For many years -- since at least 1903 -- the contention has been made that one of the most beautiful sound combinations in English is cellar door. Numerous writers have commented about this phenomenon. Among the most recent is Grant Barrett, writing in The New York Times Magazine of Feb. 14.
As Barrett and others have noted, the contention is that cellar door is beautiful not for what it means but for the way it sounds, its euphony. This is in contrast to such words and phrases as love, mother and peace, in which the beauty lies in the meaning, not necessarily the sound.
Barrett and others have also noted that there is much conjecture about who first cited cellar door as having a superlatively ear-pleasing sound. Among those who have been mistakenly credited are J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy Parker and Robert Frost. (Parker is often quoted as saying that the two most beautiful words in the English language are "cheque enclosed." But she has also been quoted as saying she liked cellar door. )
Some commentators have said that cellar door retains its beauty even when it is spelled selladore, completely separating it from any beauty attributable to its meaning. Thus, they have said, it is equally pleasing to people who don't speak English.
A fairly recent citation of the supposed beauty of cellar door appears in the dialogue of the 2001 movie Donnie Darko. A literature teacher played by Drew Barrymore says, "A famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words, that cellar door was the most beautiful."
The earliest citation that I have found in doing some research -- a citation that Barrett mentioned -- appeared in a 1903 novel by Cyrus Lauren Hooper titled Gee-Boy. The title character makes a list of words that he loves most, words whose sounds are considered apart from their meaning. Cellar door is among them.
To my ear, cellar door has no particularly beautiful sound. I suspect, as some other commentators have, that once it was cited as being especially beautiful, people began to accept that judgment and perpetuate the idea.
If any readers have some words whose sounds they consider surpassingly beautiful or pleasing, I would like to hear from them.
Confusing the words affect and effect is one of the most common and persistent errors among writers and speakers. A recent example is this one from The Charlotte Observer:
"Doctors and hospital officials say health-reform legislation won't have much affect on them in the short term." The word needed here is effect, not affect.
One reason the words are often confused is their similarity in spelling and pronunciation. Another possible reason is that effect can be a noun or a verb, depending on its use in a sentence.
As a noun, effect means an influence or result: "Her kindness had a strong effect on him." "His outburst had the effect of alienating everyone at the meeting." As a verb, it means to cause or bring about: "So far, efforts to effect a lasting peace in the Middle East have failed."
As a verb, affect means to influence or to have an effect on: "Her kindness affected him strongly." It can also mean to feign, pretend or assume: "In the face of public ridicule, he affected indifference." In psychiatry, affect also has a specialized use as a noun meaning an emotional reaction or response.
To follow up a list in last week's column, here are some more words and phrases cited by Your Dictionary.com as being among the most often mispronounced words in English. The correct pronunciation is followed by the mispronunciation:
Blessing in disguise/blessing in the skies; cavalry/calvary; candidate/cannidate; carpal tunnel syndrome/carpool tunnel syndrome; cacophony/cacaphony; caucuses/caucusus; chest of drawers/chester drawers; cornet/coronet.
Richard Creed is a retired Journal editor. He can be reached at richcreed@triad.rr.com.
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