The Music of Language

A friend recently sent me a note along with a quote. "This is you," she said, and the quote was this:

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make. ~Truman Capote

She's right; I love the sound of words. And I love finding new ones, like the one I discovered last week via Wordsmith:

quaggy (KWAG-ee) adjective

Marshy; flabby; spongy.

[From quag (marsh), of unknown origin.]

And how can you not like:

embrangle (em-BRANG-guhl) vert tr.

To embroil or entangle.

[From en- + brangle (to shake), from French branler (to shake).]

Embrangle sounds like something I'd make up. But more than fun-sounding words, I love beautiful ones like lambent, gloaming and kismet (my puppy's name!).

Is it just me? Can the words you choose help make you an unboxed writer? Maybe...

I sat in on a workshop session with Judith Ivory some years back, and she mentioned that she keeps unusual words she falls for in a notebook so that she can pull them out and use them in her writing. She's certainly unboxed. One fan once told her that it took a long time to get through Ivory's books because they weren't skimmable; there were just so many words and phrases requiring thought.

"Good," said Ivory, "then you're getting your money's worth."

The notebook is a great idea, and I've adopted it somewhat by keeping a file of favorite words that I receive through Wordsmith. Like Capote, for me, it's all about the sound, the music the word makes. It's why I like quaggy; a fun-sounding word; a word a quirky character might use. It's a keeper. Here's a compilation of others' picks for beautiful words (I'm stealing this verbatim from a site called A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia):

Wilfred Funk's list of the most beautiful words in English: ASPHODEL, FAWN, DAWN, CHALICE, ANEMONE, TRANQUIL, HUSH, GOLDEN, HALCYON, CAMELLIA, BOBOLINK, THRUSH, CHIMES, MURMURING, LULLABY, LUMINOUS, DAMASK, CERULEAN, MELODY, MARIGOLD, JONQUIL, ORIOLE, TENDRIL, MYRRH, MIGNONETTE, GOSSAMER, ALYSSEUM, MIST, OLEANDER, AMARYLLIS, ROSEMARY. [Alysseum may be a misspelling of alyssum, but this is how the word appears in Paul Dickson's Words.]
In the same poll, other American writers, poets, and critics responded with these selections: HOME (Lowell Thomas), CHATTANOOGA (Irvin S. Cobb), MELODY (Charles Swain Thomas), NOBILITY (Stephen D. Wise), VERMILLION (Lew Sarett), GRACIOUS (Bess Streeter Aldrich), PAVEMENT (Arnold Bennett), LOVELY (George Balch Nevin), HARBORS OF MEMORY (William McFee), and NEVERMORE (Elias Lieberman). Louis Untermeyer responded, "The most musical words seem to be those containing the letter 'l'. I think, offhand, of such words as VIOLET, LAKE, LAUGHTER, WILLOW, LOVELY, and other such limpid and liquid syllables" [Charles Turner].

According to James Joyce, CUSPIDOR is the most beautiful word in English [Dickson].

In A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (page 86), Annie Dillard writes: "My friend Rosanne Coggeshall, the poet, says that 'sycamore' is the most intrinsically beautiful word in English" [Sarah Gossett].

A survey conducted in 2004 by the British Council which asked more than 40,000 people around the world to rank the most beautiful words among a list of 70 words found MOTHER first, followed by PASSION, SMILE, LOVE, and ETERNITY [Charles Turner].

According to reporter, editor, writer, and author Willard R. Espy, the ten most beautiful words in the English language are GONORRHEA, GOSSAMER, LULLABY, MEANDERING, MELLIFLUOUS, MURMURING, ONOMATOPOEIA, SHENANDOAH, SUMMER AFTERNOON, WISTERIA [The Book of Lists 2 (1980)].

Okay, Therese here, because I can't help but interject...Gonorrhea? Bleh. Onward...

In a 2005 column in the New York Times, James Gorman wrote that he was infatuated with the word AMYGDALA. "I like its sound, you might say its musicality" [Robert Brown].

And here, the opposite end of the spectrum:

The ten worst-sounding words in English, according to a poll by the National Association of Teachers of Speech in August, 1946: CACOPHONY, CRUNCH, FLATULENT, GRIPE, JAZZ, PHLEGMATIC, PLUMP, PLUTOCRAT, SAP, and TREACHERY.

Of course, the word flatulent would be on the teachers' list. Hee.

Can a writer go to far with great words? Hell, yeah. If you haven't already, you MUST read Paperback Writer's hilarious post Thesauritis; just be sure you're not eating or drinking anything while you do.

Write on!