Cellar door (phrase): Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively

← Previous edit

Content deleted Content added

VisualWikitext

Inline

Latest revision as of 15:04, 28 September 2022

Redirect to:

Phonaesthetics#Cellar door

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+#REDIRECT [[Phonaesthetics#Cellar door]]
-{{other uses}}
-{{italic title}}
-In [[phonaesthetics]], the [[English compound]] [[noun]] '''''cellar door''''' has been cited as an example of a word or phrase which is beautiful purely in terms of its sound ([[euphony]]), without regard for [[semantics]] (i.e., meaning).<ref name="barrett"/> It has been variously presented either as merely one beautiful instance of many, or as the most beautiful in the [[English language]]; as the author's personal choice, that of an eminent scholar's, or of a foreigner who does not speak the language.<ref name="barrett"/><ref name="numberg"/> The original instance of this observation has not been discovered, although it was made as early as 1903.
+{{Redirect category shell|
-==Meaning and phonaesthetics==
+{{R from merge}}
-The semantics of ''cellar door'' derive straightforwardly from its component terms:{{clarify|date=January 2017}} in the United States, a cellar door is often a door or pair of shutter doors between the outside of a building and its [[Basement|cellar]]. In Britain, Ireland and Canada, a cellar door is often located within a house and opens onto a flight of stairs leading to the cellar. Outside doors are more common to pubs and restaurants.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
+{{R to section}}
+}}
-From the nineteenth century, many American houses on large plots had slanted [[trapdoor]]s abutting the side and opening onto a flight of steps leading down into the cellar. By the mid-twentieth century this rustic feature was a rarity; in 1953, [[William Chapman White]] wrote in the ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]'':
-{{quote|The modern small home or apartment has ... deprived today's child of ... the pleasant summer afternoon activity of sliding down cellar doors. Just what happened to the slanted cellar door in this efficient age isn't clear; although cellars have remained, nothing has disappeared more quietly from modern life than these cellar doors.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=eT4aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=eSMEAAAAIBAJ&dq=cellar-door%20slide%20down%20childhood&pg=3182%2C3463962|title=The Lost Art of Bannister Sliding|last=White|first=William Chapman |date=20 April 1953|work=The Milwaukee Journal|page=52|accessdate=27 February 2010}}</ref>}}
-[[Geoff Nunberg]] suggests the use of such a semantically banal term to illustrate the idea of beauty appeals to [[aesthete]]s as "an occasion to display a capacity to discern beauty in the names of prosaic things".<ref name="numberg">{{cite web|url=http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2142|title=The Romantic Side of Familiar Words|last=Nunberg|first=Geoff|date=26 February 2010|work=[[Language Log]]|accessdate=27 February 2010}}</ref>
-Nunberg suggests the phonetic characteristics of ''cellar door'' are relevant, not for purely auditory reasons, but by phonological association with languages imbued with romantic preconceptions:
-{{quote|it at once brings to mind a word from one of those warm-blooded languages English speakers invest with musical beauty, spare in [[Consonant cluster|clusters]] and full of [[liquid consonant|liquid]]s, [[nasal stop|nasal]]s, and [[open syllable]]s with vowel [[syllable nucleus|nuclei]]&nbsp;— the languages of the [[Mediterranean]] or [[Polynesia]], or the [[Celtic Revival|sentimentalized Celtic]] that [[C. S. Lewis|Lewis]] and [[J. R. R. Tolkien|Tolkien]] turned into a staple of [[fantasy fiction]].<ref name="numberg"/>}}
-Nunberg further suggests the semantics of ''cellar door'' are not actually irrelevant; in fantasy, a mundane door can become a [[Portals in fiction|portal to another world]], as with the wardrobe of ''[[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]]'' or the [[Burrow|rabbit hole]] of ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]''.<ref name="numberg"/> This idea is utilized in the 2001 film ''[[Donnie Darko]]'', where the phrase ''cellar door'' is discussed in one scene, and an actual cellar door figures into the plot in a later scene.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kois|first=Dan|date=23 July 2003|title=Everything you were afraid to ask about "Donnie Darko"|journal=Slate|url=http://www.salon.com/2004/07/23/darko/}}</ref>
-==History==
-[[Grant Barrett]], writing in ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]'', cites a passage from ''Gee-Boy'', a 1903 novel by Cyrus Lauron Hooper, as possibly being the earliest example of the idea, where it is attributed to "an Italian savant". Barrett surmises the idea was already current when Hooper was writing.<ref name="barrett">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14FOB-onlanguage-t.html|title=On Language: Cellar Door |last=Barrett|first=Grant|date=14 February 2010|work=New York Times|page=16, Sunday magazine|accessdate=27 February 2010}}</ref>
