Cellar door
Encyclopedia
The English compound
English compound
A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme.English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their components.-Compound nouns:...

 noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

 cellar door (especially in its British pronunciation of sɛləˈdɔə) is commonly used as an example of a word or phrase which is beautiful in terms of phonaesthetics (sound) with no regard for semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 (meaning). It has been variously presented either as merely one beautiful instance of many, or as the most beautiful in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

; either as the author's personal choice, or that of an eminent scholar, or of a foreigner who does not speak the language.

Phonaesthetics

The semantics of "cellar door" derive straightforwardly from its component terms: in the United States, a cellar door is a door or pair of shutter doors between the outside of a building and its cellar
Basement
__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...

. In Britain and Ireland, a cellar door is often located within a house and opens onto a flight of stairs leading to the cellar (basement
Basement
__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...

 in American English). Outside doors are more common to pubs and restaurants.

From the nineteenth century, many American houses on large plots had slanted trapdoor
Trapdoor
A trapdoor is a door set into a floor or ceiling .Originally, trapdoors were sack traps in mills, and allowed the sacks to pass up through the mill while naturally falling back to a closed position....

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
William Chapman White
William Chapman White was a foreign correspondent in the 1930s who became a columnist for the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. He is known especially for his 1954 book, Adirondack Country...

 wrote in the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...

:
"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."


Geoff Nunberg suggests the use of such a semantically banal term to illustrate the idea of beauty appeals to aesthetes as "an occasion to display a capacity to discern beauty in the names of prosaic things".

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:
it at once brings to mind a word from one of those warm-blooded languages English speakers invest with musical beauty, spare in clusters
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....

 and full of liquid
Liquid consonant
In phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:...

s, nasal
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...

s, and open syllables with cardinal vowel
Cardinal vowel
Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. For instance, the vowel of the English word "feet" can be described with reference to cardinal vowel 1, , which is the cardinal vowel closest to it....

 nuclei — the languages of the Mediterranean or Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

, or the sentimentalized Celtic
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...

 that Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

 and Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

 turned into a staple of fantasy fiction


Nunberg further suggests the semantics of "cellar door" are not actually irrelevant; in fantasy, a mundane door can become a portal to another world
Portals in fiction
A portal in science fiction and fantasy is a magical or technological doorway that connects two distant locations separated by spacetime. It usually consists of two or more gateways, with an object entering one gateway leaving via the other instantaneously....

, as with the wardrobe of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis. Published in 1950 and set circa 1940, it is the first-published book of The Chronicles of Narnia and is the best known book of the series. Although it was written and published first, it is second in the series'...

or the rabbit hole
Burrow
A burrow is a hole or tunnel dug into the ground by an animal to create a space suitable for habitation, temporary refuge, or as a byproduct of locomotion. Burrows provide a form of shelter against predation and exposure to the elements, so the burrowing way of life is quite popular among the...

 of Alice in Wonderland. This idea is exploited in the 2001 film Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is a 2001 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell...

, where the phrase "cellar door" is discussed in one scene, and an actual cellar door looms ominously in a later scene.

History

In 2010, Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett is an American lexicographer, specializing in slang, jargon and new usage. He is also co-host and co-producer of the nationwide public radio show A Way With Words, and editor of the Official Dictionary of Unofficial English , the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang Grant...

 discussed the "cellar door" combination of words in the "On Language" column of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

. The earliest example he cites is from Gee-Boy, a 1903 novel by Cyrus Lauron Hooper, where it is attributed to "an Italian savant". Barrett surmises the idea was already current when Hooper was writing. William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...

 in the March 1905 issue of Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...

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?"

A story told by syndicated columnists Frank Colby in 1949 and L. M. Boyd
L. M. Boyd
Louis Malcolm Boyd, popularly known as L. M. Boyd was a newspaper columnist whose nationally syndicated column was a collection of miscellaneous trivial and amusing facts....

 in 1979 holds that "cellar door" was Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's favorite phrase, and that the refrain Nevermore in "The Raven
The Raven
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...

