Question: Can you guess what the following words all have in common: mother, smile, love, sunshine, sweetheart, hope, rainbow, sunflower, twinkle, serendipity, lullaby, butterfly, galaxy, lollipop, bumblebee, giggle, peekaboo, cherish, blossom, umbrella?
Answer: If they sound a little like music to the ears, you're on the right track. The above were considered among the most beautiful words in English, by 7,000 people polled in 46 countries for the British Council, says David Crystal in "Words, Words, Words." Also voting were 35,000 Web site visitors. In similar polls, the words melody, twilight, hush, luminous, golden, chimes, tranquil were selected.
"Surveys of this kind tend to mix up words that have beautiful sounds like peekaboo and words that have beautiful meanings like hope." Words like parakeet, sycamore, zoo, antimacassar, doppleganger seemed picked for their sound rather than their meaning.
So what makes a word SOUND appealing? Perhaps some nasal sounds, especially "m," or continuant sounds like "r" and "s." Two or more syllables help, where the consonant and the vowel sounds vary from syllable to syllable, as in melody and mellifluous. Lullaby turns up on everyone's list. "Both mother and enthusiasm also make the lists for their meaning, but aside from these, there are few 'th's' included. And the significance of that? Ask Darth Vader."
Question: You're in a romantically darkened room when your girlfriend, who is studying to be a dentist, pulls out a pack of wintergreen LifeSavers and reaches to pop one into her mouth. But first she teases, "a sweet light show for you." Pulling a pair of pliers out of her bag, she proceeds to crush the LifeSaver, which to your amazement emits a faint flash of blue light. Can you shed light on this?
Answer: It's a form of "sparking," stemming from the graininess of electricity, say David Halliday et al in "Fundamentals of Physics." When the sugar crystals in the candy rupture, one part has excess electrons while the other has excess positive ions. Almost immediately, electrons jump across the rupture gap, with the electrons and the positive ions colliding with nitrogen molecules in the air.
Oil of wintergreen in the crystals emits enough blue light to light up a mouth or a pair of pliers, in a show of fluorescence. However, if the candy is wet with saliva, the demo will fail because the moisture neutralizes the two parts.
But, your girlfriend cautions, please don't sit around
chomping on these candies with your teeth, or you may need to pay me a different sort of … dental visit!
Question:What's the origin of the "sardonic" grin, that slightly crooked or wry expression that isn't quite the smile it might have been?
Answer: The word goes back to the Greek bard Homer, who first used it to describe the hero Odysseus as he "smiled sardonically," dodging an ox jaw thrown by one of his wife's former suitors, says "Discovery News." According to some scholars, Homer coined the word after learning that the Sardinians gave a smile-inducing potion to condemned people or to those who could no longer care for themselves. Then in ritual killings, they were dropped from a high rock or beaten to death, says Charles Choi in "Scientific American" magazine. Scientists at the University of the Eastern Piedmont in Italy believe they have now identified a natural toxin that forces a person to smile — the herb "hemlock water dropwort," popularly known as "water celery." Highly toxic chemicals in the plant can make facial muscles contract into a grimace (as reported in "The Journal of Natural Products"). Yet, added the researchers, the plant molecules may one day be modified to have the opposite effect, causing muscles to relax and helping patients recover from facial paralysis.
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@cs.com. © Bill Sones and Rich Sones, Ph.D.