1226:: "I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was 'cellardoor'. It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find l and r difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, had never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside — the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the word’s appeal. He also enjoyed going to restaurants and hearing the waiter ask if he would like salad or roast vegetables, because again the phrase 'salad or' could be heard. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the l and r sounds and d and long o dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare it with 'celandine', where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely."
482:
90:'. Speech sounds have many aesthetic qualities, some of which are subjectively regarded as euphonious (pleasing) or cacophonous (displeasing). Phonaesthetics remains a budding and often subjective field of study, with no scientifically or otherwise formally established definition; today, it mostly exists as a marginal branch of
622:'s 1894 hit song "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard", which contains the lyric "You'll be sorry when you see me sliding down our cellar door." Following the song's success, "slide down my cellar door" became a popular catchphrase up until the 1930s or 1940s to mean engaging in a type of friendship or
208:'s 1995 paper "Phonaesthetically Speaking" explores lists, created by reader polls and individual writers, of English words that are commonly regarded as sounding beautiful, to search for any patterns within the words' phonetics. Frequently recurring example words in these lists include
181:
in music. In poetry, for example, euphony may be used deliberately to convey comfort, peace, or serenity, while cacophony may be used to convey discomfort, pain, or disorder. This is often furthered by the combined effect of the meaning beyond just the sounds themselves.
176:
Euphony is the effect of sounds being perceived as pleasant, rhythmical, lyrical, or harmonious. Cacophony is the effect of sounds being perceived as harsh, unpleasant, chaotic, and often discordant; these sounds are perhaps meaningless and jumbled together. Compare with
846:
In a 1966 interview, Tolkien said: "Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me—'cellar door', say. From that, I might think of a name 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow".
824:
Howells attributes to a "courtly
Spaniard" the quote, "Your language too has soft and beautiful words, but they are not always appreciated. What could be more musical than your word
618:
being considered as an inherently beautiful or musical phrase is mysterious. However, in 2014, Nunberg speculated that the phenomenon might have arisen from Philip
Wingate and
875:
are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.
117:): that not just words but even certain sound combinations carry meaning. For example, he shows that English speakers tend to associate unpleasantness with the sound
1378:
41:) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by
197:'s "Player Piano" as an example of cacophonous poetry, one passage being "My stick fingers click with a snicker / And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys".
503:
has been widely cited as an example of a word or phrase that is beautiful purely in terms of its sound (i.e., euphony) without inherent regard for its
652:
auditory beauty becomes more apparent the more the word is dissociated from its literal meaning, for example, by using alternative spellings such as
837:
Nunberg identifies "Playmates" as an earlier song from which "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard" was derived; in fact the derivation is the reverse.
1415:
1057:
73:
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634:" as being based on euphony may have spawned an unverified legend, propagated by syndicated columnists like Frank Colby in 1949 and
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1351:
511:
being regarded as euphonious appears to have begun in the very early twentieth century, first attested in the 1903 novel
227:
accent, is that words perceived as pretty tend to have a majority of a wide array of criteria; here are some major ones:
896:
744:
166:
571:
in 1963. Furthermore, the phenomenon itself is touched upon in many sources and media, including a 1905 issue of
190:
178:
1407:
The
Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
1325:
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193:" as an example of euphonious poetry, one passage being "...Oars divide the Ocean, / Too silver for a seam" and
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is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say,
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471:, which he notes are similar to the types of names often employed in the marketing of pharmaceutical drugs.
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489:
hole", which
Tolkien devised, is a type of "cellar door", the idea of whose phonetic beauty he popularized.
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scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper. It has been promoted as beautiful-sounding by various writers; linguist
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series,) which take on the quality of an enchanting name (and some of which suggest a specifically
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1002:"CACOPHONY, Literary Terms and Definition by Carson-Newman University"
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has regarded phonaesthetics as the study of "phonaesthesia" (i.e.,
555:", delivered in 1955 (in which he described his reverence for the
480:
342:
27:
Pleasantness associated with the sounds of words or parts of words
137:, or they associate repetition lacking any particular shape with
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165:"Cacophony" and "Euphony" redirect here. For other uses, see
712:
706:
454:
448:
413:
357:) are favored over long vowels and diphthongs (e.g., as in
460:
419:
407:
1238:"Everything you were afraid to ask about "Donnie Darko""
388:
A perfect example word, according to these findings, is
626:
reminiscent of childhood innocence. A 1914 essay about
1216:
An Essay on French Verse for
Readers of English Poetry
320:, then a huge drop-off before other consonants (e.g.,
918:
The
Influence of Phonesthesia on the English Language
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300:
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630:'s choice of the word "Nevermore" in his 1845 poem "
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1044:Elizabeth, Mary; Podhaizer, Mary Elizabeth (2001).
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1410:. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. p. 25.
185:The California Federation of Chaparral Poets uses
855:Most English-speaking people ... will admit that
48:during the mid-20th century and derives from
1326:"Words to "Playmates" Song Stir Up Controversy"
1133:42.2 (April): 8–12. Cambridge University Press.
645:Tolkien, Lewis, and others have suggested that
8:
963:. University of Chicago Press. p. 260.
392:. Crystal also suggests the invented words
1163:
1161:
1141:
1139:
991:. Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics.
933:A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
1437:. University of Wales Press. p. 36.
1404:Zaleski, Philip; Zaleski, Carol (2015).
897:Inside a Song': Tolkien's Phonaesthetics
563:are extraordinarily frequent"; see also
888:
817:
936:. John Wiley & Sons. p. 364.
