Such pretty words

In The Grass Harp, Truman Capote conjures a little girl who calls herself Texaco Gasoline, "because they were such pretty words."

Sometimes, words are pretty. They feel good in the mind, in our ears, on our tongues.

For me, one of those words—on a par, I think, with Texaco Gasoline for mundanity—is telephone.

To think of the thing in my pocket taking the same name as an object that sat in small squadrons on office desks the size of tennis courts, with rotary dials, multi-coloured so you knew which one was for what, is crazy. To call the thing in my pocket by the same word as something with two horns attached to walls in English manor houses, which would connect you to an operator, is equally crazy.

The word telephone is so much more indulgent than the clipped, expedient, modern "phone". Telephone is luxuriant. Telephone takes time to say and to listen to. Three glorious syllables, which I like to draw out, instead of one.

Grown adults snigger when I call my phone a telephone. Friends chuckle. It's just a phone! Right?

Well, shorter isn't always better. And telephone is such a pretty word.