:)īut all of those sounds have "ur" in a stressed position (indeed, most of them are monosyllables), whereas "utter" has it in an unstressed position, where it doesn't have as strong as an effect. but I can't really think of many positive words that have the "ur" sound, other than "purr", "flirt".įinally, "turkey" is just comical rather than positive or negative. ![]() Some are more neutral, like herd, urge, surge, quirk, discern, concur, circle, circa. A lot of words with a "ur" sound in them have some kind of negative association with them: burp, usurp, twerp, turd, nerd, slur, hurt, dirt, jerk, lurk, lurch, murky, stern. but I think there's something to the sound theory. Of course, all this is just conjecture on my part. The schwa at the beginning doesn't really help there, either. sounds like something a caveman might say. There's something about the "ur" sound that is a just little rough. It's not one of the harshest-sounding words in the language, but it's not particularly euphonic, either, especially in rhotic dialects (like most American English) with the terminal "r". It could also just be the sound of the word. It could be that these phrases became common first, and then their commonality associated the word "utter" with negativity. ![]() There are some particularly common examples with negative words: "utter chaos" and "utter ruins" leap to mind most readily. ![]() People see utter/utterly used more often with negative adjectives, so they tend to use it that way themselves, which reinforces the association with negativity.
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