Cellar door
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A cellar door is a door that allows entrance to, or exit from, a cellar. A widely repeated claim holds that the phrase cellar-door is the most beautiful in the English language.
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[edit] Phonetical aspect
Cellar door is a combination of words in the English language once characterized by J. R. R. Tolkien to have an especially beautiful sound. In his 1955 essay "English and Welsh", commenting on his affection towards the Welsh language, Tolkien wrote:
- "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."
Tolkien also once used the phrase to illustrate a point about his writing process during an interview:
- "Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me - 'cellar door', say. From that, I might think of a name, 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow."[1]
Tolkien's discourse is the most likely origin of this concept and the only documented one. Further insights into why Tolkien found the word cellar-door aesthetically pleasing can be found in considering texts in his constructed language of Quenya. The poem Namárië opens with the words:
- Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva.[2]
Tolkien's text contains a large number of sonorants and a paucity of stop consonants; only the brief stops /t/ and /d/ appear in the opening of his text. It contains many open syllables and few consonant clusters. Vowels are mainly monophthongs, and few diphthongs or other vowel sounds more complex in articulation appear here. These same phonetic features distinguish the English word cellar-door. Note also that Tolkien's pronunciation of that word would not feature any rhotic sound, since he was speaking with non-rhotic accent: [ˈselə ˌdɔː].
Compare this text with another poem in one of Tolkien's constructed language, the evil inscription of the One Ring in his Black Speech of Mordor:
- Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
This text contains many consonant clusters (/zg/, /mb/, /θr/, /kr/) and a far larger variety of stop consonants.
[edit] Misattribution
Nonetheless, this phrase has been subject to a legendary degree of misattribution. In common circulation, this pronouncement is commonly attributed to "a famous linguist". [3] It has also been mistakenly attributed to Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy Parker[4], and Robert Frost although no such texts have surfaced. The most detailed account alludes to a survey, possibly conducted around the 1940s, probing the word in the English language generally thought to be the most beautiful. Contributing to this survey, American writer H. L. Mencken supposedly claimed that a Chinese student, who knew little or no English, especially liked the phrase cellar door — not for what it meant, but rather for how it sounded. Some accounts describe the immigrant as Italian rather than Chinese. Another account suggests that it is a mispronunciation of the French words C'est de l'or, which can be translated as "It is gold".
In 1991, Jacques Barzun repeated the claim, attributing it to a "Japanese friend":
- 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. 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.[5]
[edit] Cultural references
[edit] References in literature
- In Larry Niven's A World Out of Time, the city that the protagonist wakes up in, after 240 years of cryogenic sleep, is called Selerdor.
- The cover of Stephen King's On Writing is a photograph of a cellar door.
- In the comic book series Ultimate Spider-Man, Norman Osborn uses "cellar door" as a codeword to trigger his son's hypnosis.
- An island in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series is named Selidor.
[edit] References in film and television
- Monty Python's Woody and Tinny Words sketch finds humor in the pure sounds of English words and their inherent beauty (woody) or ugliness (tinny); see also Inherently funny word.
- The phrase is mentioned in the 2001 film Donnie Darko during a conversation between Donnie, the film's protagonist, and his English teacher. The English teacher states, "A famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that cellar door is the most beautiful." In the director's commentary Richard Kelly mistakenly attributes the phrase to Edgar Allan Poe. It was actually J.R.R. Tolkien.
- Celador is the name of the British entertainment production company that produced the television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the 2002 dramatic film entitled Dirty Pretty Things.
[edit] References in music
- The Cellar Door was a club on 34th Street in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. that operated in the 1960s and 70s. It was one of the premier music spots in Washington and many important artists of the era played there. The Danny Gatton "Redneck Jazz Explosion" live performance recordings were made here on New Year's Eve 1978
- A 1970 Miles Davis album is entitled The Cellar Door Sessions, also featuring Keith Jarrett. It was recorded on December 16-19 at the Washington, DC club mentioned above.
- Cellar Door is the name of the 2004 album by musician John Vanderslice.
- The phrase appears in Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done".
- The phrase is also used in the song "Angelsea" by Cat Stevens.
- Holly Brook's debut album, Like Blood Like Honey, features the song "Cellar Door" as the closing track.
- Death metal band Glass casket have a song titled "Cellar Door" on the album We Are Gathered Here Today.
- Cellardoor is an independent electro-acoustic Brooklyn, NY-based pop band.
- The phrase appears in the song "The House That Dripped Blood" by The Mountain Goats.
- The Lemonheads' hit "It's A Shame About Ray" includes the lyric "the cellar door was open, I could never stay away."
- The hardcore/screamo band Escape The Fate has a song titled "Cellar Door" on their album "Dying Is Your Latest Fashion" (Epitaph Records, 2006)
- American power metal band Cellador acquired their name from a combination of the two words.
- "Cellar Doors, Donnie!" is a song title by the screamo band Mozart Season.
- The phrase appears repeatedly in Pearls Before Swine's song "Playmate."
- "Lock the cellar door" is a lyric in the song Talk Dirty to Me by Poison.
- There is song named "CellarDoor" by Nicolas Kuecken
- Cellar Door is an Icelandic band *[1].
- Appears in the 1894 song "I Don't Want To Play In Your Yard" by Henry W. Petrie and Phillip Wingate.
[edit] Other
- The phrase "Cellar door" is also used to refer to the point where tourism meets winemaking — a shop at a winery that allows visitors to taste and buy the wine made there or using grapes from that area.
- The phrase is referenced in online game Kingdom of Loathing, as you must enter a bar cellar to fight rats. "The bartender shows you where the cellar door is (you pause a moment to admire the phrase) and you descend into the darkness."
- There is a Cellar Door Drive in Bristow, Virginia.
- The Cellar Door is a resale shop known as "Cedar Rapids' #2 Tourist Attraction." (wwww.thecellardoor.net)
- There is a reference to "cellar door" in the monologue "Alby" by Emo Phillips
- There is a planet named Cella Dor in the Corsair home system in the computer game Freelancer.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Cater, Bill (April 12, 2001). We talked of love, death, and fairy tales. UK Telegraph. Retrieved on 2006-03-13.
- ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
- ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, while more commonly noted as an author, was primarily a philologist.
- ^ Dorothy Parker is also quoted as saying that the most beautiful words in the English language are "cheque enclosed." (probably more in meaning than in phonetics)
- ^ Jacques Barzun, An Essay on French Verse for Readers of English Poetry (New Directions, 1991). ISBN 0-8112-1157-6
