Note: Our Sixth Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge is underway. It will run until Feb. 18.
euphonious yü-ˈfō-nē-əs adjective
1. having a pleasant sound
2. (of speech or dialect) pleasing in sound; not harsh or strident
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The word euphonious has appeared in five articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Feb. 22 in “A Tune Heard Often at These Olympics Gets to the Heart of Being Korean” by Andrew Keh:
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — It may not have been the most obvious choice for Yura Min and Alexander Gamelin, the American-born ice dancing pair representing South Korea at the Olympics, to skate on Tuesday to “Arirang,” a Korean folk song whose roots go back hundreds of years.
…. The name Arirang actually refers to a category of folk songs. There are countless regional variations, with dozens of known melodies and thousands of known lyrics. The common thread among them is the use of the word “Arirang,” or other words that sound similar. Complicating matters some is the fact that those words do not have a universally accepted meaning. Some historians believe them to be simply euphonious syllables, a Korean fa-la-la.
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