon and things like that, which aren't aren't negative. So it's it's interesting. Good point. Did you say you'd got some revelations about jesters? Oh, I sure do. The word jest in general. Um so a jest is not originally a joke. So a jest, G E S T, which is the predecessor to this word, was originally a story of achievements or adventures. One of the most famous medieval jests is this piece called Gesta Franc orum, which is the Gest of the Franks by Fulcher of Chartre Chartres, who is a which is a Latin chronicle of the first crusade written by this priest named Fulcher, who participated in the crus ade. And jester was originally a word for a professional storyteller or a minstrel or a professional reciter of romances. And not until the fifteenth century. This started in like the thirteenth century, but by the 15th century it was any sort of court entertaining entertainer, and of course they were quite silly. And a just, meanwhile, shrank down to a less grand story, just something you would tell over your ale. So actually that's quite similar to the story I was telling about Dizzards, right? Yeah. They start off as a storyteller and then become a teller of silly stories and then a teller of silly jokes. I also looked up joke, by the way, the origin of joke. I mean, it's not one of the more controversial origins. I mean it's from Latin jocchus, but it's got some relatives in other languages that are quite interesting, like the French j and jouet, which mean game and play, respectively. Obviously more directly from the Latin we get jocular and jocund as well. One thing that we didn't quite address in Commedia dell'Arte is that the word punch in the in the context of comedy, like the character punch and Judy, and then I believe the the punchline as well ultimately is from the notion of Yeah, is from Commedia delight. I was looking up whether I I'm not convinced anymore. Because I I got it in my head that Punchline was related to Punch and Punch and Judy. I think it's older than that because there was a character in Commedia Dellarte called Pulchinella, and Punch and Judy is based on that. There were th both of them involved Aaron Powell I'm not sure the term punchline goes back far enough though. Oh okay. It's a twentieth century term. It could be that they it is invoking that idea of punch, but I just think it's fine Yeah, that makes sense. Do you have punch and judy shows in America? Uh no, but I'm familiar with them because read a lot. Um that's I I mean they're not unfamiliar to your average person. I don't think so. I I I think most Americans probably have heard of Punch and Judy. And the magazine Punch in particular also made its way across the pond. Yeah. Satirical magazine, named after the one of the two main characters in the Punch and Judy shows. I I mean I saw a lot of Punch and Judy shows as a as a child for people who I mean if you don't know what it is, it is a a a small puppet show done in sort of like a little a little shack that they put outside with a little window and it's it's essentially a little stage. And it involves a lot of domestic domestic violence Punch and Judy, beating each other with sticks. There's always a a policeman involved as well, chasing them around. Kids absolutely love it . It's not terribly politically correct. But like we talked about about pantomime as well, somehow these things manage to endure, nevertheless. The word punch is not specifically from uh comedy. It means like puncture or or poke something and it it's originally from the French ponchonnet, which means to punch or prick or stamp or something. Ponchon is a pointed tool or a piercing weapon. Do you use the word gag in the States for a joke? Yeah, sure. It's one of those ones that people don't know. It might be from the sound you make when you laugh. But again, we keep mentioning the OED, because this is where we do like to look for these things. And it says that it's possibly uh invoking a a thrusting something down the th roat of a incredulous person because this is a key detail. Gags were not originally jokes. Gags were tricks . By gagging someone, are you figuratively seeing how much they can swallow what they would swallow. You know, how far you can you can push the the trick, how far you can push the scam. Oh, that makes sense. That's good. Yeah, it's interesting. But it m but it might be I'll no matter it might it just simply might be. Like a lot of our words for for laughing are like giggle, snicker, snigger, uh Ghaffore. Gaffeur's a good one. Gaffe is a Scottish word . Scots had um a verb gorf , which is to laugh. Oh, that's great. And and from that we get we get gapfor. Totally unrelated, but it reminds me that chortle is uh is a portmanteau coined by Lewis Carroll. Yes. And we just use it regularly. I I guess not in everyday conversation, but it comes up, you know. They they do like a comedy awards in Britain called the Chortle A Oh that's fun. That's cute. And snort uh chortle is chuckle and snort, isn't it? A portmanteau of those. Doug. There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this? Your first date? Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Ah! Me to a human, him to a bird. Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways. Get a quote at LibertyMutual.com or with your local agent. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty , Liberty. At Giants, when budgets are tight, we keep our communities knit even tighter with every way to save on all the meals you crave all year long . Diet. This is home. Could I pause to tell you a couple of jest s from history? I don't know why, just because your name is Jess. I can't when you mention that Jests from History, it feels like there's an extra S in the middle on the poster. Go on. Give us some Jess's jests from history. I found a a work called there, there are a couple different works called Shakespeare's Gest Book from the Tudor period that were collections of humorous anecdotes that were published within a few years of each other, and they're framed as having influenced some of Shakespeare's hum or. N we have no idea if they did if they did or not, or like what era all of the the jokes are from, but there was a hundred Merry Tales from fifteen twenty six and the Merry Tales and Quick Answers from 1530. So they're um and they're they're compiled