The University of Vienna found that words judged to have a pleasant sound are recalled more easily. Researchers showed made-up terms like "clisious", "smanious" and "drikious" to about 100 English-speaking participants, who learned, later recalled and then rated the words for beauty. Words rated most beautiful were also the most memorable, suggesting a link between euphony and memorability with implications for language learning, marketing and language change.
Beauty in Sound Makes Words Stick: Study Shows Pleasant-Sounding Words Are Easier To Remember
11:35 AM, 12/09/2025
A University of Vienna study suggests that the way a word sounds — independent of its meaning — can make it easier to remember. Researchers used invented words to isolate sound from meaning and tested whether "pleasant" sounds boost memorability.
How The Study Worked
About 100 English-speaking participants were shown a set of made-up words such as "clisious", "smanious" and "drikious". The items were preclassified by the researchers as "beautiful", "neutral" or "not beautiful" based on their sound patterns. Participants first learned and memorised the words, completed a later recall test, then rated each word for how beautiful it sounded.
Key Findings
The words participants rated as most beautiful were also the ones they recalled most successfully. "We found that the words that participants remembered best were also the ones they rated as most beautiful," said study leader Theresa Matzinger. The authors describe this close relationship between memorability and euphony — the aesthetic quality of a sound.
"Whether we remember things better because we find them beautiful or find them beautiful because we can remember them better remains to be seen," Matzinger added. The research was published in the journal PLOS One.
Why It Matters
These results suggest that sound aesthetics could influence what sticks in our memory and, over time, which sound patterns persist in languages. The researchers note possible applications in foreign-language teaching, brand naming and marketing, and the study of language change across generations: sound patterns perceived as pleasant may be more likely to survive and spread, while less appealing patterns could fade.
Takeaway: Euphony — the perceived beauty of a word's sound — appears linked to how easily that word is learned and recalled, even when the words have no meaning.
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