Advertise on podcast: Word Wrangling with Terry Victor

Looking back at the language of  cigarette smokers in the company of Oasis, Duke Ellington and the Kinks (among others).

Part one was an al dente trip from A to L. This is part two: M to Z, including the sophisticated delights of  Mac'n'Cheese and Spag Bol. Along the way, we discover the origins of 'dude',  encounter a tragic princess and strangle a priest. Buon appetito (part two)! 

The shapes and stories of many a  favourite pasta - and many you haven't heard of.  All dished up in the best possible taste, with flavours of Marco Polo, The Godfather and Lord of the Flies. Buon appetito!

Word Wrangling politicians. Oh my. If ever there was a word freighted with thrilling expectations… But here we go. Because politician is the lexical fruit of such a rich etymological tree.

Let's go time travelling with the likes of David Bowie, H.G, Wells and Charles Dickens. The Doctor is on board, so is King Solomon, and together we will try to unknot British Summer Time as we dance around the Doomsday Clock.

Word Wrangling goes to a rap battle with Stephen Sondheim and Punch and Judy. There's something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone who needs a laugh.

Uncovering and wrangling one little word's saucerful of secrets. In the company of Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Pink Floyd (which one's Pink?), among other notables.

 As the word  Blackmail decided not to pay to keep its secret secret ... now it will pay the price   in graphic lexical detail.  Everyone has a secret. How much is yours worth to you?

A chase through some dictionaries in search of a reliable definition for a word that never quite means what some people want you to think it does. With a cast of poets, playwrights and novelists to illustrate this podcast and some politicians standing by to spin it, welcome to a sovereign edition of Word Wrangling.

A fine collection of words which are words about words have been gathered together for your wordy pleasuring.  It's a miscellany of rhetorical devices and the kind of flourishes that give figures of speech a good name. Among other things Jane Austen does zeugma in the company of Flanders and Swann, Brutus uses synecdoche, and we kick some adverbs around in the company of Tom Swift. Abba falls prey to mondegreenery. And Humpty Dumpty is on cracking form. 

It's one of those things.  We think we know what civilisation is, and what's involved... are we all the same page of the dictionary? This short sharp episode dips into Freud, fantasy and forgotten history.

The words we didn't need until we did for something we already had...