into one sometimes called Shakespeare's jest book. And we do see things like our Mary Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham referenced in this, not in full, but there will be a little short blurb about the the man of the the the men of Gotham doing ridiculous things to convince the the king not to build his road through the town. But some of these jokes are filthy, like absolutely filthy. Like there's one. I uh it it's in it's in it's in Elizabethan English, so I'm going to translate it to modern English, but there is one about a woman standing by a river and washing her clothes, and because she keeps squatting down, her dress gets caught in her butt crack and shows off the outline of her other bits, and a friar comes up and makes a joke that's like the horse is biting his bridle, and she says, Master Friar, he's just wiping his mouth, so you'll come and kiss him . Absolutely filthy. And that's that's not the worst one I read. But on the lighter side, I also looked up a a mid-19th century selection of jokes called the Just Book by Mark Lemon. And this one has tamer ones. Some of them are a little, they're not politically correct by any means, but they're they're definitely meant to be more family friendly. But there's one per for example that uh that says the following admonition was addressed by a Quaker to a man who was pouring forth a volley of ill language against him. Have a care, friend, thou mayest run thy face against my fist. Which I feel like that joke is reli like that sounds like a modern joke, right? Yeah. Yeah. Stop hitting yourself. Archaic language. Watch it, mate, or you're gonna run into my fist. It's great. This one's uh this one's fun. A a loving husband once waited on a physician to request him to prescribe for his wife's eyes, which were very sore. I don't know what what's wrong with your eyes if they're sore. And the doctor advises her to wash them with a small glass of brandy. Again, I think that might make it worse. Anyway, a few weeks later, the doctor chanced to meet the husband. Well, my friend, has your wife followed my advice? She's done everything in her power to do it, Doctor, said the spouse, but she never could get the glass higher than her mouth. Very good. Very good. Yes . This one I I I'm gonna do one more and then we can move on. But I have I li I'm enjoying these. I'm enjoying these. Well I I to be honest, th th the first one was was far too raw. But um could really see it , yeah. Uh anyway. This wouldn't like the framing of it is not politically correct, but it's actually the the punchline is profound. So I'm I'm and not even funny profound, just like actually profound. So the the the joke goes a a lunatic in bedlam was asked how he came to be there, and he answered by a dispute. Someone asked, what dispute? The bedlamite repl ied. The world said I was mad. I said the world was mad, and they outwitted me. And I'm like, my goodness. It's clever. Yeah, it is. It's clever. It's clever. It's not a joke, though, is it? No, it's not a joke. It's more like a wit social commentary. It's a witticism. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it is. That's that's what it is. Whoa. Uh anyway. We should move back to forms of comedy. Oh yeah. When we were in England together, we you mentioned uh a panto, and I was like, you mean a pantomime? Because I hadn't heard of a panto before, which maybe I should have, but I I hadn't, and it sounded like something that I've been to in the States. But first, can you tell us what a panto is and what it has to do with pantomime? Well, it's panto is just short for pantomime. But our understanding of pantomime in Britain is not the traditional understanding of pantomime. Pantomime is just a mime, yeah. But uh Brit a British pantomime is a it's a Christmas play. It's usually a fairy tale story, a fairy story told um with music, bright colours, a lot of cross dressing. There are like in the Commedia del Arte, there's uh stock characters like the Dame, which is always a man, usually a middle-aged man, dressed up as a woman, usually plays the mother of the leading man, who is always played by a woman. And is also that they're incredibly good fun. And I mentioned a panto, it was during my show that I mentioned it, I think, because there's an interlude. It always ends, almost always ends, no, let's say it always ends, with a a wedding between the leading man and the leading woman. And that is always quite a sort of um extravagant affair . Requires a set change. So during the set change, what they do is they bring out the words to a song and everyone gets to sing the song. So this is in front of the envelope, in front of the curtain. Yeah, and there are all these little traditions like that. There's a lot of back and forth with the audience, a lot of call and response. Oh no he didn't. Oh yes he did. Oh no he didn't. A lot of shouting, he's behind you, he's behind you . Honestly, these are shown around Christmas. A lot of amateur companies will put them on. It'll be their big production, their big money spinner. A lot of amateur dramatics companies, it's the only way that they stay afloat is that they put on a pantomime each year. Because it's one of those things where you can see it done badly and still have a very, very good time. And we'll have to get you over at Christmas one time and take to Panto. That sounds great. It's it sounds a little Rocky horror-ish as well. I mean it certainly got all the cross-dressing and music of rocky horror pictures. And the interaction bits as well, right? Trevor Burrus But the thing about it is it's it's targeted at children as well as adults. So it's filled with double entendre like the jokes are never overtly sexual, or at least if they are, there's a way that the sentence can be interpreted by a child that is innocent. So I was looking at the kind of the evolution of the term . Um in it like you said, it means a mime originally. The the notion is performing. I'm not sure I I'm not sure if the sense is you perform with your whole body or you can perform anything. A pantomime in the Roman Empire was a performer who acted out mythological stories through kind of expressive gesture and dance and movement. So they might make sound, but they were still acting out through uh through their their bodies. And then in um