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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think this should be limited to words that we really like instead of making me spend all my time on Wiktionary, Sash; but, hey, you're great, I love ya, I mean it, now get outta here!
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 4:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey! I do use these words really. Perhaps not on this site, true. But then again, most posters are just English teachers, so one could not expect them to have a wide vocabulary, you know : ) I mean when words like 'lose' and 'loose' are regularly confused by our brethren, you need to consider the target reader when writing, dontchaknow...
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 4:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cinereal
prelapsarian
mephitic
assegais
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Teacher in Rome



Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Posts: 1286

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

And back to the more prosaic:

rump
gusset
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

horrent
knobkerrie
strangury
climacteric
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

When is somebody going to post 'cellar-door'?
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cellar-door.

Okay, now, what's that mean?
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear johntpartee,

"In phonaesthetics, the English compound noun cellar door (especially in its British pronunciation of UK /sɛləˈdɔː/) has been cited variously as an example of a word or phrase which is beautiful purely in terms of its sound, without regard for semantics (i.e., meaning). It has been variously presented either as merely one beautiful instance of many, or as the most beautiful in the English language; as the author's personal choice, that of an eminent scholar's, or of a foreigner who does not speak the language. The original instance of this observation has not been discovered, although it was made as early as 1903."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellar_door

"Words like mother and love often appear on lists of beautiful English words. But so do defenestration and lollygag. Obviously, they are not all chosen for the same reason. Some words tug at the heart, some pique the mind and others are simply euphonious. Perhaps the strangest member of the last category, the purely harmonious, is the otherwise ordinary phrase cellar door.

The claim that cellar door is beautiful to the ear — in opposition to its prosaic meaning — has been made by and attributed to a wide variety of writers over the years. “Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things,” H. L. Mencken wrote in a 1920 magazine column. “It may be either or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word cellar-door is musical. The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of everyday.”

More recently, the superior sound of cellar door was mentioned in the 2001 movie “Donnie Darko,” in which a cellar serves as a time-twisting portal. In one scene, the main character, Donnie, sees the phrase on a schoolroom chalkboard. He asks his teacher why it’s on the board, and she explains that the words are thought to be especially lovely, vaguely attributing the idea to a “famous linguist.”

The fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien, who was also a philologist, might well be the linguist she had in mind. He mentioned the idea of cellar door’s special beauty in a speech in 1955 and is often given credit for it. Other supposed authors abound; the story is tangled. But Tolkien, at least, can be ruled out as the originator. He was, after all, just 11 years old in 1903 when a curious novel called “Gee-Boy” — which also alludes to the aesthetic properties of cellar door — was published by the Shakespeare scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper. Hooper’s narrator writes of the title character: “He even grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning, and once made a list of the words he loved most, as doubloon, squadron, thatch, fanfare (he never did know the meaning of this one), Sphinx, pimpernel, Caliban, Setebos, Carib, susurro, torquet, Jungfrau. He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar-door is purely American.”

There is no reason to conclude that Hooper was the founder of the cellar door fan club, either, but it is notable that he used a template according to which the story often has been told since: a person of note — brainy, foreign or both — declares the sounds of cellar door to be exceptional, to the surprise of native but less discerning English speakers.

Often, commentators claim cellar door is beautiful without reference to any other source or author. Did they rediscover it? Or did they simply not remember where they first heard it? The writer and famous wit Dorothy Parker didn’t think much of the collection of beautiful words compiled in 1932 by the dictionary-maker Wilfred J. Funk, who topped his list with words like dawn, hush and lullaby. Parker said she preferred check and enclosed — but also cellar door. A journalist named Hendrik Willem van Loon was one of two other people who suggested cellar door as an omission in Funk’s list. Van Loon expressed surprise that Parker selected the same term: “I’ve only met Miss Parker twice in my life, and we’ve never talked of cellar-doors.”

There is no scientific proof that the phonemes of cellar door are particularly pleasing to the English-speaker’s ear. A subjective poetic argument for the phono-acoustic superiority of the phrase is easier to make, as long as one can, as in “Gee-Boy,” dissociate sound from meaning. David Allan Robertson, a professor at the University of Chicago, touched on the basic delight of the phrase when he wrote in 1921: “Cellar door, oleomargarine; oleomargarine, cellar door. If we agree with modern fanatics, that assonance and cadence alone make poetry, we have a poem in those four words.”

In a similar vein, the drama critic George Jean Nathan used cellar door to mock Gertrude Stein in 1935: “Sell a cellar, door a cellar, sell a cellar cellar-door, door adore, adore a door, selling cellar, door a cellar, cellar cellar-door. There is damned little meaning and less sense in such a sentence, but there is, unless my tonal balance is askew, twice more rhythm and twice more lovely sound in it than in anything, equally idiotic, that Miss Gertrude ever confected.”

Sometimes, the loveliness of cellar door is thought to be more evident when the phrase is given a different spelling. “I was astonished when someone first showed that by writing cellar door as Selladore,” C. S. Lewis wrote in 1963, “one produces an enchanting proper name.” Norman Mailer toyed with a respelling in his 1967 novel, “Why Are We in Vietnam?” “He is marooned, in case you have not noticed, on that balmy tropical isle pronounced Selador, spelled cellardoor, ” Mailer writes of D. J., his 18-year-old protagonist. “Do you know a committee of Language Hump-type professors put out a committee finding back in 1936 — most beautiful word in the English language is cellardoor.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14FOB-onlanguage-t.html

I'm not sure why Sasha hyphenated it - I'd never seen it written that way before.

Of course, as a salesman, you could also sell a door. Very Happy

Regards,
John
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It is a nice sounding word, I thought it might be a phonetic rendering of something (sounds French).
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santi84



Joined: 14 Mar 2008
Posts: 1317
Location: under da sea

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pedantic!
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
phonaesthetics
!
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear johntpartee,

Yup, that was a new one for me, too. Very Happy

Learn something new every day - problem is, at my age, I also forget about 10 old things everyday.

The outlook is not encouraging. Very Happy

Regards,
John
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I also forget about 10 old things everyday


The up side is that you're always meeting new people.
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johnslat



Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 13859
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear johntpartee,

WHo the hell ARE you?

Regards,
John
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dear Johnslat

I was copying this article, and making sure that it is counted as just one word:

http://sloopie72.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/sunday-with-zin-euphony/


Sasha dash
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