Word of the week: Mice, rats, spiders, foxes to raccoons, this obscure adjective, connected to the French noun broticole, this relates to any animal and insect species with a tendency to live around and alongside humans and their dwellings perhaps as scavengers, but also showing adaptability
Read moreWord of the week: flittermouse
Word of the week: With other variants such as flickermouse and flinder-mouse, this rather charming Tudor-period English noun is a rather evocative and onomatopoeically descriptive one for that quietly sonic-guided night creature – the bat
Read moreWord of the week: octodont
Word of the week: Meaning, in Latin, having eight teeth, but also a general term for particular groups furry mammals who are part of the Octodontidae or Octodon genus of rodents of South America, particularly the degu
Read moreWord of the week: ululation
Word of the week: The noun of the verb ululate, meaning to to deliver a high-pitched cry, or howl, very much like that of a wolf in the forest, though it can also be applied to the human voice
Read moreWord of the week: vicuna
Word of the week: Also spelled vicuña (Lama vicugna) this, is one of the two species of wild South American camelids living in high alpine areas of the Andes, a relative of the llama and the wild ancestor of the alpaca
Read moreWord of the week: ibex
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?
Read moreWord of the week: yapok
Word of the week: With dense marble pattern fur and webbed hind feet, but front claws, this lesser known semiaquatic South American water opossum is an unusual hybrid – and the only marsupial to have pouches in both sexes
Read moreWord of the week: gymnure
Word of the week: Survival concerns? Maybe be more gymnure. Small, elusive and nocturnal, it's not a rat, nor a shrew, but a furry hedgehog, a Galericinae from the Erinaceidae family, with acute senses, especially of smell, and likely resembles the earliest form of mammal
Read moreWord of the week: aardvark (and aardwolf)
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 moreWord of the week: olfactory
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?
Read moreWord of the week: simian
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 moreWord of the week: whippet
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 moreWord of the week: yellowback or yellow-back
Word of the week: Following on from zephyr last week, we work backwards to a colour term that can pertain to cheap books, a fish, a mussel, insect, a certificate for gold, and in urban slang, council workers wearing hi-vis jackets
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