797:("euphonic" rules in Sanskrit grammar)
1170:"The Romantic Side of Familiar Words"
726:), which is homophonous with "sell a
345:, followed in order by the vowels in
7:
1196:Howells, William Dean (March 1905).
242:Stress on the first syllable (e.g.,
1168:Nunberg, Geoff (26 February 2010).
1146:Barrett, Grant (14 February 2010).
105:More broadly, the British linguist
1385:. Reading, Pennsylvania. p. 5
1377:Boyd, Louis M. (15 January 1979).
1300:"GN response to comment by "Emma""
565:Sound and language in Middle-earth
25:
899:". In: Eden, Bradford Lee (ed.).
69: 'voice, sound' and
1379:"Quoth the raven "cellar door"?"
1350:Colby, Frank (3 November 1949).
1324:Lovelace, Melba (15 July 1989).
1298:Nunberg, Geoff (17 March 2014).
1272:Nunberg, Geoff (16 March 2014).
699:
605:, and a scene in the 2019 movie
435:
397:
272:
254:
220:. Crystal's finding, assuming a
1052:. Barron's Educational Series.
523:specifically names the writers
231:Three or more syllables (e.g.,
863:, and far more beautiful than
1:
912:Shisler, Benjamin K. (1997).
380:the most common, followed by
266:is the most common consonant
1448:Le Guin, Ursula K. (1968).
1274:"Slide down my cellar door"
642:was Poe's favorite phrase.
1513:
1431:Tolkien, J. R. R. (1964).
1236:Kois, Dan (23 July 2003).
1148:"On Language: Cellar Door"
1127:Phonaesthetically Speaking
745:Assimilation (linguistics)
167:Cacophony (disambiguation)
164:
72:
55:
1454:. Parnassus. p. 64.
1023:"Definition of Cacophony"
895:Holmes, John R. (2010) "'
559:and about which he said "
191:A Bird came down the Walk
179:consonance and dissonance
1218:(New Directions, 1991).
1125:Crystal, David (1995). "
960:A Dictionary of Language
770:Japanese sound symbolism
341:Short vowels (e.g., the
338:contains the first four)
171:Euphony (disambiguation)
1260:Walking Tree Publishers
1152:New York Times Magazine
957:Crystal, David (2001).
930:Crystal, David (2011).
785:Phono-semantic matching
740:Affection (linguistics)
537:Hendrik Willem van Loon
374:manners of articulation
983:Allan, Keith (2014). "
584:Why Are We in Vietnam?
490:
378:approximant consonants
225:Received Pronunciation
1352:"Take My Word For It"
1198:"Editor's easy chair"
901:Middle-earth Minstrel
765:Inherently funny word
541:Albert Payson Terhune
529:David Allan Robertson
485:The entrance of the "
484:
161:Euphony and cacophony
1451:A Wizard Of Earthsea
579:William Dean Howells
507:. The phenomenon of
668:(an island name in
597:psychological drama
1434:Angles and Britons
1106:chaparralpoets.org
989:Linguistic Meaning
903:. McFarland. p. 30
591:, a 1991 essay by
545:George Jean Nathan
491:
1417:978-0-374-15409-7
1202:Harper's Magazine
1059:978-0-7641-1614-8
687:The Wheel of Time
670:Ursula K. Le Guin
581:, the 1967 novel
574:Harper's Magazine
553:English and Welsh
141:in such words as
121:in such words as
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372:Three or more
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1358:. p. 45
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1181:27 February
1074:"Cacophony"
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780:Phonestheme
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624:camaraderie
616:cellar door
595:, the 2001
569:C. S. Lewis
517:Shakespeare
509:cellar door
501:cellar door
476:Cellar door
195:John Updike
18:Cacophonous
1476:Categories
883:References
760:Epenthesis
636:L. M. Boyd
233:goss·a·mer
92:psychology
88:aesthetics
81:aisthētikḗ
1492:Phonology
1046:"Euphony"
865:beautiful
750:Cacofonix
658:Selladore
632:The Raven
547:in 1935;
531:in 1921;
527:in 1920;
390:tremulous
96:phonetics
74:αἰσθητική
1335:21 March
1309:21 March
1283:21 March
1111:12 April
734:See also
674:Earthsea
432:drematol
244:góssamer
237:mel·o·dy
218:tranquil
210:gossamer
201:Research
1362:1 March
1330:News OK
1083:26 July
871:for me
678:Salidar
666:Selidor
662:Celador
654:Selador
608:Tolkien
567:); and
515:by the
513:Gee-Boy
505:meaning
394:ramelon
268:phoneme
222:British
155:shatter
151:flutter
147:glitter
143:chatter
100:poetics
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676:), or
650:'s
539:, and
487:hobbit
376:(with
353:, and
248:mélody
216:, and
214:melody
153:, and
133:, and
123:sleazy
1242:Slate
1102:(PDF)
869:Welsh
812:Notes
599:film
343:schwa
139:-tter
135:slush
127:slime
98:, or
64:phōnḗ
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1456:ISBN
1412:ISBN
1391:2010
1364:2010
1337:2014
1311:2014
1285:2014
1220:ISBN
1183:2010
1113:2017
1085:2015
1054:ISBN
1031:2013
1009:2013
965:ISBN
938:ISBN
498:noun
493:The
430:and
367:loud
363:load
359:lied
246:and
235:and
189:'s "
169:and
131:slug
113:and
57:φωνή
1129:".
987:".
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861:sky
730:."
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