Cellar door

Cellar door is a combination of words in the English language once characterized by J. R. R. Tolkien to have an especially beautiful sound. In his 1955 essay "English and Welsh", commenting on his affection for the Welsh language, Tolkien wrote:"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful.
Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."

Tolkien also once used the phrase to illustrate a point about his writing process during an interview:

"Supposing you say some quite ordinary words to me - 'cellar door', say. From th

at, I might think of a name, 'Selador', and from that a character, a situation begins to grow."

Tolkien's discourse is the most likely origin of this concept and the only documented one. Further insights into why Tolkien found the word cellar-door aesthetically pleasing can be found in considering texts in his constructed language of Quenya. The poem Namárië opens with the words:

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,

yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!

Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier

mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva.