Big Beautiful Bill
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Trump’s favorite verbal tic is now 1,000 pages of legislation
He keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
Monica Hesse, WP (5/29/25)
Everybody has what I call a kǒutóuchán 口頭禪 (lit., "oral zen", i.e., "favorite expression", kind of like a mantra). Mine, in Nepali, is "bāphre bāph!"; Pinkie Wu's, in Cantonese, is "wah!"; a Harvard historian I know loves to say "precisely!"; and so forth and so on. President Trump's is "beautiful".
Monica Hesse opines:
N.B.: I have omitted most hyperlinks in the quoted text below.
The verbal tic of President Donald Trump that has always most fascinated me is his predilection for the word “beautiful.” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “wrote me beautiful letters and we fell in love.” On the cover of Time magazine, Kamala Harris looked “like the most beautiful actress ever to live” (this quickly devolved into an anti-compliment). On Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” Golf courses are beautiful, but so are White House telephones, farming, fighter jets, notes from the Chinese president, chocolate cake, the Supreme Court, Harambe the gorilla and Christians. Do you know who doesn’t need 30 dolls? “A beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old.”
Is this a vocabulary deficit? A real estate developer buzzword, such as “spacious” or “walk-in pantry”? Is this a manifestation, a linguistic trick to make it appear that everything is better than fine? In college, did he fulfill a gen ed requirement with a course on the history of aesthetics?
I have gone down a rabbit hole. Did you know that there is a whole field called phonaesthetics, which is the study of how pleasing words are to the ear? Unpleasing sounds are called “cacophonous”; pleasing words are “euphonious.” One of the fathers of this field was J.R.R. Tolkien (yes, that one), who taught English at the University of Oxford and worked on the Oxford English Dictionary and declared that the most melodious word combination in English was "cellar door." Words are more likely to be thought of as euphonious if they have three or more syllables, with the stress on the first syllable. The most euphonious letter is “l,” followed by “m,” “s” and “n”; the most euphonious vowel sounds are short rather than long.
“Beautiful” fits many of those criteria, which makes me wonder if it’s as simple as that. Trump is human, like the rest of us, and he is just as drawn to pleasing words as any of us, and “beautiful” is a more pleasing word than, say, “pretty” — though not as pleasing as “luminous.”
Next, Hesse waxes linguistic:
Then again, the Oxford English Dictionary — and I just paid $10 for a subscription to learn this, so now I have to share it with you — says that “beautiful,” in terms of usage, is about as common as the words “facility,” “solve” and “travel,” and Trump definitely doesn’t use those words with any noteworthy frequency. The OED also tells me that the word peaked in 1850. By 1946, when Trump was born, it was in a steep decline and reached its lowest usage point in 1980, when Trump was 34 years old and a television interviewer was first asking the young tycoon whether he’d ever consider running for president.
Trump uses “beautiful” to describe sleeping gas (“They have a gas that’s a beautiful sleeping gas”). He uses it to describe fossil fuels (“clean, beautiful coal”). He uses it to describe his unrealized health-care plans, airports, his physical body (“If I took this shirt off, you’d see a beautiful, beautiful person”). Politico published a list last year aggregating weird times he’s used the word, and until I clicked on it, I had almost forgotten about when he celebrated the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by praising “a dog, a beautiful dog” and also the “beautiful, big hole” created by the U.S. military when it blasted through Baghdadi’s house during a raid.
I spend a lot of time preoccupied with language: how it works and why it works and whom it works for. What I think I find most jarring about Trump and “beautiful” is how many times he uses the word to describe something I find to be the opposite. He tweets about the removal of “beautiful” Confederate statues and monuments — but it doesn’t matter how regal the statues look, because they represent something nauseating and tragic. Trump posts an AI-generated video depicting a resort built on the rubble of Gaza, and the resort is supposed to be beautiful, but it only feels horrifying.
…
Which brings me to the reason I am writing this. Trump has named his signature agenda — which the House has passed, which the Senate will consider, which will form and shape America and determine our values — the One Big Beautiful Bill.
The Big Beautiful Bill works for Donald Trump because it uses a common, euphonious word to sell a tantalizing concept: that the federal government is simple instead of being a giant, complicated mess — but one that got that way for a reason. To fix it, you don’t need wonks, economists, the swamp, the “deep state,” lawyers, laws or elaborate tax codes; you just need to clonk it upside the head with the Big Beautiful Bill.
The “the” is intentional. The Big Beautiful Bill is the One Ring of legislation, the only bill you’ll ever need. “Big Beautiful Bill” is a phrase that could lull you into believing it contained only good things. And it does not.
