Cacophony
A harsh or discordant combination of sounds in a phrase or passage.
Cacophony is the deliberate or accidental use of sounds that clash with one another, producing a jarring effect. The word comes from Greek kakophonia, 'bad sound.' It is the opposite of euphony, the pleasing harmony of sound.
Cacophony can be unintentional: a sentence with too many sibilants, hard stops, or repeated consonants can be difficult to read aloud. It can also be intentional, as in Tennyson's description of 'the wrinkled sea beneath him crawls' or the violent consonants of many war poems.
In quotation, cacophony is worth noticing when the quoted line is meant to sound like what it describes. A passage about a machine crash that is full of hard k and t sounds is probably doing cacophonic work.
Common mistake: smoothing out every cacophonic line. Sometimes the roughness is the point; a polished version of a cacophonic sentence can destroy its meaning.
“With clinking clank and waddling wobble, the cracked crank creaked.”
Keep reading the glossary
The repetition of an initial consonant sound across nearby words.
Repeated consonant sounds within or at the end of nearby words.
Repeated vowel sounds in nearby words, binding a phrase together without rhyming it.
The immediate repetition of a word for emotional emphasis, without any intervening word.