Some words are created to sound like the thing they describe — like ‘fizzle’, ‘burp’, ‘hiccup’, ‘chatter’, and ‘squelch’. This kind of word-making is called ‘onomatopoeia’.

Nothing strange about that, you’re thinking, and you’re right. What might surprise you, though, is the meaning of one of those words when it was first used 500 years ago. The original meaning of ‘fizzle’ was ‘to break wind without noise’ — in other words, to fart silently! If we say something ‘fizzles out’ today, we mean it loses its power and fades away. Just like a windipop that no one else notices.

Now, what’s the opposite of a quiet, er, fizzle? It’s one that explodes of course, and that has a very funny story behind it…

If you’ve ever been to a panto, you’ll know that the baddie is always loudly booed and hissed at! In ancient times, every actor, even in serious plays, faced that horrible possibility. This time, though, it wasn’t just booing and hissing, but some deafening clapping too.

Today, of course, we associate clapping with approval, but in the days of Roman theatre it could the opposite. And so if an actor wasn’t particularly good, the audience would clap VERY loudly.

The Latin word for clap was plaudere — which is where we get the word ‘applause’ from. Explaudere meant to clap someone OFF the stage — ex meant ‘off’ or ‘out’. So when someone ‘exploded’ in the theatre, they weren’t struck by a bomb or a stick of dynamite. They were simply forced to leave the stage!