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Jarvis Cocker playfully addresses the issue of the volgivagant in a classic number from 1995
Word of the week: It’s an obsolete 17th-century term pertaining to the common masses and so-called more vulgar or baser tastes within the uneducated and poor, but something that remains as relevant today in the pursuits of cultural or political popularism
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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?
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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
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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
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Oh what a carillon … in Bruges, Belgium
Word of the week: The bells! The bells! Struck by metal clappers connected to baton keys, this beautiful sounding word – and a-peeling historic instrument – comprises, by definition, a minimum of 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells played melodically or in chords
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Güiro - used in more genres than you might imagine
Word of the week: Used in Latin American music, but also by artists from David Bowie to The Rolling Stones, it’s idiophone made of resonant gourd or wood, is held through holes making a rhythmic, ratchet sound by scraping a stick across specially created ridges
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The vibraslap is a replacement for the jawbone
Word of the week: It's one of the most modern of all analogue percussion instruments, a combination of stiff wire, wooden ball and box with metal teeth, a replacement for animal bones, but where does it appear in songs?
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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
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Bombast, ironic and otherwise, comes in this album by The Fall
Word of the Week: It describes high-sounding, pretentious, showy language with little meaning used to impress people, and explodes enjoyably when pronounced, but how it is used in lyrics, and does it affect the natures of the song itself?
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Egrets? We have a few …
Word of the week: They are from the heron family of water-fishing birds, various in size and colour but mostly white, elegant, angular and thin, and are beautiful to watch, but how is this unusual word used in song lyrics?
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Flim flam isn’t only what people might say, it’s also a font
Word of the week: It means pseudo-intellectual nonsense, insincerity or a confidence trick perpetrated by elected officials, so while antiquated, always current and relevant, and with a lovely musicality where has it been used in lyrics?
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Typical gabardine coats (centre and left)
Word of the week: Let’s extend the lyrical wardrobe. It’s a smooth, durable, twill-woven worsted, rayon or cotton cloth material and also the name of coat, but is a also beautifully sounding, musical word, perfectly suited to sung words
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May and Thatcher: two more recent harridans, though their gender has nothing to do with policy or nature
Word of the week: It traditionally means a scolding, bossy, unpleasant woman, possibly with origins from the 17th century and related to the verb to harry, or hassle, and has a certain comical quality, but where does it come up in song lyrics?
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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?
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Monstrous nonsense: from the original illustration of the Jabberwock from Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass
Word of the week: It’s best known as the mythical monster in Lewis Carroll’s poem from Through The Looking Glass (1871), but the word also means nonsense or gibberish, something that continues to be very much at large
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Kissed and met: Elvis Presley’s endless 1960s movie destiny
Word of the week: It’s originally from an Arabic word, qisma, meaning portion or lot, and taken from Turkey in the 19th century, meaning fate, but where has in turned up in song lyrics since the 20th century?
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The days are getting longer …
Word of the week: It’s not all doom and gloom right now. With the winter solstice just gone by, days will slowly lengthen, allowing us to perceive more lux, that unit of illuminance and luminous flux. It’s a beautiful word, but where does it appear in lyrics?
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Malignant malarkey: May and Trump
Word of the week: It means utter nonsense talk, and there’s no shortage of that – at work, home, in law, and especially in politics right now, but where does the word come from and how is it used in song lyrics?
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The Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant of the constellation of Taurus
Word of the week: It’s a cloudy cluster of related words as we play with lovely sounding space dust, a haziness or vagueness and more, but where can it be found song lyrics?
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Polar bears, and others from the bear family can sense food from as far as 20 miles
Word of the week: It refers to the system that governs our sense of smell (olfaction) and is a highly evocative word, and while there are many songs about odours, who uses it in lyrics?
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