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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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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
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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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Travel broadens the mind, one hopes, with a spot of some 19th-century xenization in Egypt
Word of the week: This archaic term from the 19th century means travelling as a stranger in a foreign country, implying learning, discovery and broadening of the mind – quite topical in the current political climate
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The yaffingale, or green woodpecker
Word of the week: It’s an archaic, southern English name for the European green woodpecker, picus viridis, that species of beautiful colour that taps on softer wood trunks to feed and nest, but how does such a bird come up in song?
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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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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 …
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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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The true sound of Australia …
Word of the week: It's that unmistakable indigenous Australian hardwood trumpet "drone pipe" classified as a brass aerophone and among its extraordinary qualities, playing helps reduce snoring and obstructive sleep apne by strengthening the muscles of the upper airways
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The esraj is a four-string version of the older dilruba
Word of the Week: It has a beautifully eerily, emotional sound that echoes the human voice, that comes not from vocal chords, but from bowed strings in this instrument from southern Asia – mainly music in Sikh, Punjab and eastern Bengal culture
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Like a trumpet, but not a trumpet …
Word of the week: It’s similar to a trumpet, but isn’t. What’s the difference, who plays it, and on what songs and pieces. All is revealed here in a blow-by-blow account, featuring artists including Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen and The Pogues
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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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Hurdy-gurdy
Word of the week: It sounds like a medieval insult, disease or even sexual position, but it's a basic form of the stringed instrument played with keys and by turning a hand-crank wheel that rubs against the strings like a mechanised violin
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Tuvan musician Evgeny Saryglar on the igil
Word of the week: It's an elegant, bowed, two-stringed Tuvan musical instrument, central to the music of that southern Siberian region, emitting a haunting sound that often accompanies and is played by throat singers
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Two for one: the jazzophone
Word of the week: It is quite rare, has possibly the cheesiest name of any instrument, and is an unholy hybrid of trumpet and alto saxophone, but can produce a remarkably vibrant and unusual sound
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Have you ‘herd’ this before?
Word of the week: It's a beautiful, haunting Scandinavian high-pitched, very musical vocal style, designed to resonantly call in herds of cows or goats from high pastures and long distances, sung out particularly by women
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Sticking the boot in …
Word of the week: The Australian name for the Mendoza, Mendozer, Monkey Stick, Murrumbidgee River Rattler, or Zob Stick, this ultimate pub instrument is a shake-and-bang percussion stick or pole is mostly made from nailed-on beer bottle tops
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Mbuti pygmies listening back to their own music in 1952
Word of the week: It is a horn-like trumpet used by the Mbuti pygmy tribes of Democratic Republic of the Congo, but also the name of a ritual to celebrate the precious life of the forest to these hunter-gatherers
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