An old and well worn topic to be sure, but songs are being written all the time with previous unused words in them. I bought Richard Thompson’s new album Still yesterday and was listening to it on the walk to work this morning when my ear was caught by the following couplet (from No Peace No End):

Geneva Convention gets used as a pessary, Olive branch is a fashion accessory

Surely ‘pessary’ has never been used in popular song before? It’s hard to think of an occasion when its use might have been necessary, but the man who once used ‘misericord’ in a song is still trawling the dictionary to widen the vocabulary of song. Any more recent entries?