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In phonaesthetics, the English compound noun ''cellar door'' has been cited as an example of a word or phrase which is beautiful purely in terms of its sound, without regard for semantics (i.e., meaning).〔 It has been variously presented either as merely one beautiful instance of many, or as the most beautiful in the English language; as the author's personal choice, that of an eminent scholar's, or of a foreigner who does not speak the language.〔〔 The original instance of this observation has not been discovered, although it was made as early as 1903. ==Phonaesthetics== The semantics of "cellar door" derive straightforwardly from its component terms: in the United States, a cellar door is often a door or pair of shutter doors between the outside of a building and its cellar. In Britain, Ireland and Canada, a cellar door is often located within a house and opens onto a flight of stairs leading to the cellar. Outside doors are more common to pubs and restaurants. From the nineteenth century, many American houses on large plots had slanted trapdoors abutting the side and opening onto a flight of steps leading down into the cellar. By the mid-twentieth century this rustic feature was a rarity; in 1953, William Chapman White wrote in the ''New York Herald Tribune'': Geoff Nunberg suggests the use of such a semantically banal term to illustrate the idea of beauty appeals to aesthetes as "an occasion to display a capacity to discern beauty in the names of prosaic things". Nunberg suggests the phonetic characteristics of "cellar door" are relevant, not for purely auditory reasons, but by phonological association with languages imbued with romantic preconceptions: Nunberg further suggests the semantics of "cellar door" are not actually irrelevant; in fantasy, a mundane door can become a portal to another world, as with the wardrobe of ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'' or the rabbit hole of ''Alice in Wonderland''.〔 This idea is utilized in the 2001 film ''Donnie Darko'', where the phrase "cellar door" is discussed in one scene, and an actual cellar door figures into the plot in a later scene. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「cellar door」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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