Cacophony

/kəˈkɒfəni/ noun

A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds — noise without pattern, the opposite of music.

From Greek kakophonia, from kakos (bad) + phone (voice, sound). The same root gives us "telephone" (far voice), "symphony" (together sound), and "euphony" (good sound). Greek built an entire vocabulary system around the quality of sound.

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