Your Custom Text Here
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?
Read more
Old orgiophantine work
Word of the week: It sounds like a colossal beast, and indeed much flesh is involved, except this word pertains to a person or presides over, and organises an orgy. Quite how to direct proceedings once it starts is anyone’s guess …
Read more
Gretchen Menn, composer, solo artist, and member of the band Zepparella might well be associated with this word
Word of the week: It has been in use since the 15th century, derives from the Latin adjective pulcher, and while not exactly onomatopoeic, pertains, like the noun pulchritude, to physical beauty or ‘comeliness’.
Read more
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
Read more
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
Read more
Can you get a Handel on what this week’s word might be?
Word of the week: It's an obscure, archaic 19th-century word with a definition almost as strangely obvious and clear as what it describes isn't – poor, illegible handwriting, and bad spelling and grammar
Read more
A woundikins moment in Family Guy …
Word of the week: It’s an archaic, comically silly swearword, an exclamation of pain or exasperation that was only used for a brief period in the 19th century, but where does this kind of thing relate song lyrics?
Read more
Time to weigh up this week’s word
Word of the week: In politics or business it’s always important to scrutinise the smallprint. This now antiquated, but handy and evocative word pertains to medieval market official in charge of the official weights, against which merchant weights were compared to make sure they were not cheating their customers
Read more
Guitar crossed with cello? Arpeggione models created by luthier Philippe Berne
Word of the week: It is neither guitar nor cello, but fretted and tuned like the former, and bowed like the latter. Read on to find out more with musical examples, as well as instances where guitarists have decided to take a bow …
Read more
Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer
Word of the week: Also known as the banjulele, this resonant cross between the banjo and ukelele was first build in 1917 and became especially popular in the 1920s and 30s
Read more
What’s not to love? Aardvarks
Word of the week: It’s that appealing, nocturnal, burrowing African mammal with a long snout that lives on ants and termites, but is also slang in parts of the US for an mistake-prone person and even an uncircumcised penis
Read more
An ichthyosaur could be a long as 15 metres. Surely that’s worth a song or two?
Word of the week: After last week’s fictional Jabberwocky, a real-life deep-sea dinosaur, a fish-reptile with an extraordinary evolutionary history on land and sea, famous in fossils, but where can we dive to find it in song lyrics?
Read more
You must remember this … a kiss is just …
Word of the week: It’s an adjective with a beautiful sound. It means the characteristics of our ape cousins, but of course sharing almost all the same DNA, it also means us. But where is simian in lyrics?
Read more
A famous whippet frisbee-catching champion?
Word of the Week: It’s a slim, fast dog, the name of a car, a ship, a tank and a light aircraft, and also slang for recreational use of nitrous oxide from small metal containers, but where does it appear in song?
Read more