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It is sometimes incorrectly used to mean out of control or even orgiastic, but the original meaning of the word is to describe something as similar to the works of François Rabelais himself – down-to-earth and humorous.

In his published works, Rabelais (1494–1553) was many things that most writers of the era were not – satirical, funny, humanist and full of coarseness such as double entendres which raise eyebrows even today. His best-known works are the novels Gargantua and Pantagruel, the former giving us the eponym ‘gargantuan’ (see above).

Rabelais was a doctor by profession, but his sympathies lay very much with the common people, and that earthiness and humanist sympathies saw him condemned by the Church. He is said to have died muttering that he was ‘going to the Great Perhaps’.