-[[William Dean Howells]] in the March 1905 issue of ''[[Harper's Magazine]]'' attributes to a "courtly Spaniard" the quote, "Your language too has soft and beautiful words, but they are not always appreciated. What could be more musical than your word ''cellar-door''?"<ref>{{cite journal|last=Howells|first=William Dean|date=March 1905|title=Editor's easy chair|journal=Harper's Magazine|page=645|url=http://www.harpers.org/archive/1905/03/page/0163}}</ref>
-In 2014, Geoff Nunberg speculated that the choice of ''cellar door'' might have arisen from [[Philip Wingate]] and [[Henry W. Petrie]]'s 1894 hit song "I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard", which contains the lyric, "You'll be sorry when you see me sliding down our cellar door", after which "'slide down my cellar door' became a kind of catchphrase to suggest innocent friendship".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11136|title=Slide down my cellar door|last=Nunberg|first=Geoff|date=16 March 2014|work=Language Log|accessdate=21 March 2014}}</ref>{{#tag:ref|Nunberg identifies "Playmates" as an earlier song from which "I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard" was derived; in fact the derivation is the reverse.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11136#comment-578872|title=GN response to comment by "Emma"|last=Nunberg|first=Geoff|date=17 March 2014|work=Language Log|accessdate=21 March 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://newsok.com/words-to-playmates-song-stir-up-controversy/article/2272570|title=Words to "Playmates" Song Stir Up Controversy|last=Lovelace|first=Melba|date=15 July 1989|work=News OK|accessdate=21 March 2014}}</ref>|group="nb"}}
-A story told by syndicated columnists Frank Colby in 1949<ref>{{cite news |title=Take My Word For It |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=eZ4yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=w-kFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4752%2C1357975 |last=Colby |first=Frank |date=3 November 1949|work=Miami Daily News|page=45|accessdate=1 March 2010}}</ref> and  [[L. M. Boyd]] in 1979 holds that ''cellar door'' was [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s favorite phrase, and that the refrain ''Nevermore'' in "[[The Raven]]" was chosen as "the closest word to 'cellar door' he could think of."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=a90hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pqAFAAAAIBAJ&dq=cellar-door%20english%20word&pg=3537%2C2682286|title=Quoth the raven "cellar door"?|last=Boyd|first=Louis M.|date=15 January 1979|work=Reading Eagle |page=5|accessdate=27 February 2010|location=Reading, Pennsylvania}}</ref>  This may derive from a 1914 essay by [[Alma Blount]]:
-{{quote|Poe, who studied sound effects carefully, says that he chose "Nevermore" as the refrain for ''The Raven'' largely because the word contains the [[sonority hierarchy|most sonorous]] vowel, ''o'', and the most "producible" consonant, ''r''. An amusing story is told of an Italian lady who knew not a word of English, but who, when she heard the word ''cellar-door'', was convinced that English must be a most musical language. If the word were not in our minds hopelessly attached to a humble significance, we, too, might be charmed by its combination of [[spirant]], liquids, and vowels.<ref>{{cite book|last=Blount|first=Alma|title=Intensive Studies in English Literature|publisher=Macmillan|location=New York|date=January 1914 |pages=30–31|chapter=III: Melody and Harmony |url=https://archive.org/stream/intensivestudies00blourich#page/n59/mode/2up}}</ref>}}
-In 1919, with [[Prohibition in the United States]] about to come into force, ''Cartoons'' magazine jocularly invoked the idea when predicting the rise of [[speakeasy|speakeasies]] hidden in basements:
-{{quote|That eastern professor who said, one time that cellar-door was the most beautiful word in English was speaking oracularly. ... if cellar-door is not the most beautiful word it is probably, now that THE GREAT DROUTH [sic] is upon us, the most popular.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PkYbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jEkEAAAAIBAJ&dq=cellar-door%20english%20word&pg=5785%2C2334658|title=The most beautiful word |date=22 July 1919|work=The Pittsburgh Press |page=6|accessdate=27 February 2010}}</ref>}}
