Ugly-sounding words can describe beautiful things

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | April 2, 2020 | Melissa Mohr, Correspondent

[Jagermonster]

The meanings and negative associations of moist make it ugly, just as positive associations can make other words seem lovely.

People seem to dislike the sound of the word moist. It tops so many “Ugliest Words in the English Language” lists that psychologists at Oberlin College in Ohio and Trinity University in Texas decided to investigate. Their study participants tended to blame the word’s “phonological properties.” “It just has an ugly sound that makes whatever you’re talking about sound gross,” one person said. Foist, hoist, and rejoice, though, did not evoke negative responses, despite their similar sound patterns. Participants thought “moist cake” was just fine, too. It was only when they were cued to associate the word with disgust at bodily functions that they likened moist to “fingernails scratching a chalkboard.”

The meanings and negative associations of moist make it ugly, just as positive associations can make mother into one of the most beautiful words in English. There are some words, though, that defy this pattern; (almost) everyone agrees they sound terrible, but they signify something lovely. Ironically, pulchritudinous means “beautiful,” though most people find the word anything but. It derives from the Latin pulcher (“beautiful,” “noble”), and seems to have first been used in English as a way to elevate one’s tone. One 14th-century text, for example, describes what poetry does as taking “the truth” and dressing it up in “oblique [indirect] figurations with pulchritude.” In other words, poetry makes things less clear but better sounding.

When John Milton was looking for a synonym for “radiance” in his poem “Paradise Lost” (1667), he took effulgence from the Latin ex + fulgere (“to shine forth”). This word does a great job of conveying the radiant splendor of God.

[dfwgator]

“Schadenfreude”

[dfwgator]

[CommerceComet]

The German said, “What about Schmetterling??”

Dave Barry sums up the German language very well:

The way you order a beer in Germany is, you say: "I`d like a beer, please." Everybody in Germany, including domestic animals, speaks English, often better than we do. This is probably because their native language, German, contains very large words that it takes two and sometimes three alert people, working in shifts, to pronounce.

[Leep]

Yep, i didn’t know until i searched it on the internets.

[kalee]

For later

[Mrs. Don-o]

HA!

And "corset" and "girdle" have long been replaced by a ramifying, never-ending collection of euphemisms (the latest in my spam file being ads or "shapewear"? by "shapermint"?) but I'm told (by my brother) that the German is:

`

hinderbinder

[DuncanWaring]

A German officer, Friedrich Steinbrecher, wrote of a Great War battle “Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.”

[Verginius Rufus]

Mark Twain's essay on "The Awful German language" is hilarious. He tells of a man who needed two months to learn how to order two beers in German--Zwei Bier. But he had that down solid.