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The aspectabund performance of Gregor Fisher on the Hamlet cigar ads
Word of the week: This rare adjective describes a highly expressive face or countenance, where emotions and reactions are readily shown through the eyes or mouth
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Runners sometimes discalceate for a purer movement …
Word of the week: A rarely used, but often practised verb, especially when arriving home, it means to take off your shoes, but is also a slightly more common adjective meaning barefoot or unshod, particularly for certain religious orders that wear sandals instead of shoes. But in what context does this come up in song?
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Erythrophyll in autumn
Word of the week: A seasonally topical word relating to the the red pigment of tree leaves, fruits and flowers, that appears particularly when changing in autumn, as opposed to the green effect of chlorophyll, from the Greek erythros for red, and phyll for leaves. But what of songs about this?
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Jenticulate with the jentacular in the morning …
Word of the week: A tasty noun and an adjective all associated with the first meal of the day - one means to take breakfast, the other, with a variant spelling, describes anything related to that meal. Both derive from the Latin noun ientaculum, meaning a breakfast taken immediately on getting up
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Titania falls under a kalopsian spell in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Drawing by Charles Buchel, 1905
Word of the week: A noun describing distorted perception, meaning the delusion of seeing things as being more beautiful than they are, or through rose-tinted glasses
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Three recent books that are more than relevant to the current word
Word of the week: About whom could this apply right now? It's a word for extreme, foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance that tends to lead to a fall, and a dangerous thing in the head of someone with power who refuses to acknowledge it.
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The ibex will clamber almost vertical walls …
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?
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Autumn is a kexy time of year …
What old meanings are we cranking out this week?
Word of the Week: They’re going fast! This archaic adjective in use from the mid-17th to mid-19th century describes something in great demand and ready for a quick sale, from the Middle and Old English lieftell, meaning agreeable and countable
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The Ariston Organette
Word of the Week: It’s a mechanical, hand-operated organ instrument first manufactured in the late 1870s playing music from perforated paper, cardboard, or metal disks on wooden rolls or “cobs” that clunkily and rather beautifully captures another era
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Adam Ant stands and delivers what could be described as a vectarious number
Word of the week: It is neither triumphant nor relating to mathematical space, but while sounding thoroughly splendid, it's an obscure 17th-century adjective meaning belonging to or associated with a wagon or carriage
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XTC like to talk about the foppotee, but not always in a derogatory way
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?
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Miso soup
Word of the week: A derivative of the French jus for juice, this rarely tasted mid-17th-century word means full of broth or soup, a deliciously evocative adjective that bubbles up a variety of associations, but does it appear in song?
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Cammelia japonica knosps, pushing out like pursed lips, are some of the first to open in the late winter period
Word of the week: Winter may still have a tight grip in the western hemisphere as spring slowly stirs, but this noun is the highly descriptive name for an unopened flower bud, and also the architectural term for bulbish knobs of a similar design
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A 3D LED music-themed lamp
Word of the week: It’s an archaic, late-Victorian word some might imagine to be associated with pugilism, but more obviously, and yet poetically means the shimmeringly fragile and hopefully beautiful art of lamp care and decoration
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A sweeping visual statement about this week’s word …
Word of the week: Some kind of norse telescope? An instrument to detect scandal? Neither. This week's archaic word originated in 1802 with an invention to automate chimney sweeping and to put dusty child labourers out of danger
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The Dead Kennedys bring up a number that fits this week’s word
Word of the week: Clear your ears, but especially your throat. What word is coming up this time? An archaic term that that was in use from the late 16th to 19th centuries means to cough, from the Latin tussicus, or tussis, having that affliction
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