The word of the day has been buzzing around in my head since yesterday. Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever get a word or a phrase stuck in your head?

It happens to me a lot. I try to write them down in my notebook, or on a scrap of paper, or the notepad on my phone.

Today’s word is:

Mellifluous

Mellifluous is an adjective. It means a pleasantly flowing quality, suggestive of music; it tends to describe voices. Synonyms include lyrical, mellow, melodic, and musical.

To me, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Jim Morrison, David Gilmour, Billie Holiday, Cate Blanchett, and Tracy Chapman are among the people with the most mellifluous voices. Morgan Freeman has a mellifluous voice, too, of course, but that’s an easy one.

It’s interesting to me that the most pleasing voices are low, deep, and slow, and therefore typically masculine. Antonyms of mellifluous, like grating, are used to describe higher pitched female voices. Hmm. When you think of someone with an irritating, grating, squeaky, or monotonous voice, whose do you hear?