Word of the week: Huge, gigantic, enormous, voracious or insatiable, this colourful adjective derives from the character in the pioneering 16th-century French prose writer François Rabelais’s multiple volume work, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Read moreWord of the week: rucklety-tucklety
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: umbriphilous
Word of the week: An adjective describing that which loves the shade, whether person, plant or otherwise, from the Latin, umbra, for shade and related to other derivatives, such as umbraphile, one who loves eclipses
Read moreWord of the week: vorlus-snorlus
Word of the week: A strangely poetic, archaic Gloucestershire term meaning haphazard, pertaining to a a person who acts at random, possibly a corruption of the Latin term nolens volens, meaning neither willing nor unwilling, related to the word willy-nilly
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: callithumpian
Word of the week: An evocative adjectival form of callithump, commonly used from 1836 in the American mid-West, describing a parade or band of noisemakers, but also originally an 18th-century British dialect noun for a group who made a rumpus on election days in southern England
Read moreWord of the week: nai
Word of the week: This Romanian 17th-century panpipe is a mainstay of traditional folk and classical music, wide in range and resonant, it is made up of at least 20 pipes made of bamboo or reed in the diatonic scale of C or G, and emits a clean, distinctive sound
Read moreWord of the week: plock
Word of the week: Also called płock, płocka or fidel płocka, a box-shaped six-string traditional Polish folk violin, without fingerboard or tailpiece, played vertically resting on the knee, and pairs of strings doubling pitch to bring a rich, resonant sound
Read moreWord of the week: ronroco
Word of the week: An Andean 10-string (5 doubles) form of mandolin, baritone or bass charango, this beautiful instrument was invented in the 1980s by Gonzalo Hermosa González, of the group Los Kjarkas from Cochabamba, Bolivia and has been used in many acclaimed film scores
Read moreWord of the week: wheeple
Word of the week: A Scottish dialect term dating back to at least the 19th century, meaning to utter a shrill, prolonged whistle or cry, often used to describe the high-pitched call of the curlew or plover
Read moreWord of the week: yaraví
Word of the week: A broad term for a traditional, slow love song from Peru and other Andean and south American regions, often nostalgic and melancholy, stretching back to Inca culture, and sometimes also honouring the dead
Read moreWord of the week: dundun / dunun / doundoun
Word of the week: These evocative, onomatopoeic variants are generic names for a family of West African talking drums, particularly in the Yoruba culture of Nigeria, Guinea, talking drums that mimic human speech, rope-tuned and cylindrical with a rawhide skin at both ends, and played with a stick
Read moreWord of the week: fujara
Word of the week: A traditional Slovakian shepherd’s flute of unusual length (160-200cm) with distinctive deep mumbling tones, emitted by its lower register and very high overtones, a beautiful, meditative, ghostly sound, emitting melancholic and rhapsodic music, varying in relations to the life and work of the shepherd
Read moreWord of the week: huapanguera
Word of the week: This guitar variant eight-stringed instrument of the Huasteca region of Mexico offers a deeper sound than its more conventional acoustic cousin, often played within a conjunto huasteco ensemble, alongside a five-string jarana huasteca and violin
Read moreWord of the week: kamancheh
Word of the week: Most commonly tuned like the violin (G, D, A, E) though with variants, though with its own distinct sound this Persian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Kurdish music, has a long neck and a spherical body
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: yatga
Word of the week: Related to the Chinese guzheng, this beautiful and delicate sounding instrument is a traditional fingernail-plucked Mongolian zither, the other hand applying pressure to strings to change the notes
Read moreWord of the week: zurna
Word of the week: You will know it as soon as heard. With it distinctively high, reedy, resonant and evocative sound, this short folk, conical-shaped oboe of Arab origins can be heard from Turkey across south-east Europe and parts of Asia made of wood with a double reed
Read moreWord of the week: balalaika
Word of the week: A distinctive long-necked three-stringed lute used in traditional Russian folk and dance music with a triangular body, this instrument has short sustain with a small sound hole, so requires rapid strumming or plucking, and comes a range of sizes and tunings
Read moreWord of the week: crwth
Word of the week: Intriguingly vowel-less, this is a bowed medieval Welsh lyre with a flat bridge ideal for playing chords and melodies, with a design dating back to Roman times and reached peaked popularity in the Middle Ages
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