
It's worth noting that some people take a much broader view of what constitutes cacophony. In fact, in most cases, cacophony is created using the help of other, non-explosive consonant sounds, since it makes the jumble of noises all the more discordant-and with cacophony, discord is the name of the game. But that doesn't mean that every consonant has to be explosive-and it also doesn't mean that the explosive sounds have to occur right next to each other. So a word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or poem is typically considered cacophonous when it contains explosive consonants in relatively close succession.

As you can hear, the word cacophony itself has two explosive consonant sounds that repeat in close succession ( kuh- koff-uh-nee), making it a cacophonous word. You can think of explosive consonants as all the letters you would want to use if you were going to try to write out the sounds a frying pan would make if you threw it down a stairwell: ting, ping, klang, dong, bang, crash. Other consonants that can have explosive sounds are C, CH, Q, and X.Įxplosive consonants are really the key ingredient when creating cacophony. The consonants B, D, K, P, T, and G (as in Gorilla, not George) are all explosive.
#Tikki tikki tembo no sarimbo how to#
Here's how to pronounce cacophony: Kuh- koff-uh-nee Cacophony in Depth The opposite of cacophony is euphony, or the mixture of words that sound smooth or pleasant together.Cacophony is one of the words that is used most often to speak about the musicality of language-how it sounds when it's spoken aloud.The word cacophony is itself slightly cacophonous because of the repetition of the "k" sound.The word cacophony comes from the Greek word meaning "bad sound.".

Some additional key details about cacophony: For instance, the protagonist of the children's book Tikki Tikki Tembo has a very long, very cacophonous name: Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sarimbo Hari Kari Bushkie Perry Pem Do Hai Kai Pom Pom Nikki No Meeno Dom Barako. What is cacophony? Here’s a quick and simple definition:Ī cacophony is a combination of words that sound harsh or unpleasant together, usually because they pack a lot of percussive or "explosive" consonants (like T, P, or K) into relatively little space.
