Beautiful Words

Serendipity! What a great word! It's beautiful sounding, and it's full of excitement and anticipation. Can't you just feel it? Unexpected pleasure or surprise. I'd like to hear your favorite "beautiful" sounding words.

We could name lots of words that are beautiful in their meanings: love, joy, peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Beautiful in their connotations.

But I'm interested in hearing your nominations for words that simply sound beautiful, and why you think they're beautiful.

Ugly Words!

Welcome to my Blog. If you've happened onto it, you are probably a fellow wordsmith, interested in reading or writing
or conversing about one or the other or both. (Or a friend, coerced into looking me up!)

My purpose is to encourage readers to read, or writers to write, or conversers to enjoy good conversation, so if you're taking a break from whatever it is that you do, enjoy your time here, but do get back to the important stuff of reading, writing, and conversing!

Isn't "blog" an ugly word? But cyber-communicating requires a certain adaptation to, if not acceptance of, the terminology that makes this amazing tool available.

Let's talk about ugly words. Blog, for instance. It's derived innocently enough from Web Log, but our penchant for abbreviating everything reduces it to something that sounds like gargling—or worse!

Some words are ugly because of their connotations. Others simply sound ugly. "Scud" is an ugly sounding word, not only in its pronunciation, but in it's association with the enemy "Scud" missiles. But feathery clouds "scudding" across blue skies are a beautiful sight, and reading about them conjures summer meadows and fresh breezes. Ironically both uses of the word could appear at the same time with the ugliness of a scud missile tearing through peaceful summer skies full of scudding clouds.

What words would you nominate to the "ugly" category? And why? Sound? Connotation?


lois (8 August 2006)