The love song must resonate with the susurration of sorrow, the tintinnabulation of grief.

susurration (n) : a whispering sound; murmur – tintinnabulation (n) : 1 : the ringing or sounding of bells; 2 : a jingling or tinkling sound as if of bells – Nick Cave’s Love Song Lecture

I found that language became a poultice to the wounds incurred by the death of my father.

poultice (n) : a soft usually heated and sometimes medicated mass spread on cloth and applied to sores or other lesions – Nick Cave’s Love Song Lecture

In that period, Ramis said, the dominant structural and narrative perspectives were of ”the proscenium. It was all about the composition of the frame. Nature didn’t enter the picture.”

proscenium (n) : 1 a : the stage of an ancient Greek or Roman theater b : the part of a modern stage in front of the curtain c : the wall that separates the stage from the auditorium and provides the arch that frames it; 2 foreground – Meta-fiction films look at world in fresh ways

LaBute is the only one of his playwriting peers to fully understand and dramatize this psychological fillip, which is why his plays are so complex and unnerving.

fillip (n) : something tending to arouse or excite; a: as a stimulus; b: a trivial addition, embellishment; c: a significant and often unexpected development, wrinkle – source: The New Yorker: Blood Under The Bridge

Coldplay’s better songs are miniature epics that suggest vast stores of emotion; Bedingfield is a clean-cut pop singer with a knack for R. & B.; and Blunt satisfies an enduring if baffling need for men who mewl without their shirts on.

mewl (v) : to cry weakly [syn: whimper] – source: The New Yorker: Blighted

Terry Wogan, doyen of British Eurovision TV coverage, jokingly described the performance as ”nicely understated” and added ”every year I expect it to be less foolish, and every year it’s more so”.

doyen (n) : a man who is the senior member of a group [syn: dean] – source: From the land of Sibelius, a song for Satan

Yet the fervor of the hoi polloi mattered little to their betters, whose comments ran the gamut from contempt to conspiracy.

hoi polloi (n) : the common people generally [syn: multitude, masses, mass, people] – source: The Perils of Soft Power

The sobriquet was printed on T-shirts, coffee mugs, souvenir notepads. As a public relations campaign, it landed with a hollow thud.

sobriquet (n) : a familiar name for a person (often a shortened version of a person’s given name); – source: A writer unblocked

It gave life a more vivid intensity in that people weren’t cossetted so much.

cosset (v) : treat with excessive indulgence – source: Mr Taste (Word May 2006)