the 18th century it it it sort of um it moved into ballet and movement based storytelling again could have sound and things. But then the the British pantomime sense seems to have come primarily from Comedi Delarte, like applying the same notions that we mentioned before. Apparently it's tied clos ely to the Harlequinod, A, which is a comic stage form based on those figures as well. Apparently, in those, Harlequin often receives a magic wand and then he drives the action through a bunch of changes and chases and tricks and transformations. In the States you have this theatre tradition of of vaudeville. We don't really have it in Britain. I think it's I think our equivalent is called Music Hall. Can you tell me about vaudeville? I sure can. It it comes from chanson du vaudeville. It is the song of the valley of Vier, which is in the is it which is in Normandy. And the phrase was applied to these satirical popular songs that were associated with Olivier Basselon, which was a fifteenth century poet from Vere, that's one potential option. Uh a second explanation might be that it's related to words like vaudet meaning to go and Virre meaning The idea here is that it's a country song essentially, and that that's what you experience when you experience uh it's funny i you would say vaudeville right and i have heard both vaudeville and vaudeville in american english dialects apparently both are are okay. It's interesting from what you were saying about the origin of it, that the vil at the end of it is sort of a misunderstanding either in English or or or I don't know earlier in French, because it should be vir , not vil. It's correcting, but it's correcting to another French word. Yeah. They've done well . Got the wrong language. Phono-semantically matched the wrong language. Hey, there we go. Hey, there we go. Phono semantic matching. Anyway, um vaudeville is basically a variety show and it tends to involve dancers and singers and musicians and magicians and ventriloquists. Which did you know that ventriloquist originally meant it means belly talking, essentially. It wasn't a word for what we now call a ventriloquist. It was it's not an entertainment. It's it's like a a a possession by a demon, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Like a a rumbling internal speech like the exorcist. Yeah. And then it was extended. I presumably because the the notion is that like you can't see their mouths moving. They're doing a lot more of the speaking down. Can you do it? Can you can you talk without using your mouth? No. There's that joke. Would you like would you like a bottle of beer or a wine. I'll have a wine because you can't say bottle of beer. shows and riverboat shows and music halls and burlesques and circus acts. You kind of do everything with with vaudeville, but it wasn't it was typically considered more family entertainment than burlesque shows. We already talked about parody and lampoon, but there's another word in that sort of dialectic, isn't there, which is which is spo of. It's a funny word, right? Yeah, it's a spoof. Again, it's a it's a word that doesn't go back that far. It's based on a game, right? Yeah, it's a card game. Yeah, called spo of. So either invented by or just res urrected by a music hall comedian. So I've talked about music hall. So basically calling him a comedian, but he could turn his hand to everything. These people could they could sing, they could dance, they could do everything. But his name was Arthur Roberts, and in the eighteen eighties he popularized this game of cards called spo of, sometimes spelled S P O O F, sometimes spelled S P O U F, and it would appear that a a large part of the game was tricking people. Which is common in card games. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So actually in a similar way to we can talk about trumping someone, that comes from the game of trumps. You start being able to talk about spoofing someone from the game of spoof, you know, tricking them. That's where spoof comes from. Mm-hmm. And then and so how did we get from spoof to like parody . It's it's not parody, but it it has elements of parody. You know what I mean? Well spoofing, for example, radar. So if you spoof a radar, that means you have tricked that radar into thinking something is there that is not there. So from those kinds of usages of trickery via spoofing, you then end up with the idea of faking something that is real . And that's what so a film spoof is a fake version of the the real thing, you know. So that's like scary movie taking the whole genre of horror films and making a a fake funny one. They spoofed it, exactly. I would love to talk about the word travesty because this was first in English a word for a comedic form as well, right? Travesty means uh it it's trans and vestire. So to clothe across it's cross dressing, something re-clothed or cross dressed. And the in English literary use it was a burlesque treatment of a serious work, especially one that kept the subject and the characters while making the language low or grotesque or absurd. So like parody changes the subject while imitating the style and travesty keeps the subject and the characters but then drags everything through the mud. And so a travesty became any distorted or inferior or grotesquely inadequate version of what something should be. So we have like a travesty of justice, which is like one of the earliest phrases that we have. That is one of those etymologies that is gonna change how I use that word ever so slightly. Etymologically, it means the same thing as transvest ism, basically. Travesty. But it's it's a figurative wearing of Yeah. We we have lots of words that figuratively use that sort of v idea of vestment, don't we? Like invest. It is basically a a doublet of the word trans vestite , but with a different ending in a different sense, right? But uh but it in French it went from like uh French and Italian dropped the N and the S so it became travestir, which mean meant dressed in disguise, but not necessarily cross dressed, just like different dressed. All right. I will round us out with a few more jokes that I pulled from history. Uh but there's uh these are these are laugh. These aren't bad, I promise. No no um horses nibbling at anything. Yes. Oh, I've just said the word camel toe on a microphone.