SerpApi.Org
For more than a thousand years, the English language has evolved to give us everything from the coarse to the descriptive.
Now, a new poll has identified the most beautiful words among them.
Diaphanous, meaning something that is light, delicate and translucent, is often used to describe fabrics and materials. The term was voted the most beautiful by 17 per cent of the 1,500 members of the Poetry Society of America.
Ethereal, used to describe something airy and out of this world, came second, while mellifluous, meaning sweetly flowing or melodic – often used to describe a smooth and pleasant sound or voice – came third.
Babbel, the language-learning app, surveyed members of the society this year using a list of words from Dr Robert Beard’s 100 Most Beautiful Words in English, published in 2009.
Epiphany, susurrous and lithe
The top 10 also included epiphany, denoting a sudden moment of revelation, susurrous, used to describe a soft, whispering or mumbling sound, and lithe, meaning something delicately flexible and agile.
Asked to reveal favourite words of their own, members most often suggested words beginning with the letters L, M and S. Popular words were luminous, moonshine, melody, sensuous, serendipitous and elysian, used to describe something blissful.
European romantic terms also appeared in the survey results. French was popular with amour, as was corazón, the Spanish term for heart, and saudade, a Portuguese word used to describe a sense of nostalgic melancholy.
One person chose wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection.
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Matt Brogan, executive director of the poetry society, said: “One of the paradoxes of language is that it is easier to hear the distinctive music of a language you don’t know than one you do, unless you are a poet.
“Poets are keenly attuned to the sound effects of language – the ways in which consonants and vowels combine, repeat, clash and echo to give a word or phrase its soundtrack.
“The originality of some of their suggestions for ‘the most beautiful-sounding word’ reminds us that phonaesthetics is as much an art as a science.”
Not all the suggestions were focused on love or beauty. One respondent described euthanasia as a beautiful word, while another said they thought diarrhoea was a word worthy of appreciation.
Separate research by Babbel found that many words’ meanings had changed drastically over the last two centuries. In the past, awful was used to mean “inspiring awe” or “full of awe”, quick described being alive, and fond meant silly or foolish.
