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Saturday March 20, 2010

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cacophony [kuh-KAH-fuh-nee]

noun

1. A combination of harsh or discordant sounds.
2. An uncouth or disagreeable sound of words in literary composition.

• For Mace, it's just another well-meaning movie that exaggerates it all a bit too much. "They make it sound like it was the end of the world," he said during a recent visit from a reporter, a cacophony of explosions and gunfire erupting from his big-screen television, courtesy of a preview DVD. "There's too much machine gun fire, too many mortars."
  Eric Deggans, "'THE PACIFIC' ARMED WITH CLICHES, BLOOD; Vet says it's too much, but he'll watch again", St. Petersburg Times, Mar 14, 2010
• "This country has had a low tolerance for polarization," said Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America expert at the Council of the Americas in New York. "This crisis and the cacophony of complaints will test that."
  Ginger Thompson, "The ideology of an earthquake; Chile's president defends her legacy as political landscape shifts in crisis", International Herald Tribune, Mar 5, 2010
• As the three women stood there, taking leave of each other, the odour of the cheeses seemed to become more pestilential than ever. It was a cacophony of smells, ranging from the heavily oppressive odour of the Dutch cheeses and the Gruyeres to the alkaline pungency of the Olivets.
  Emile Zola (1840 - 1902) An French writer. The Fat and the Thin

Origin of the Word

Cacophony, approximately 1650s, derives from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos "harsh sounding," from kakos "bad, evil" + phone "voice."