" was chosen as "the closest word to 'cellar door' he could think of." This may derive from a 1914 essay by Alma Blount:
Poe, who studied sound effects carefully, says that he chose "Nevermore" as the refrain for The Raven largely because the word contains the most sonorous
Sonority hierarchy
A sonority hierarchy or sonority scale is a ranking of speech sounds by amplitude. For example, if you say the vowel [a], you will produce a much louder sound than if you say the plosive [t]...

 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.


In 1919, with Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...

 about to come into force, Cartoons magazine jocularly invoked the idea when predicting the rise of speakeasies
Speakeasy
A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition...

 hidden in basements:
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.


The rhythmic or musical quality of the phrase was referenced by H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...

 in 1920, by professor David Allen Robertson in 1921, and by critic George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...

 in 1935. In 1932, poet Wilfred J. Funk publicized Funk & Wagnalls dictionary with a top ten list of beautiful words, which did not include "cellar door". Writers were polled afterwards for their own candidates, and three included "cellar door": Hendrik Willem van Loon
Hendrik Willem van Loon
Hendrik Willem van Loon was a Dutch-American historian and journalist.-Life:He was born in Rotterdam, the son of Hendrik Willem van Loon and Elisabeth Johanna Hanken. He went to the United States in 1902 to study at Cornell University, receiving his degree in 1905...

, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....

, and Albert Payson Terhune
Albert Payson Terhune
Albert Payson Terhune was an American author, dog breeder, and journalist. The public knows him best for his novels relating the adventures of his beloved collies and as a breeder of collies at his Sunnybank Kennels, the lines of which still exist in today's Rough Collies.-Biography:Albert Payson...

. The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....

responded:
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.


A passage from J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

's 1955 essay "English and Welsh
English and Welsh
English and Welsh is the title of J. R. R. Tolkien'svaledictory address to the University of Oxford of 1955.The lecture sheds light on Tolkien's conceptions of the connections of race, ethnicity and language....

" has been cited as the origin of the idea:
"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"


The teenage protagonist of Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...

's 1967 novel Why Are We in Vietnam? attributes the observation to "a committee of Language Hump-type professors ... back in 1936 ". Richard Lederer
Richard Lederer
Richard Lederer is an American author, speaker, and teacher best known for his books on word play and the English language and his use of oxymorons...

 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.

In 1991, Jacques Barzun
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...

 wrote:
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.


The remark is attributed to "a famous linguist" in the dialogue script of Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is a 2001 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell...

(2001). When asked about the origin of the phrase, writer-director Richard Kelly
Richard Kelly (director)
James Richard Kelly is an American film director and writer, best known for writing and directing the cult classic Donnie Darko in 2001.-Early life:...

 inaccurately suggested Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 as the possible source.

Denis Norden
Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden CBE is a former English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during World War II. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the successful BBC Radio comedy programme Take It from Here with Frank Muir...

, asked for his favorite word in 2008, said:
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.

Paul Smith, who produced Norden's show It'll be Alright on the Night
It'll be Alright on the Night
It'll be Alright on the Night is a British television bloopers show screened on ITV and produced by London Weekend Television. It was one of the first shows created with the specific purpose of showing behind the scenes bloopers from film and TV and it has been running since 18 September 1977...

, later co-founded Celador
Celador
Celador is a global light entertainment company originally formed as an independent production company in 1983. It has produced a number of popular light entertainment shows and is probably best known for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and co-producing the film Slumdog Millionaire which collected...

 Productions.

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. Moved to New Hampshire in 1975, the company has specialized for many years in the art and published 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 Collecton, the University of Southern Mississippi in 2011.

Respellings

Respellings of "cellar door" have been made to preserve its purported phonoaesthetics while obscuring the semantics. Some respellings presume a non-rhotic accent and do not represent the R of "cellar". Some respellings may fail in accents lacking the horse–hoarse merger.

