Euphony

The noun euphony (pronounced 'YOU-fern-y', IPA: /ˈjuː fə nɪ/), with the adjective euphonious ('you-PHONE-i-us', /juː ˈfəʊ nɪ əs/), means '[having a] pleasant sound'. (It comes from the Greek εὑ-, 'well', 'good' and φωνή, 'sound' or 'voice'.

• The latter shows its predominant current application, in literary and linguistic use: 'having a pleasing or harmonious sequence of sounds in speech [or writing, as it would sound if read aloud]'.
• Those who study scientific linguistics, specially those who describe spoken language, may narrow the definition to 'the choices made by a speaker for ease of pronunciation'. (This makes it a practical rather than an aesthetic category.)

As AWE uses the term, euphony is most often applied to matters of choice of words where the speaker or writer has chosen one synonym over another for a (usually unconscious) belief that 'it will sound better', or 'that it will be easier to say'. These unconscious choices are made all the time in constructing utterances. They can be hard for a non-native speaker to understand, let alone learn; and such a foreign speaker may well perceive 'pleasant-ness of sound', or 'ease of pronunciation' very differently from a native speaker. As with all aesthetic matters, euphony is hard to define, let alone agree upon', and it may be best for most students to accept that it is meant chiefly as an explanation of a phenomenon that is hard to explain.

Two related words are not used in the same sorts of discourse:

the apparent opposite cacophony (adjective cacophonous, both with the stress on the second syllable 'cack-O-fe^rn-i (or -us)', /kæk ˈɒ fə n ɪ (or əs)/, 'bad sounding' is not often used about language. It is most usually applied these days to music that is felt to be discordant, or to general noise that is felt to be unpleasant, and usually loud: a zoo in which all the animals utter at the same time would be a cacophonous place, and a central foyer during Freshers' Week at a university may well be felt to be a cacophony. These terms may be applied figuratively, as for example a building using several different architectural styles might be said to be 'a cacophony of detail'.

A euphonium ('you-PHONE-i-um', IPA: /juː ˈfəʊ nɪ əm/ is a brass musical instrument with a low register. It is similar to, but smaller and lighter than, a tuba, and is in the tenor range where the tuba is in the bass range.