Word of the week: This beautifully strange, rhythmic, rhyming, onomatopoeic English word hails from the 18th century, meaning crumpled or gathered up, often pertaining to cloth or clothing, and deriving from the word for crease – a ruckle
Read moreWord of the week: tooth-music
Word of the week: A tasteful word in a sense – but not, unfortunately, referring to any form of gentle, dental, melodic xylophone-style playing, but simply an 18th-century dialect word for chewing or mastication
Read moreWord of the Week: zenzizenzizenzic
Word of the week: We return to the alphabet’s end with a word that’s as wonderfully weird, yet buzzily beautifully in sound as it is obscure and obsolete – an antiquated mathematical term meaning the eighth power of a number x, where x is multiplied by itself 8 times
Read moreWord of the week: daxophone
Word of the week: A uniquely versatile friction idiophone instrument that produces sound through the vibration of wooden slats played by finger touch and bow, producing an extraordinary range of animal and vocal-style noises, its name derived from the German word Dachs, meaning badger
Read moreWord of the week: xaque-xaque
Word of the week: Sometimes also xique-xique, a wonderfully evocative, onomatopoeic term for any kind of Brazilian rattle instrument, but when used in English referring more specifically to the maracas rattle
Read moreWord of the week: melochord
Word of the week: A postwar milestone and highly influential in electronic instrument evolution, the melochord is a monophonic keyboard created by German pioneer Harald Bode (1909–1987) in 1947 and based on vacuum tube technology
Read moreWord of the week: Omnichord
Word of the week: Out latest instrument in the series is was first released in 1981 by Suzuki, including a touch plate called SonicStrings, preset rhythms, auto-bass line function, and sets of single buttons for playing major, minor, and 7th chords in different keys
Read moreWord of the week: floccinaucinihilipilification
Word of the week: One of the longest in English, it’s the action or habit of estimating something as worthless or unimportant, but is it worth exploring this through the prism of song lyrics? Perhaps …
Read moreWord of the week: ibex
Word of the week: From the genus Capra, or mountain goat, a species that survived the ice age, these specialist climbers have huge horns and spreading feet for death defying climbs and ascents, but how might they have inspired songwriters?
Read moreWord of the week: kexy
Word of the week: myriander
Word of the week: It sounds like an exotic name, a form of wandering, or a term for many items, but this beautiful late 17th-century word pertains to an army of 10,000 men, a phrase spanning history and personal metaphor
Read moreWord of the week: nosism
Word of the Week: It sounds like a strange religion or nasal habit, but from Latin ‘nos’, this is the practice of using the ‘we’ pronoun when really only referring oneself in action or opinion - it’s more common in song than ‘we’ might imagine
Read moreWord of the week: phorminx
Word of the week: Taking us back to some of the earliest ever music, in ancient Greek φόρμιγξ, the phorminx, a developed form of lyre, is one of the oldest instruments and the a forerunner to the kithara
Read moreWord of the week: quincunx
Word of the week: This ancient symbolic word is not really one to sing, but points down many cultural roads through history, as well as unearthing a variety of lesser known music
Read moreWord of the week: tonitruone
Word of the week: An evocative term suitable for hearing the effects of changeable weather, this is a lesser known word for a musical instrument used to recreate the sound of thunder. But how? And who uses it?
Read moreWord of the week: watchet
Word of the week: It sounds like a small timepiece or a low-key warning, but this is really word of a shade of pale blue, an angler's fly, and also a harbour town in Somerset
Read moreWord of the week: bumposopher
Word of the week: A delightful looking and sounding noun, and an alternative to bumpologist, this is a humorous, gently derogatory mid-19th-century word for a practitioner in the highly dubious, once-popular pseudoscience of phrenology
Read moreWord of the week: coddiwomple
Word of the week: Usually our entries are historical obscurities, but this verb is not yet in the formal lexicon, has only entered language via online circulation, yet has still inspired recent music and its definition harks back to great traditions
Read moreWord of the week: foppotee
Word of the week: It’s a very rare and also pleasant sounding, poetic word that was briefly used in the 17th century, but is in fact derogatory, pertaining to simpleton. It could well describe much behaviour in modern life too. But in songs, is it always wrong to be a foppotee?
Read moreWord of the week: gymnure
Word of the week: Survival concerns? Maybe be more gymnure. Small, elusive and nocturnal, it's not a rat, nor a shrew, but a furry hedgehog, a Galericinae from the Erinaceidae family, with acute senses, especially of smell, and likely resembles the earliest form of mammal
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