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So, what words sound beautiful? What words sound beautiful but the meaning drags them down?
Well, I think "onomatopoeia" sounds beautiful. Which would be my main argument against accepting "heterological" as its antonym, in fact.
Seems to me antonyms should, as polar opposites (see previous post) share a common nature. Yes, I know this appears to be a paradox, so off the top of me head, here are some examples: "optimistic" goes with "pessimistic" rather than "cynical". "Malevolent" goes with "benevolent" rather than "good". OK, not very good examples, but I'm rushed.
By the way, I also think "enantiodroma" and "serendipity" are beautiful. I confess I haven't checked them against Crystal's rules yet, but I suspect their appeal is as much in the meaning as the sound for me.
Agree with Max, phonaesthetics sounds fascinating!
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The article was in English Today, Vol. 11 No. 2 (the April 1995 issue) so those of you who have access to decent libraries can LIU. English Today is published by the Oxford University Press, and is supposed to be on the Internet, but last time I looked, admittedly some time ago) it was for those with institutional subscriptions only.
To summarise, he looked at lists which had appeared in various places of what words various writers or newspaper readers thought beautiful. He then did a statistical analysis of what sounds and word features appeared frequently in the lists and what didn't. The "rules" I posted earlier were the result. "Tremulous" is a word which scored 10 out of 10. "Alyssum" and "alumnus" scored 9/10 each. "Zoo" scored 0/10.
Bingley
Bingley
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old hand
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also, isn't the opposite of zero infinity, in mathematical terms?
In mathematical terms the opposite of any number is itself on the negative side; therefore, the opposite of infinity would be negative infinity.
I would have to say that the opposite of zero is the existence of anything, whether it be positive or negative, but not any specific number.
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okay, what about positive and negative zero then?
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The Big Bang, the chicken or the egg, Shrödinger`s Cat. I think this topic falls under the same category. It seems to me that there are certain things that are rife with theories but cannot be proven. Aaak !
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Before risking another outbreak of brain-ache, let's try to be clear: the everyday sense of the term "opposite" has no place in mathematics. Some people here were using it in the sense of "complement" (set theory) others in the sense of "negation". And there is no "positive and negative zero" as far as I know. +-0 means "zero within the limits of error".
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enthusiast
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>>also, isn't the opposite of zero infinity, in mathematical terms?
The "correct" term would be "inverse": roughly speaking we could say that
the inverse of 0 is infinity - it correspond to the fact that , dividing a given fixed (positive) number by another (positive) number becoming smaller and smaller, then the result is becoming bigger and bigger (i.e. goes to the infinity).
Emanuela
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yes, we have been using the word "opposite" very loosely hereabouts; it is more of an exacting problem in math(s), but is also problematical in linguistics! [see other threads]
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Isn't the inverse of zero (one divided by zero) undefined?
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>Isn't the inverse of zero (one divided by zero) undefined?< That's right. And it's the undefined things that make us irresistibly scramble for definitions  .
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