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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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Gregor Fisher as the photo booth man in the 1986 Hamlet advertisement
Word of the week: It’s a long, slender cigar, derived from the Spanish panatela, for a long thin biscuit, and the Italian panatello for small loaf, but where does it appear in songs, and also a famous set of TV advertisements?
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From Hawkwind’s 1977 strangely particular album …
Word of the week: It's the infinitesimally small subatomic particle which forms matter, a type of curdled cheese from soured milk, is used in computer language and in sci-fi fiction names, but where in lyrics?
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Scaramooche, scaramooche …
Word of the week: With an appropriately flamboyant sound and rhythm it’s a word best known for the title of Freddie Mercury’s epic Bohemian Queen song, and several major classical works, but where is it used in song lyrics?
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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?
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Sparky: ArcAttack perform with a massive Tesla coil
Word of the Week: It sizzles off the tongue, it’s the name of a great inventor, and after him, a unit of magnetic flux density, and it’s also a car, and in slang recreational drug, but where does it appear in song lyrics?
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Any umbrellas? Should we focus on Rihanna for some shelter?
Word of the Week: It’s a word with a beautiful sound formed from the Latin word, umbra, for shade, is not merely an expanding accessory to shelter from the rain, also a general term of protection or a thing made of many parts
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Vesper cocktail, but that’s just one of many evening meanings …
Word of the Week: It’s a famous Bjork album, but where does it come up in lyrics? The root of this word relates to the evening and its tolling bell, but also bats, Venus, a cocktail, and in slang – a kind, smart, cool girl
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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?
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One of many visual impressions of the imagined stately pleasure palace
Word of the week: It’s an idealised location of magnificence and beauty with Chinese origins described in Coleridge’s poem, and a 1980 film starring Olivia Newton-John and song performed with ELO, but where else does it appear in lyrics?
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Yellowback books from 19th century
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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