Cellar Door: a quest to find the most beautiful word in English | Hacker News Reader

Cellar Door: a quest to find the most beautiful word in English

cellar-door.co.uk

22 pointsArisC19 comments

The leader is "no", which seems odd. The second one is "trna", which is apparently "a type of RNA that helps in the translation of messenger RNA into proteins by carrying specific amino acids to the ribosome". Is that even a word? Like, do people pronounce it "turna" or something?

(Fun game though)

Yeah the ranking looks completely busted. Unless people actually like those words.

Ranking is manipulated, I just saw "incompetent" quite high up. Now it's gone.

The ranking is quite close at the mid-high ranks. There's 4 points of difference between rank 27 and 100 - high fluctuation without manipulation is entirely expected.

Nope, it's manipulated (or broken). Entries gaining hundreds of points, then losing them again in an instant. Just watch for a few minutes, it's a shit show.

Bit unkind mate. It's normal for ELO rankings to update by many points.

I think someone hacked my sql table :(

A bit of background: JRR Tolkien developed a linguistic branch he called "phonaesthetics", the study of beauty of words. Many writers have agreed on "cellar door" to be beautiful in terms of the sound of the phrase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonaesthetics#Cellar_door

Interesting. I have long thought the word “celerity” to be a beautiful word.

I've heard it said (perhaps apocryphally) that when non-English speakers are asked to judge words based purely on aesthetics, the word 'diarrhea' tends to rank quite highly.

To be fair, it does have a certain flow.

Using generative Natural Intelligence, an italian wrote a top 40 song that sounded to 1970s non-english speakers as if it had had english lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8

(compare "abstract comics", "asemic writing")

Very interesting, I'd always thought it was a made up thing from Donnie Darko.

I don’t remember where I first read it (Google is showing TH Huxley) and it’s two words, not one – but the phrase “mellifluous eloquence” is my answer to this question.

As a side note I wonder if this project is addressing the tendency for people to perceive Latin-origin words as being more beautiful or sophisticated, compared to Germanic ones.

Very fun and almost addictive. I would like a bit more help though with what is meant by 'beautiful'. Or maybe that's the point, whatever the user infers from that single word is what they're looking for.

Some context here: https://logos.substack.com/p/cellar-door

"inoubliable" if you'll pardon my French. You can't forget this word once you see its definition.

In case you missed it, the current leader is `tRNA`: https://www.cellar-door.co.uk/leaderboard

Which, isn't even a word, but I enjoy the internet doing classic internet things.

Edit: It is now `no`. Amazing.

it's soliloquy

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