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That distinctive gingerbread twang
Word of the week: Two alternative spellings, spicily evocative and colourful, they are adjectives pertaining to the Zingiberaceae family of flowering plants that variously bring that distinctive flavour of, and are a rather fancy way of saying – ginger
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The Deoch an Dorus pub in Partick, Glasgow
Word of the week: From the17th-century Scottish Gaelic phrase, deoch an doruis (and also with the form deochandorus), this literally means “door-drink” – a toast made with, or to honour, someone about to depart
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A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts a shadow
Word of the week: From the Ancient Greek, γνώμων (gnṓmōn)this pointed noun literally means one that knows or examines, but it is specifically the part of a sundial that casts a shadow as well as referring to other mathematical terms
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The Green Man
Word of the week: Two lesser known and very similar adjectives from the Latin word heder – hederaceous meaning resembling ivy, while hederigerent describing that which is dressed with or bedecked in ivy
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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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Loweswater in the Cumbrian Lake District
Word of the week: A poetic word taken from the Latin lacus and French or Italan lacustre, this shimmering liquid of an adjective means relating to, formed in, living in, or growing in lakes, lake-like or positioned by a lake
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Ooftish
Word of the week: This evocative term is derived from the Yiddish expression gelt afn tish, meaning cash money on the table, ooftish was common slang for money or cash in late-19th to mid-20th century English, with oofless in turn meaning skint, poor or bankrupt
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Illustration from Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel by Gustave Doré
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
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Homer and Bart Simpson in a regular moment of spanwhengling
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
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Umbriphilous bluebells …
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
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Xyloid art
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
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Turkish musician Görkem Şen playing his invention, the 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”
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Meadowlark at first light
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
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Callithumpian band
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
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The erxian takes many years to master
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
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The firikyiwa can be played on one hand
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
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Ghungroo ankle bells
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
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Hyōshigi will regularly feature in Japanese kabuki theatre to call attention to the audience
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.
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Don’t look back in anger, but 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
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