With over a million words, it would be difficult to narrow the English language down to its 881 most beautiful and ugly words. However, thanks to Robert E. Wolverton and his students, you will not have to. Wolverton, a professor of classical languages at Mississippi State University, asked students in his Latin II and Latin IV classes last spring to list the most beautiful and ugly words they could think of.
“The students were learning Latin and Greek, but I wanted them to examine the intricacies of their own language,” Wolverton said.
The end result was a list of 431 words deemed beautiful and 450 deemed ugly. Little did Wolverton know, the list would only be the first snowflake of an avalanche.
“Once I gathered the list, I wanted to write a little story about it,” Wolverton said. “I wrote the story at the end of the school year and handed it over to Maridith Geuder in university relations.”
Under Geuder’s distribution, Wolverton’s story came to life in newspapers like The Clarion Ledger. However, Wolverton’s list did not truly blossom until he received a call from National Public Radio in Washington, D.C.
“Around Aug. 5, I got a call from Melinda Weir at NPR,” Wolverton said. “They saw a copy of the list and wanted to do an interview for Morning Edition.”
Before the list could break the AM airwaves, Wolverton needed a liaison.
“The missing link was Jeff Kosmacher,” Wolverton said. “He is a freelance writer who goes around various campuses talking to people, looking for story ideas. He caught wind of the list and took it to NPR. He said it was the easiest sell of his life.”
Wolverton conducted his interview with NPR’s Melissa Block and woke up early the next morning to listen to it on the air.
“I woke up at 5 that morning, listened to NPR all morning long until I went to class, but they never played the interview” Wolverton said. “I called them later that afternoon and asked why it wasn’t on, but they said it was.”
The interview was broadcast on August 23, but not in the place of origin.
“The supreme irony is that the interview was on in every state but Mississippi,” Wolverton said. “They pre-empted that segment in favor of Farm Week.”
The Magnolia State may have missed out on Wolverton’s interview, but the rest of the country was quick to take notice. “E-mails came in from California, Texas, Minnesota and New Hampshire,” Wolverton said. “I was flabbergasted by how many people wanted a list.”
When determining the validity of the list, one must first consider the backgrounds of the students. For instance, Mississippi made the beautiful list while Arkansas was dismissed as an ugly word. Spiritual words like peace, faith and Jesus made the beautiful list while Satan, glutton and hell were condemned to the ugly list.
“We had a lot of religious words because the students are mostly 18 to 25-year-olds who grew up in small towns in Mississippi with strong Christian beliefs,” Wolverton said.
Like religion, politics played a role in making the list.
“Liberal received three ugly votes, but conservative didn’t make the beautiful list,” Wolverton said.
Selection of the words derived largely from connotation rather than definition.
“Most of the ugly words are Anglo-Saxon, guttural and one-syllable,” Wolverton said. “Many of the beautiful words–like mellifluous–come from Greek. Melancholy made the beautiful list even though the meaning is very depressing.”
However, there were a few elegantly articulate words like stiletto that were deemed ugly.
“Stiletto has a nice sound to it, but it is more evil than good,” Wolverton said.
Wolverton’s classes were largely comprised of psychology and pre-med students, which may explain why morphine and Novocain were listed as beautiful. Wolverton was also curious about the impact technology would have on the students’ vocabularies.
“I wanted to see what impact television would have on the students, especially MTV,” Wolverton said. “I was surprised to find that not much of the buzz words showed up. I also did not expect the students to have so many multi-syllable words because they haven’t been out in the world very long.”
As cultures evolve, so do the native languages. According to Wolverton, the English language is constantly adopting new words and dropping old ones–making dictionaries obsolete in just a few years.
“English has over a million words while French only has about 100,000,” Wolverton said. “There’s no other language that borrows from other languages and exports a few words of its own the way English does. The average person has about a 20,000 word vocabulary.”
English is so expansive, it often makes words of other words. “English is by far the most playful language,” Wolverton said. “Think of all the puns and acronyms we come up with like motel and snafu.”
Today, virtually no country claims Latin to be its official language. Hence, it is often called the dead language.
“Latin is not dead,” Wolverton said. “Seventy percent of our words are derived from Latin either directly or through French.”
For a complete list of beautiful and ugly words, visit www.ur.msstate. edu/news/stories/classics.asp.