Cellar Door

The English compound cellar door [ˈsɛləˌdɔ:] plays a certain role in discussions of phonoaesthetics; a widely repeated claim first put forward by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay English and Welsh (1955) holds its sound is intrinsically beautiful.

"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."