-The rhythmic or musical quality of the phrase was referenced by [[H. L. Mencken]] in 1920, by professor David Allen Robertson in 1921,<ref name="barrett"/> and by critic [[George Jean Nathan]] in 1935.<ref name="barrett"/>  In 1932, poet [[Wilfred John Funk|Wilfred J. Funk]] publicized [[Funk & Wagnalls]] dictionary with a top ten list of beautiful words, which did not include ''cellar door''.<ref name="barrett"/> Writers were polled afterwards for their own candidates, and three included ''cellar door'': [[Hendrik Willem van Loon]], [[Dorothy Parker]], and [[Albert Payson Terhune]].<ref name="barrett"/> ''[[The Baltimore Sun]]'' responded:
-{{quote|Three poets who were questioned as to their preferences agreed that the measure of a word and its associations are far more important in judging its beauty than the mere sound ...Although Baltimore writers showed wide disagreement in their preferences, none could make out why [writers] in New York think "cellar-door" should be ranked at the top.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fitzgerald|first=Francis Scott |title=Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald |editor=[[Matthew Joseph Bruccoli]], Judith Baughman|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|year=2004 |series=Literary conversations series|chapter="'Cellar-Door'? Ugh!" Quoth Baltimore Writers |page=106|isbn=1-57806-605-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M_BObJAl0lIC&lpg=PA106&dq=%22cellar%20door%22&num=100&pg=PA106#v=onepage&q=%22cellar%20door%22&f=false}}</ref>}}
-A passage from [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s 1955 essay "[[English and Welsh]]" has been cited{{by whom|date=January 2017}} as the origin of the idea:
-{{quote|Most English-speaking people ... will admit that ''cellar door'' is "beautiful", especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, ''sky'', and far more beautiful than ''beautiful''. Well then, in Welsh for me ''cellar doors'' are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.<ref name="barrett"/>{{verification failed|date=January 2017}}}}
-However, Tolkien most likely was not the originator, seeing as he was merely 11 years old in 1903 when a strange novel called “Gee-Boy”&nbsp;— which also alludes to the aesthetic properties of cellar door&nbsp;— was published by the Shakespeare scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper.<ref name="barrett"/> Hooper’s narrator writes that the protagonist says:
-{{quote|He even grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning, and once made a list of the words he loved most, as doubloon, squadron, thatch, fanfare (he never did know the meaning of this one), Sphinx, pimpernel, Caliban, Setebos, Carib, susurro, torquet, Jungfrau. He was laughed at by a friend, but logic was his as well as sentiment; an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar-door is purely American.<ref name="barrett"/>}}
-Of course, cellar doors have been around in other parts of the world long before in America, but this hints that the idea and recognition of the beauty of the phrase was American to begin with.{{whom|date=January 2017}}
-In 1966, Tolkien referred to ''cellar door'' in an interview, using it as an example of the way in which words will shape his stories: "Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me, 'cellar door', say," he said. "From that, I might think of a name 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow."<ref>http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/printer_friendly_posts.asp?TID=215561</ref>
-The teenage protagonist of [[Norman Mailer]]'s 1967 novel ''[[Why Are We in Vietnam?]]'' attributes the observation to "a committee of Language Hump-type professors ... back in 1936 ".<ref name="barrett"/>  [[Richard Lederer]] in ''Crazy English'' claims that H. L. Mencken had claimed in a 1940s poll that ''cellar door'' had been favored by a student from [[China]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Lederer |title=Crazy English |origyear=1989 |year=1998 |edition=revised |isbn=978-0-671-02323-2 |publisher=Pocket Books |page=162}}</ref>
-In 1991, [[Jacques Barzun]] wrote:
-{{quote|I discovered its illusory character when many years ago a Japanese friend with whom I often discussed literature told me that to him and some of his English-speaking friends the most beautiful word in our language was "cellardoor". It was not beautiful to me and I wondered where its evocative power lay for the Japanese. Was it because they find l and r difficult to pronounce, and the word thus acquires remoteness and enchantment? I asked, and learned also that Tatsuo Sakuma, my friend, had never seen an American cellar door, either inside a house or outside&nbsp;— the usual two flaps on a sloping ledge. No doubt that lack of visual familiarity added to the word’s appeal. He also enjoyed going to restaurants and hearing the waiter ask if he would like salad or roast vegetables, because again the phrase "salad or" could be heard. I concluded that its charmlessness to speakers of English lay simply in its meaning. It has the l and r sounds and d and long o dear to the analysts of verse music, but it is prosaic. Compare it with "[[Celandine (disambiguation)|celandine]]", where the image of the flower at once makes the sound lovely.<ref>Jacques Barzun, ''An Essay on French Verse for Readers of English Poetry'' (New Directions, 1991).  ISBN 0-8112-1157-6</ref>}}
