The sound of language

Music may be the food of love, but the sound of language is lovelier still. Who can resist a word like squelch? Everything about it is soft and wet. Tribbing is fun, but the name doesn’t do it justice. Playing squelchy is a better name for it, but if it were up to me, I’d just call it squelching. Of course, squelch is onomatopoeic, describing a sound, like moan, or slap. However, that isn’t where the beauty of language stops. Take slap and tickle. Tickle doesn’t describe a sound, but if tickling were named bodding, for example, it wouldn’t represent tickling half as well as tickle does.

It might only be English. I speak a bit of French, and a little leftover schoolgirl Latin, but English is the language with which I’m most familiar, and whose richness of expression captivates my imagination. Spank, tug, drip, dribble, and drool. Suck and swallow. Pinch and squeeze. Finger and fist. Love sounds so much more restrained than lust, and not only because lust rhymes with thrust. After all, love rhymes with shove. The difference between grope and fondle is all in the sound of the words. Just thinking about them makes me tremble.

I shan’t dwell on the range of names for the things between people's legs, except to say that I prefer knob to prick and cunt to snatch, but there are other body parts with beautiful names, like thigh, and belly. Thighs sound as if they’re begging to be spread, and a belly is so much fleshier than a tummy. Who’d go to watch a tummy dancer? It’s a pity that there isn’t a really lovely word for breasts. Boobs sound friendly, but hooters and knockers are more like jokes, and they bring with them the idea of size. Tits are in your face, saying ‘look at me’. Breast itself is quite a nice word, but it still doesn’t have quite the quivery wobbling beauty of the thing it describes.

Longer words struggle. Masturbation doesn’t sound half as much fun as the act itself. Boys, would you rather come or ejaculate? Menstruation is a world away from bleeding. Voluptuous manages to pull it off, sounding as fleshy as fleshy, but it’s something of a loner at the party.

Longer also words tend to have more restricted meanings. Compression means compression, and not much else. Ignition just means ignition. Describing the workings of an internal combustion engine could be awfully boring, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Next time you put your foot down, think of it in English. Suck, squeeze, bang, blow. It still makes me smile.

The hills may be alive with the sound of music, but pillow talk does it for me. Whisper to me, and make me melt, what’s your favourite word?