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Euphony   Listen
noun
Euphony  n.  (pl. euphonies)  A pleasing or sweet sound; an easy, smooth enunciation of sounds; a pronunciation of letters and syllables which is pleasing to the ear.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Euphony" Quotes from Famous Books



... Tutu and his wife Ila reached the island of Tutuila, and named it so by the union of their names. U and Polu reached Upolu, and hence the name of that island by uniting their names. Sa and Vaila reached Savaii, united their names also, and, for the sake of euphony, or, as they call euphony "lifting it easily," made it Savaii ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... at the end of gegedo. The full word is really gegedove; but it is shortened to gegedo, unless the next word is a vowel. Also note the "u." There are two words for "and," namely ta and une. The "u" here is the une shortened, and put instead of ta for euphony]. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... medium of "filthy lucre;" for there was a well-known dog-fancier and proprietor, whose surname was that of the rich substantive just mentioned, to which had been prefixed the "filthy" adjective, probably for the sake of euphony. As usual, Filthy Lucre was clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement just in front of the Brazenface gate, accompanied by his last "new and extensive assortment" of terriers of every variety, which he now pulled up for the inspection of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... also call my mousme Kikou, Kikou-San; this name suits her better than Chrysantheme, which though translating the sense exactly, does not preserve the strange-sounding euphony ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... nonsense, I have no hesitation in saying has a high antiquity, and refers to the Eddaic Hjuki and Bil. The names indicate as much. Hjuki, in Norse, would be pronounced Juki, which would readily become Jack; and Bil, for the sake of euphony and in order to give a female name to one of the children, would become Jill. The fall of Jack, and the subsequent fall of Jill, simply represent the vanishing of one moon spot after another, as the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... to him? Never mind; I submit even to that thought if it gives me five minutes more of your society. But listen to me. No one can tell tales of us, because we are both strangers in the land. No one knows me from Adam, and just as few know you from—let us say Eve, for euphony's sake." ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways—style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... long before the end of the one scene in which Brnnhilde takes part in "Siegfried." Never did her voice have the lovely quality which had always characterized it in the music of Donizetti and Gounod. It lost in euphony in the broadly sustained and sweeping phrases of Wagner, and the difference in power and expressiveness between its higher and lower registers was made pitifully obvious. The music, moreover, exhausted her. She plunged into her apostrophe with ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... preserved in English—he does not make clear. The versions of Foster-Barham and of Horton and Bell show the same disfigurement, the latter omitting the extra accent of the fourth line, as they say, "for the sake of euphony"(!). It is just this lengthened close of each strophe that gives the Nibelungenlied its peculiar metrical character and contributes not a little to the avoidance of monotony in a poem of over two thousand strophes. In theory the form of the fourth line as it stands in the original ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... washed away, her free hand could lie without spasm in Henry's, and it was as if she found in her last words a secret euphony that ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... she felt there was something dangerous in the air, or that Harry Goldthwaite had some new awfulness in her eyes from being actually a commissioned officer,—Ensign Goldthwaite, now, (Rose had borrowed from the future, for the sake of euphony and effect, when she had so retorted feet and dignities upon her last year,)—we could not guess; but his name or presence seemed all at once a centre of electrical disturbances in which her whisks and whirls were simply to ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... qualifications—the thought before its illustrations; it merely prescribes that we should arrange our phrases in the order of logical dependence and rhythmical cadence, the order best suited for clearness and for harmony. The nature of the thought will determine the one, our sense of euphony the other. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... alterations in the edition of 1838 consist in spelling Christians with a capital C and the omission of the epithet "wise" as applied to the reformers, an omission more probably suggested by a desire for euphony than by any nascent doubts concerning the ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... the "Chamber of Commerce" for euphony's sake. It is in fact an association which keeps an eye upon the Parish Council, Harbour Board, and Great Western Railway, and incites these bodies to make our town more attractive to visitors. It consists mainly of lodging-house ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... is now used only of persons; which, of things; that, of either persons or things. As a rule, euphony decides between who or ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler

... picked up and whirled about by April winds, and, if they lodge in the warming earth, are fully able to grow into fine little trees the same season. Examine these seed-pods, keys, or samaras (this last is a scientific name with such euphony to it that it might well become common!), and notice the delicate veining in the translucent wings. See the graceful lines of the whole thing, and realize what an abundant provision Dame Nature makes for reproduction,—for a moderate-sized tree completes many thousands of these finely ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... my love of euphony, Hamilton. Pray let me finish. I'd rather be Laurens on my way to beg. What is a king to a lion? But seriously, my dear, the Chief is desperately sorry this has occurred. He has deputed me to assure you of his great confidence ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight!— From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future!—how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... writing for a moderate compass, a song-composer, almost alone of all composers, is provided with a means of reacting gradually upon instrumental music and of tuning anew the ear of our generation, so that it shall no longer find satisfaction in the shrill tones of extreme voice registers and the euphony of strong, easily and comfortably attained middle tones shall again be universally perceived. At the present moment our instrumental art has, in this particular, fallen under the tyranny of piano manufacturers and makers of wind instruments. When the keyboard of the grand piano has been ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... I imagine, which can be given for the transposition of letters spoken of by Mr. Williams (No. 12. p. 184.), is that it was done on "phonetic" principles—for the sake of euphony:—the new way was felt or fancied to be easier to the organs of speech, or (which is nearly the same) pleasanter to those of hearing. Such alterations have at all times been made,—as is well known to those versed in the earlier stages of the language,—and often most arbitrarily. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... the fourth of Berossus' Antediluvian kings, presents a wonderfully close transcription of the Sumerian name. The n of the first syllable has been assimilated to the following consonant in accordance with a recognized law of euphony, and the resultant doubling of the m is faithfully preserved in the Greek. Precisely the same initial component, Enme, occurs in the name Enmeduranki, borne by a mythical king of Sippar, who has long been recognized ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... discover whether any of them have been lifted during the night. When, upon their return to the City, the visitors were asked where they had been, they facetiously replied, "To count rye." This soon became a favorite expression; the "e" was dropped for euphony, and the rural districts ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various

... but Adelheid's eyes sought the paper with an expression of keen interest. A few verses, written in a careless, hasty hand, covered the white page. Egon began to read. They were indeed German verses, but in them was a pureness and euphony which told that they could only have been written by a master of that tongue, and the description which they gave was one well known to both listeners. Deep, sad, woodland loneliness, pervaded by the first breath of autumn; endless green depths ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... Pastorals appeared, heroic versification became matter of rule and compass; and, before long, all artists were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered on one happy thought or expression were able to write reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was concerned, could not be distinguished from those of Pope himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of Charles the Second, Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Oldham, would have ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in form of its presentation the speech is as perfect a poem as ever was written, and even in the minor qualities of artistic language—rhythm and cadence, phonetic euphony, rhetorical symbolism, and that subtle reminiscence of a great literary and spiritual inheritance, the Bible, which stands to us as Homer did to the ancients—it excels the finest gem to be found in poetic cabinets from the Greek Anthology downward. Only because it was not written in the ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... forth were her own or somebody else's, I could see that she relished uttering them. Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable: the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she named had a genuine fascination for her. There was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan



Words linked to "Euphony" :   euphonic, instrumentate, euphonious, auditory sensation, euphonical, reharmonize, sound, reharmonise, music, music of the spheres, instrument, harmonize



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