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Word of the week: umbrella … umbracious ... umbraculum

October 16, 2018 Peter Kimpton
Any umbrellas? Should we focus on Rihanna for some shelter?

Any umbrellas? Should we focus on Rihanna for some shelter?

It’s a word with a beautiful sound formed from the Latin word, umbra, for shade, is not merely an expanding accessory to shelter from the rain, also a general term of protection or a thing made of many parts. An umbrella has many forms and styles that related to gender, class and fashion, from the formal full-length black number to the compact-expandable, garish colours, golf umbrellas, giant or twin sizes, see-through bubble models, or flowery parasol types. They are also the annoying and selfish item used by some festival crowd individuals, and an alleged spy poisoning incident.

Umbrella also has some lovely related words, such as umbraculum, a rather more old-fashioned word meaning the same thing, or umbrella-like, umbraculiform (shaped like an umbrella), umbracious (shady), umbratilous (shadowy, shaded, secluded or sheltered indoors), umbriferous (giving or bearing shade), umbrose (giving shade), an umbril (visor on helmet to protect the eyes from light) and umbrage, which if you take it means offence (perhaps a dark side), but is also shade or foliage. But where does it occur in lyrics?

Unlike some of our previous words, there are in fact numerous uses of umbrella in song lyrics, so here are just a handful. Feel free to add your own below. One of the best umbrella songs comes in how it, and poor weather, is a vehicle for a beautiful love story in the characteristically rainy city of Manchester, in Bus Stop by the Hollies in 1966:

Bus stop, wet day
She's there, I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stops, bus goes
She stays, love grows
Under my umbrella

All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella we employed it
By August she was mine

But umbrellas don’t always offer protection that lead might lead to love. In this Andy Partridge song for XTC, 1000 Umbrellas from the 1986 album Skylarking, it’s the very opposite:

One thousand umbrellas
Upturned couldn't catch all the rain
That drained out of my head
When you said we were
Over and over I cried
'Til I floated downstream
To a town they call
Misery oh oh misery

On a more upbeat note, Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella, written by  Sammy Fain, with lyrics by Irving Kahal and Francis Wheeler, mixes the recognisable object with a metaphor:

Just let a smile be your umbrella, 
On a rainy, rainy day
And if your sweetie cries, just tell her, 
That a smile will always pay

It’s been performed by many artists, from Perry Como to Bing Crosby and Lee Dorsey, but let’s enjoy a version by those great close-harmony singer The Andrews Sisters:

On a far stormier, stranger more offbeat context, let’s step into the world of The Fiery Furnaces and the Friedberger siblings, from their 2003 album Gallowsbird’s Bark:

Gale, gale blow 
Gale, gale blow 
My umbrella can't take it you know 
Been caught in a hail storm 
A blizzard, tornado's nose 
But nothing, no nothing 
Can beat this gale blow
 

Then there’s Rihanna, in a much covered song, here joined by Jay-Z from her Good Girl Gone Bad album (2007). It sounds like a friendship song, but in sexy music marketing terms, could ‘umbrella’ mean something a little more than a device with expanding and folding flaps? Are there any other umbrella fellas out there? Perhaps Frank Sinatra for one?

Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella
You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh

How about other words related to umber and umbrella. Time to take a little umbrage? This is not so common, but who better to take it than Lou Reed on the snappy lyrics of his song So Alone, from 1980’s Growing Up In Public:

Sure all men are beasts
Hey, look, I'll sit here quietly and I'll stare at my feet
I don't blame you for taking umbrage
With animals staring at your cleavage
So alone, we're so all alone

So then, please offer more music shelter and help make this week’s word of the week a shade better by pulling out and expanding your own examples below about umbrella or its related words, and feel free to add any other associations or examples in art, film, science, history or politics.

Want to suggest other examples of this word in song lyrics, or other unusual words or contexts? Does this song make you think of something else? Then feel free to comment below, on the contact page, or on social media: Song Bar Twitter, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube. Please subscribe, follow and share.

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In hip hop, pop, rock, folk Tags word of the week, words, umbrella, XTC, The Hollies, Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal, Francis Wheeler, The Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Perry Como, The Fiery Furnaces, Rihana, Jay-Z, Lou Reed, jazz, swing, soul, R n B
← Word of the week: TeslaWord of the week: vesper, vespertine, vespertilian … →

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