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The late Ringgold Wilmer ("Ring") Lardner once listed what he considered the ten most beautiful words in English. They were: gangrene, flit, scram, mange, wretch, smoot, guzzle, McNaboe, blute, crene.*
If Satirist Lardner had his tongue in his cheek, he may also have been aware of the finding of psychologists that the words commonly thought to be ugly-sounding are so considered, consciously or unconsciously, because of unpleasant associations and not because of phonetical harshness. Scholars recognize a few words as truly onomatopoeic; e.g.,...
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