-The remark is attributed to "a famous linguist" in the dialogue script of ''[[Donnie Darko]]'' (2001). When asked about the origin of the phrase, writer-director [[Richard Kelly (director)|Richard Kelly]] inaccurately suggested [[Edgar Allan Poe]] as the possible source.<ref>Ross Smith, ''Inside Language'', [[Walking Tree Publishers]] (2007), p. 65).</ref>
-[[Denis Norden]], asked for his favorite word in 2008, said:
-{{quote|When I was at school a teacher told me the most beautiful word in the English language was ''cellar door''—and I believed him, even though it's strictly two words, and I made it mine. Many years later, I discovered the word he meant was "celador". It's still my favorite.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://e-edition.metro.co.uk/2008/10/06/10.html |title=60 Second Interview: Denis Norden |date=6 October 2008 |work=Metro UK |publisher=Associated Newspapers |page=10 |accessdate=28 February 2010|location=London}}</ref>}}
-Paul Smith, who produced Norden's show ''[[It'll be Alright on the Night]]'', later co-founded [[Celador]] Productions.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
-The antiquarian book seller Cellar Door Books was founded in [[Indianola, Iowa]] in 1971. The company traces its name to the Poe attribution through English teacher Miles Sheffler in [[Coffeyville]], [[Kansas]], in 1961. Having relocated to [[New Hampshire]] in 1975, the company has specialized for many years in the art and books of the 20th-century watercolorist Tasha Tudor (1915–2008). A significant collection of Tasha Tudor's books and other documentation formed by Cellar Door Books was placed with the De Grummond Collection, the [[University of Southern Mississippi]] in 2011.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
-The American musician [[John Vanderslice]] released a record on Barsuk titled [[Cellar Door (John Vanderslice album)|Cellar Door]] in 2004. The title refers to the [[Richard Kelly (director)|Richard Kelly]] film ''[[Donnie Darko]]'' (2001).{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
-==Alternative spellings==
-Some proper names have used alternative spellings of ''cellar door'' that preserve the sound of the phrase without the original meaning.
-Some spellings presume a [[non-rhotic]] accent and do not represent the R of "cellar". Some respellings may fail in accents lacking the [[horse–hoarse merger]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2017}}
-===Sellador===
-Columnist Maxine Martz in 1988 wrote about one Margaret Masters, who heard about ''cellar door'' at [[Drake University]], and later named her baby sister "Sellador".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Yt80AAAAIBAJ&sjid=NIQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6749,4494416&dq=cellar-door+english+word&hl=en|title=A spit-and-polish event (in more ways than one)|last=Martz|first=Maxine|date=11 March 1986|work=The Deseret News|page=14|accessdate=27 February 2010|location=Salt Lake City}}</ref>
-Sellador Crocket appeared on [[Groucho Marx]]'s television program, ''[[You Bet Your Life]]'', in 1961 and recounted the story, including the "Rat Trap" reference.  Sellador Crocket explained that if she were a boy, her sister would have named her "Rat Trap," as these were deemed the most dramatic words in the English language.{{Citation needed|date=February 2017}}
-===Selladore===
-[[C. S. Lewis]] wrote in 1963, "I was astonished when someone first showed that by writing cellar door as Selladore one produces an enchanting proper name."<ref name="barrett"/><ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Dorsett |editor1-first=Lyle W. |editor2-last=Mead |editor2-first=Marjorie L. |title=C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children |date=1995 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=0-684-82372-1 |page=110 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nVcbp3A-pSoC&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=cellar+door+Selladore |language=en}}</ref>
-==See also==
-* [[Celador]]
-* [[Cellador]]
-==Footnotes==
-{{reflist|group="nb"}}
-==References==
-{{Reflist}}
-==Further reading==
-*{{cite web|last1=Powney|first1=Harriet|title=What's the loveliest word in the English language?|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2012/may/25/mind-your-language-loveliest-word|website=The Guardian|date=25 May 2012}}
-==External links==
-* [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1002c&L=ads-l&D=0&T=0&P=28951 Discussion arising from Barrett's "cellar door" article]{{dead link|date=November 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} on the [[American Dialect Society]] mailing list
-{{DEFAULTSORT:Cellar Door}}
-[[Category:English phrases]]
-[[Category:Phonaesthetics]]