Cellar door (phrase): Difference between revisions
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#REDIRECT [[Phonaesthetics#Cellar door]] |
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{{Inadequate lead|date=September 2017}} |
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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. |
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==Meaning and aesthetic qualities== |
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In the United States, houses are often built with a [[door]] or pair of shutters 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}} |
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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]]'': |
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{{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>}} |
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Linguist [[Geoffrey 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> |
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In 1991, [[Jacques Barzun]] wrote: |
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{{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 — 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', 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>}} |
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==Use in literature== |
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{{Primary sources|section|date=March 2017}} |
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Author [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] is often given credit for the idea that ''cellar door'' is an especially beautiful phrase.{{refn|name=barrett}}{{efn|In a 1966 interview, Tolkien said: "Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me{{emdash}}'cellar door', say. From that, I might think of a name 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Zaleski |first1=Philip |last2=Zaleski |first2=Carol |title=The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams |date=2015 |publisher=Farrar Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0-374-15409-7 |page=25 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lhToCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&dq=cellar+door |language=en}}</ref>}} An excerpt from Tolkien's 1955 lecture "[[English and Welsh]]" reads in part: |
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{{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>{{cite book|last1=Tolkien|first1=J. R. R.|title=Angles and Britons|date=1964|publisher=University of Wales Press|page=36|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nlkZAAAAIAAJ&q=Welsh+cellar+doors|language=en}}</ref>}} |
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However, an earlier instance can be found in the 1903 novel ''Gee-Boy'' by the Shakespeare scholar Cyrus Lauron Hooper: |
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{{quote|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">{{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 Magazine |page=16}}</ref>}} |
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[[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> |
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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>{{efn|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>}} |
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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]]: |
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{{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>}} |
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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: |
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{{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 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 Pittsburg Press |page=6}}</ref>}} |
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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: |
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{{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>}} |
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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> |
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In the 2001 film ''[[Donnie Darko]]'', 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> The remark is attributed to "a famous linguist" in the dialogue script of the film. 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> |
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==Alternative spellings== |
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Some proper names have used alternative spellings of ''cellar door'' that preserve the sound of the phrase without the original meaning.{{Citation needed|date=September 2017}} Columnist Maxine Martz wrote in 1988 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> [[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> |
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==See also== |
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* [[Celador]] |
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* [[Cellador]] |
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==Notes== |
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{{notelist}} |
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==References== |
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{{Reflist|30em}} |
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==Further reading== |
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*{{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}} |
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==External links== |
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* [https://archive.is/20121221013209/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] on the [[American Dialect Society]] mailing list |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cellar Door}} |
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[[Category:English phrases]] |
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[[Category:Phonaesthetics]] |
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Latest revision as of 15:04, 28 September 2022
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