Word Wrangling with Terry Victor

...and so, 124 weekly episodes later, Word Wrangling is coming to an odd kind of an end. There are so many other things going on at the mo that I will need to look away for a while. Still, all good (and indifferent) things come to an end.The Word Wrangling podcast will remain live - there are 123 previous episodes for you to find. And I will occasionally find an excuse to podcast again.So, here we are: odds and odder ends. Enjoy. Or disagree. Your choice.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

I recorded this episode a while ago, during the greater limitations of the pandemic. It must have fallen down the back of the sofa. Anyway, it's all about getting an invitation to a  Speed Awareness course. I was not happy.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Why do some people find words more offensive than deeds? In this episode of Word Wrangling podcast I question the standards of television news, movies, and radio. Find excuses to quote Tom Jones, Queen, the Sex Pistols and Tom Lehrer among others.Oh, there's robust language and murder. You have been warned.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

This episode is dedicated to every Aoifa; and to everyone else with a name that gets mispronounced; and Gerald Wiley.It's all about getting our words wrong. Does it matter? And what's a nepobaby?What word do you never get right, or really annoys you when others get it wrong?Word Wrangling all that and more...Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

This House believes the Word Police should be banned from Social Media. What do you think? How would you vote? Here are the arguments. Followed by a brief  consideration of 'how long is a piece of string?' I say brief... but how long is a piece of string?  Report me to the Word Police.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

A waking waltz in the corridors or power - with Kanye West and Rage Against The Machine out loud n' proud and discreet contributions from Public Enemy, James Brown and the Spice Girls.It kinda makes sense. I think.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

A particularly lo-fi recording of this week's episode. Sorry. But the content is fascinating and there is such a special treat to be discovered somewhere in the middle of it. It's not every day that you  get a link to something fabulous and free.This episode of Word Wrangling is a mash up of Desert Island Discs and the OED. Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

The letter X has long been overlooked or ill-considered, its powers denied.This episode of Word Wrangling goes the Xtra mile to bring Doctor Johnson into the company of punks, superheroes and Michael Rosen. X marks the spot where dictionary might get invaded.XXX xoxoxWord Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

What does the word "woman" mean? Some people don't think it should mean that much.This episode of Word Wrangling features echoes of Chaka Kahn, Shania Twain, Christine Kitrell, Helen Reddy and Doja Cat among others.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

When the letter A pops up in an ever-expanding initialism the quest is on to find A's meaning...What happens next  is probably the shortest Word Wrangling episode ever. Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Here's a Winter Solstice sortie into all sorts of Santas, anti-Santas, and Scrooge-alikes. From St Nick and Kriss Kringle to Krampus and the Grinch, by way of 1 Growler, 13 Yule Lads and 7 Dwarves.Will you find the surprise in this Christmas pudding of a podcast?Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Nickname, noun,  a familiar or humorous name given to a person or thing instead of or as well as the real name. We've called a lot of people a shedload of names in 2022. Word Wrangling has narrowed down the list  of contenders for 2022's Nickname of the Year to a representative selection of moguls and politicians - the sort of people it's easy to call names.And the winner is...Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Ha ha haHo ho hoChortle chortle chortle ...This episode of Word Wrangling has more laughs than you can shake a sticky stick at. You have been warned.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Armed with eponyms and properly villainous intent, this episode welcomes terrorists, political philosophers, hacktivists and collaborators. It's a parliament of Charlies in the company of Machiavelli, the Marquis de Sade, and Les Miserables, among others; with Churchill, Thatcher, and a Johnson or three; Tolkien, Tarantino and Trump have have all turned up to the party. Music by Adolphe Sax.You are invited. Bring your own gunpowder and matches.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

On a butterfly hunt, searching high and low and below the belt for a particular type of word. Quoting Bruno Mars and Chicago, misquoting Shakespeare, name-dropping. Jack Reacher. Saying a 'dyb dyb dyb' and a 'dob dob dob' for Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM GCMG GCVO KCB KStJ DL  (1857 –1941),  founder and first Chief Scout,  author of  'Scouting for Boys'.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

A short sharp root through domestic matters. Includes inspirational words from a couple of Johnsons and the Crown Prosecution Service.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

... And the band started leaving 'Cause they all stopped breathing Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahA snatch of lyric that kind of sums up this whole episode. If you can't name that song I can't think of a better reason for having a listen.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

An innocent duck hunt  doesn't go to plan. There will be swears before bedtime.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Cosplay, LARPing, Historical Re-enactment, Fetish and Drag (and more) – this episode Word Wrangling has dressed to impress.Who was the first drag queen?What is 'yiffy'? Word Wrangling may not change your life but it could change your plans for the weekend.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

"An ology? He gets an ology and he says he's failed...you get an ology, you're a scientist!"Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Welcome to a special – no! – exceptional episode of the ongoing Word Wrangling podcast.  From Dream to Tempest, from Cave Paintings to Star Wars, these are the voyages of narration on the Sea of Story.Word Wrangling welcomes the author and storyteller Leon Conrad to the podcastle. Furniture is spun, a new word (pre-loved but new to me) is explored. There's even an uncredited joke nicked from Rocky Horror. Oh, the stories we could tell!Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.Word Wrangling is an independent production. We are always on the lookout for new ways with words. If you have any thoughts please get in touch.

Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.When you read you begin with - A - B - CWhen you sing you begin with DO - RE – MIWhen you wrangle Do-Re-Mi the very beginning is a long long time ago.

This episode of Word Wrangling follows some unlikely links and relationships though the U and non-U undergrowth of 20th century snobbery. It's a class thing.What connects James Bond to Brief Encounter? Why does it matter? Who is Strix?

A brief excursion into the small world of all things bijou and petty. 

The official word for the quirk of our language that I have lighted on today is reduplicative. This episode of Word Wrangling goes from nursery rhymes to a murderous cult, Bob Dylan, Donovan  and Queen get quoted,  There's a bit of Lewis Carroll, Gilbert & Sullivan and Shakespeare in the mix. And Lady Gaga.Something to annoy everyone.

Welcome to the 100th weekly episode of Word Wrangling! It's time to tease, tempt and tantalise those words that topple and tipple on the tip of my  tongue. Let's have a game of Twister  - well, Tongue Twister. This is an especially skewed edition dedicated to the challenges of aural/oral pleasure. By the by, there is an unjustified mention of Biggie Smalls towards the end. It's a South Park thing.

Strike is a busy, well-muscled word; seemingly formed of conflict, its early gentility all but forgotten. Strike is a word that strolls through our language and then sticks out a sneaky foot to trip us up.So, that's where this episode of Word Wrangling is heading: out on strike. Pausing, perhaps,  to picket, in  company with the likes of Ivor Biggun and Noam Chomsky. Which side are you on? 

This is the zeds in a bed adventures of the English language.  A proper charm bracelet of finely wrangled words that glint and sizzle.It's time to catch  some zzzz....

Oi! The referee needs glasses. Should've gone to Specsavers.Facts, fictions, etymologies and bifocal eyeglasses!  What a spectacle. Endangered creatures, assassination and an 8-bit computer. That's a pair of spectacles.Wrangling the words we wear on our noses. You may be surprised. 

From Cadbury's 'a finger of fudge' to the Tory Party, by way of Augustus Gloop, Walter Mitty, sludge metal, and some below the belt slang.... There's more to fudge than I imagined. From the ministry of magic all the way back to well before 1066. Lyrical illustrations for this episode are borrowed from Anthony Newley, Lesley Bricusse, and Danny Elfman. And there are some other fine name drops.Fudgadelic!

Wrangling the 5 words that underpin it all for me. Plus quite a bit of swearing and a lot of penises. The cultural trivia includes John Lennon, Professor Stanley Unwin, Horace Walpole and Penguin Books. There's Oz and Ozploitation and bona oodles of polari. From Shakespeare to the Perfumed Garden and an old Persian fairy tale.It's a ribald romp to the lost horizon of my interior monologue. Or something.Join me. Bring your own words.

Word Wrangling in a heatwave leads to some unlikely times and places. There are cats and dogs;  brass monkeys, swans,  polecats and climate deniers. And an ever-changing nursery rhyme. Come on feel the heat.

A brief delve into the possibilities of trade.  With Troilus & Cressida, Lennon & McCartney, Jonathan Swift and Samuel Pepys for company. From the sexual to the industrial, one way or another, trade is hard to avoid. Are you looking for trade, dearie?

This episode of Word Wrangling knows where it needs to be but, like a refugee, can't be sure where it will land.   "Bless you if you represent the Fu."

In search of identity I meet Kojak, Barry McKenzie and Voldemort... Terry Pratchett is wrangling around in this episode too.

From Beatrix Potter to post mortem, this corner of the language holds a few unpleasant surprises. Frank Spencer and the Teletubbies are in the mix, a passing reference to the decadent Algernon Swinburne and a nod of the head to Alan Seeger and the French Foreign Legion. Plus something that has never been heard on the internet before!Join me for a wordy adventure.

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...

This week's edition of Word Wrangling has more than enough words to go around – words aplenty – and not an empty word is to be heard. Enjoy! 

This week's episode is at Alert Level Orange. Wrangling one everyday word laden with history and symbolism. This is a journey of discovery in the company of Shakespeare's Bottom, Anthony Burgess, Jeanette Winterson, Garfield the Cat and a French monk in Algeria.Join us as we travel through Africa, China and South Asia; France, Greece , Spain, the Netherlands and Ukraine; via California and Australia, with a pause for a diversion on the Glasgow Subway.

The final part of the 'endangered' phrases countdown. It's the top 5, and if you don't know already I doubt you'd guess what is at number 1.Like a good boxset, all the storylines are tied up, and it's open for a sequel. See you on the other side.