summer afternoon

The column of mercury inside the porch thermometer is about as tall as it can possibly get. The dome of the sky is pale and blue and smudged with white. I'm sitting in the air-conditioned bedroom on the third floor, eating cherries and spitting their pits into a bowl, drinking lemonade that's mostly lemon juice.

Henry James famously said that "summer afternoon" are the two most beautiful words in the English language. But, at least to my ear, there's nothing inherently pleasing about them except for their meaning. The "m"s in summer, might be reminiscent of a languid, buzzing heat, but afternoon, though it begins promisingly, pinches with the "t" and ends with a disappointing thud, like a stone dropped into a well.

When asked to vote on the most beautiful English words, people chose mother, smile, love, fantastic. But if you pay attention to the sound, not the sense, none of those words would be on the list. Tolkien especially liked the lilt of "cellar door" and I think he was right. The loveliest cadences are found in strings of voiceless aleolar sibilants, like the s in sea, and velar lateral approxmants, like the l in milk, sounds made with an open mouth or the tongue pressed lightly behind the teeth, elongated syllables that hush like lullabies or sharp consonants that glimmer like gemstones.

So, here are my choices for the most entrancing words: apostrophe, cerulean, quiescence, ellipses, spindle, celadon, fuselage. What are yours?