Delightful Words From the Glass Slipper

Grant, remember our conversation from a couple of weeks ago about words that are fun to say?

You know, the words that you carry around with you and you just say from time to time because they’re fun to say?

Oh, yeah.

Oligopoly.

Oligopoly.

Oligopoly.

That’s the domination of a market by just a few producers.

Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah, like oligarchy is the rule of the few.

Yeah.

Well, that conversation prompted an email from Sue Ann Barnes, who lives in Jackson, Tennessee.

She wrote to us about a scene in a 1955 movie called The Glass Slipper.

And it’s a really dated movie, but there’s this lovely scene where an older woman is talking to Cinderella.

And she says, Cinderella, Cinderella. Such a beautiful word. I like it very much. There are other words I like very much like windowsill and elbow, elbow. And I like apple dumpling too.

Apple dumpling. It’s a comical word. Apple dumpling. Pickle relish. That has a nice snap to it. I just, I really got a kick out of this little passage in a 1955 movie where somebody’s celebrating the sound and feel of words.

I noticed that they all had L’s in them. And I also noticed that the Cinderella was a lot like cellar door. If you remember, I wrote something from the New York Times a number of years ago about how cellar door and celadon have long been said by many people to be words they consider to be very beautiful to hear and to say.

That’s interesting.

Those L sounds.

And sometimes people pick words that are beautiful to say because they connote something beautiful like mother or love.

I remember that essay of yours from the New York Times, and we should link to it on our website.

Absolutely.

And we’re still collecting the words that you love to say, either because they’re goofy or funny or they chip off the tongue so perfectly.

Send us an email, words@waywordradio.org.