'Diaphanous' crowned the most beautiful English word

As part of a collaboration between the Poetry Society of America and Babbel, 1,500 poets and poetry lovers weighed in on the most beautiful word in the English language, crowning "diaphanous."

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

OK, Juana, what do you think is the most beautiful word in the English language?

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Hard question, but I think I'm going to go with euphoria. What do you think?

CHANG: Ooh. I like that. I think I would say onomatopoeia. Well, recently, over a thousand poets and poetry enthusiasts weighed in on this very question. And the word that they have crowned the most beautiful word in the English language is...

(SOUNDBITE OF HANDS DRUMROLLING)

ESTEBAN TOUMA: Diaphanous. It's an adjective that describes something very delicate to the point of being almost transparent.

CHANG: Diaphanous. That was Esteban Touma, a linguist and cultural expert at Babbel. The language-learning platform created a short list of 20 beautiful sounding words, and then they asked the Poetry Society of America's 1,500 members to vote for the most beautiful from that list.

SUMMERS: Diaphanous got the highest percentage of votes, followed by ethereal, then mellifluous.

CHANG: Now, behind this survey is a whole area of study called phonaesthetics, basically looking at the key ingredients for ear-pleasing words.

TOUMA: How the words flow - are they easy to pronounce? We looked at vowel quality. Open vowels are usually more associated with pleasant sounding words. We take diaphanous. Quite literally, your mouth is a little bit more open and air is kind of flowing directly out.

SUMMERS: OK. So poets like the way diaphanous sounds, but how often are they using the word?

CHANG: Well, we asked Matt Brogan that very question. He's the executive director of the Poetry Society of America, and he had just finished browsing the poetry databases.

MATT BROGAN: The actual answer is not very often. And I think this speaks to something about poets. I think they're very attuned to the kinds of things we're talking about, but they're also a little bit wary of things that feel conventionally beautiful, in the same way an artist might be a little wary of, like, making a painting of a sunset or boats in a harbor.

SUMMERS: Survey participants also had the opportunity to nominate their own words.

CHANG: Now, just because a word sounds beautiful doesn't necessarily mean that it means something beautiful.

BROGAN: Diphtheria is a really lovely sounding word. It's probably not something you want to get.

SUMMERS: Brogan says one of his big takeaways from the survey is that native English speakers tend to look to other languages to find beauty.

BROGAN: I do think that there is a bit of sound envy for native English speakers for the romance languages - like French or Italian or Spanish - that feel to us that they are just flowing along in a way that maybe we don't necessarily think about English doing in a natural kind of way.

CHANG: Well, Juana, in the interest of using more beautiful words in conversation, I just want to say, I so appreciate the sound of your mellifluous voice.

SUMMERS: Aw, thanks (laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.