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: quaquaversal
Word of the week: An adjective with origins in the late 17th century meaning pointing or heading off in all directions – particularly as in the point of a compass, sometimes pertaining to geographical structure, or such as with an exploding firework
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: spanwhengle
Word of the week: This colourfully archaic English verb, thought to have origins in the Leeds and immediate Yorkshire area, means to shake or knock something violently
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: warzle / warzlement
Word of the week: An evocative Old English-origin dialect word for sycophantic flattery, pertaining to sly persuasion for favours, it derives from two old English words – wær meaning cautious, and sealm meaning speech
Read moreWord of the week: xyloid
Word of the week: An adjective meaning woody, or ligneous, and springing from the Ancient Greek xúlon for wood, and oeidḗs for form, the origin for xylophone, it’s one that sprouts many more roots and branches in our language
Read moreWord of the week: Yaybahar
Word of the week: Resonant, vivid, and otherworldly in sound, this extraordinary musical instrument was invented by the Turkish musician Görkem Şen who describes it as a “real-time acoustic string synthesizer”
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: aubade
Word of the week: An evocative, poetic French word adopted into English language in the 17th century meaning a song or poem set, or performed, at dawn or evoking daybreak, most often about lovers separating – and the flipside of a serenade
Read moreWord of the week: bahuvrihi
In linguistics, an evocative, descriptive compound word, from Sanscrit, often comprising an adjective then noun, or two nouns, in which the first part (A) describes the second (B), to create a word describing something else which has a “B that is A”
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: 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: erxian
Word of the week: One of China’s most important traditional bowed instruments with an unmistakable sound, dating back at least 2,000 years, with a hardwood neck and a rounded bamboo soundbox and two strings, it looks simple, but takes years to master
Read moreWord of the week: firikyiwa
Word of the week: Pronounced free-chee-wah, and best known in Ghana and other parts of West Africa, this is a two-piece single-handed pod bell percussion instrument, with a round hollow iron shell worn on the index finger struck by the ring on the thumb
Read moreWord of the week: ghungroo
Word of the week: The word for a small bell, it describes one of many to form ghungroos, a musical anklet tied just above the feet of classical Indian dancers to accentuate and accompany complex footwork
Read moreWord of the week: hyōshigi
Word of the week: Hyōshigi (拍子木) describes a simple, clapping percussion instrument with a sound evocative of Kabuki theatre and other Japanese traditions – two pieces of hardwood or bamboo connected by a thin ornamental rope – they bang together, sometimes with increasing speed.
Read moreWord of the week: inanga
Word of the week: A trough-style traditional zither played in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the soundboard with concave sides and six to eight string pitches on the pentatonic scale, its evocative plucked sound is often accompanied by poetic, sometimes whispered song narratives
Read moreWord of the week: jalatharangam (jal tarang)
Word of the week: Also known as jal tarang (Hindi: जलतरंग) meaning waves of water this is a traditional, Indian subcontinent percussion instrument dating back to the 4th–6th centuries CE, comprising up to 22 porcelain or glass bowls filled with water and struck with sticks
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