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cacophony

[kuh-kof-uh-nee]

Example Sentences Origin

noun, plural -nies.

harsh discordance of sound; dissonance: a cacophony of hoots, cackles, and wails.

a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds: the cacophony produced by city traffic at midday.

Music. frequent use of discords of a harshness and relationship difficult to understand.

Origin:
1650–60; < Neo-Latin cacophonia < Greek kakophōnía. See caco-, -phony

Related forms

cac·o·phon·ic

[kak-uh-fon-ik] , adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Cacophony is an SAT word you need to know.

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light, airy, or tenuous

state of dread or alarm

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Example Sentences

The resulting cacophony is exhausting for the user, who must concentrate to isolate relevant input.

On such networks, conventional wiretaps will yield a cacophony of useless electronic noise.

When I blog on politics, on the other hand, there's a cacophony of voices.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

cacophony (kəˈkɒfənɪ)

—n , pl -nies
1.	harsh discordant sound; dissonance
2.	the use of unharmonious or dissonant speech sounds in language

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

cacophony

1650s, from Gk. kakophonia, from kakophonos "harsh sounding," from kakos "bad, evil" (see caco-) + phone "voice" (see fame). Related: Cacophonous.

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Related Words

dissonance

Matching Quote

"Now life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner. In life, we must begin to give a public performance before we have acquired even a novice's skill; and often our moments of seeming mastery are upset by new demands, for which we have acquired no preparatory facility. Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments; even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one of endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression."

-Lewis Mumford

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cacophony

ca·coph·o·ny