Mouthfeel

The pleasure of words in your mouth

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

Mouthfeel is a thing.

Connoisseurs of food and wine make a big deal about mouthfeel. And so do the rest of us who enjoy the sensations in our mouths when we eat. Think melted butter on warm toast. Or the juicy pulp that fills our mouths with the first bite of an apple. That’s mouthfeel.

I also believe there is another kind of mouthfeel. The feeling of words in our mouths.

Think about words for a moment. All our lives, starting from our first baby babblings, we use words to communicate to the people (and sometimes the pets or toys) we want to connect with.

Perhaps under hypnosis, it would be possible to reconnect with how words felt in our baby mouths the first time we said “da-da-da”. Wouldn’t that be something! But the great thing about words is that our connection with them only grows stronger and more important with the passage of time.

There are words that I love to say aloud. Not solely because of their meaning or how they sound once spoken, but also because of the way they feel in my mouth and on my lips when I speak them.

Ineluctable. One of my favorite words. When I say it I feel I have some rich, delicious piece of homemade fudge in my mouth, melting slowly on my tongue.