Celador
Celador
Celador is a global light entertainment company originally formed as an independent production company in 1983. It has produced a number of popular light entertainment shows and is probably best known for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and co-producing the film Slumdog Millionaire which collected...

: A television production company
Cellador
Cellador
Cellador is a power metal band from Omaha, Nebraska, formed by guitarist Chris Petersen in 2004. After a rotation of a few member try-outs in the band's earliest days, Cellador's album line-up was cemented in 2004. The band eventually signed to Metal Blade after playing a show with The Black Dahlia...

: A power metal
Power metal
Power metal is a style of heavy metal combining characteristics of traditional metal with speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a...

 band
Cellardoor: An online magazine
Salador: A city in Magician
Magician (novel)
Magician is a fantasy novel by Raymond E. Feist. It is the first book of the Riftwar Saga and was published in 1982. It led to many books written by Feist in the world of Midkemia, which was the setting for this book...

by Raymond E. Feist
Raymond E. Feist
Raymond Elias Feist is an American author who primarily writes fantasy fiction. He is best known for The Riftwar Cycle series of novels and short stories. His books have been translated into multiple languages and have sold over 15 million copies.- Biography :Raymond E...


Selador: A psychoanalyst in The Santaroga Barrier
The Santaroga Barrier
The Santaroga Barrier is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It is considered to be an "alternative society" or "alternative culture" novel...

by Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Although a short story author, he is best known for his novels, most notably Dune and its five sequels...

. Also a trainer of BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...

 slaves in The Marketplace from The Marketplace series
The Marketplace series
The Marketplace series comprises five novels by Laura Antoniou, which describe the experiences of the participants in a highly ritualized fictional BDSM secret society...

by Laura Antoniou
Laura Antoniou
Laura Antoniou is an American novelist. She is the author of The Marketplace series of BDSM-themed novels, which were originally published under the pen name of Sara Adamson....

.
Selerdor: A city in A World Out of Time
A World Out of Time
A World Out of Time is a science fiction novel by Larry Niven and published in 1976. It is set outside the Known Space universe of many of Niven's stories, but is otherwise fairly representative of his 1970s hard science fiction novels...

by Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...


Selidor: A remote island in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea
Earthsea
Earthsea is a fictional realm originally created by Ursula K. Le Guin for her short story "The Word of Unbinding", published in 1964. Earthsea became the setting for a further six books, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968, and continuing with The Tombs of Atuan, The...

 books.
Sellador: Columnist Maxine Martz in 1988 wrote about one Margaret Masters, who heard about "cellar door" at Drake University
Drake University
Drake University is a private, co-educational university located in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The institution offers a number of undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as professional programs in law and pharmacy. Today, Drake is one of the twenty-five oldest law schools in the country....

, and later named her baby sister "Sellador". Sellador Crocket appeared on Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

's television program, You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life is an American quiz show that aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio in October 1947, then moved to CBS Radio in September...

, in 1961 and recounted the story, including the "Rat Trap" reference. Also, Sellador is the name of the song performed by Swiss goth band Lacrimosa
Lacrimosa (band)
Lacrimosa is a duo led by German Tilo Wolff, the main composer, and Finnish Anne Nurmi, currently based in Switzerland, but originally from Germany...

 from the album Schattenspiel.
Selladore: The name of a "kind-hearted laundress" in Geyserland, a 1908 novel by Richard Hatfield. C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

 wrote in 1967 "I was astonished when someone first showed that by writing cellar door as Selladore one produces an enchanting proper name." Also a character in the underground comic Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer is a weekly comic strip written and drawn by Ben Katchor since 1988. It is published in The Forward and various alternative weekly newspapers....

.

External links

  • Discussion arising from Barrett's "cellar door" article on the American Dialect Society
    American Dialect Society
    The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal, American Speech...

    mailing list
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