Here's how the proponents of Trump's “Big Beautiful Bill” depicted it on placards when they were ushering it through Congress:
_______________________
ONE BIG
BEAUTIFUL
BILL ACT
_________________________
(images)
Hesse has written a profoundly probing essay on how language functions and means. The upshot of it all is that we need to add, in addition to its esthetic dimensions, a new Trumpian definition for it in our dictionaries:
adj. that which performs its intended function efficiently and effectively
This is the engineers' definition of "beautiful". It reminds me of the mathematicians' definition of "neat" which I learned when I hung around with them in graduate school"
adj. that which arrives at a solution efficiently, effectively, and concisely.
The BBB — in the minds of its proponents.
Selected readings
- "'Bāphre bāph!' — my favorite Nepali expression" (8/12/18)
- "The beauty and power of spelling" (9/3/21)
[Thanks to François Lang]
Josh R. said,
May 29, 2025 @ 6:42 pm
Here is what Tolkien said about "cellar door," which seems germane to the subject at hand:
"Most English-speaking people … will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful." (From "English and Welsh", lecture given at Oxford on 21 Oct., 1955)
Lars Skovlund said,
May 29, 2025 @ 8:03 pm
Maybe he's a fan of Rogers and Hammerstein:
Oh, what a beautiful mornin' / Oh, what a beautiful day. / I've got a beautiful feelin' / Everything's goin' my way.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
May 30, 2025 @ 1:56 am
I have never understood the putative appeal of “cellar door,” and the images it conjures do not help. The cellar doors I remember were not particularly lovely. I do like “luminous” much more than “cellar door.”
The text I find lovely due to assonance and alliteration (despite finding the anomalous archaism “shoon” very distracting), is Walter de la Mare’s poem “Silver.” The first line has always really appealed to me; I think I first encountered the poem in junior high:
Silver
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8494557-Silver-by-Walter-de-la-Mare
Stephen Goranson said,
May 30, 2025 @ 4:42 am
Before Tolkien chose "cellar door" as most beautiful, many others had too.
The preference has been attributed, without evidence, to E. A. Poe and to Giuseppe Mazzini, as well as to Margaret Fuller. Fuller reviewed Poe's book that included The Raven in 1845, and she met Mazzini in 1846….(!)
Back when the NY Times hosted a Sunday column on language, Grant Barrett traced it back to a 1903 novel from Chicago, Gee-Boy. "…an Italian savant maintained that the most beautiful combination of English sounds was cellar-door; no association of ideas here to help out! sensuous impression merely! the cellar door is purely American."
"Is there not a story concerned with Margaret Fuller and her awakened
appreciation of the beauties of her own tongue through the admiration of an
Italian friend, for that word–so homely of association and so beautiful for
the disposal of its consonants and vowels–Cellar door?" J. of the Illinois State Historical Society 14 (1921-1922) 271.
And I found this puzzle:
A Frenchman from Paris was supposedly comparing and contrasting the two cities. The article commented: "It is as if Paris said to Chicago, with an our-cellar-door air: 'Humph! Don't you think yerself big!" What does "cellar door" mean here?
A Frenchman on Chicago; Dr. Lutaud Likes Us, but Hates Skyscrapers. No Use
for Skyscrapers. Admires the Auditorium. American Women.
Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1922). Chicago, Ill.: Feb 2, 1896. p. 33 (1 page)
Stephen Goranson said,
May 30, 2025 @ 4:53 am
Relevant to cellar door?
…
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Yves Rehbein said,
May 30, 2025 @ 5:37 am
It is linguistic priming. Eventually you will associate the word outside of the context with politics.
I concur the "cellar door" example comes to mind for euphony, but I need to note euphemism (!) one more time for its priming effect.
Robert Coren said,
May 30, 2025 @ 9:09 am
Years ago, there was a fancyish restaurant in Cambridge, MA, named Celador. The name was elucidated as derived from "cellar door", because the restaurant was in the basement of a residential building.
David L said,
May 30, 2025 @ 9:23 am
The opposite of 'beautiful,' in Trumpspeak, is 'nasty.'
J.W. Brewer said,
May 30, 2025 @ 11:09 am
There was a separate thread recently on the oddity of the President saying "great late" instead of "late great." Here, I think "big beautiful bill" sounds more natural than "beautiful big bill." But interestingly enough many formulations of the purported "rule" for adjective ordering seems to suggest "beautiful big" on the theory that "opinion" precedes "size" and "beautiful" is an "opinion." Looking at the google ngram viewer shows both "big beautiful" and "beautiful big" with fairly similar rates of usage back to before 1920, with "big beautiful" being the modestly more common of the two for almost all of the period since 1948.
Perhaps a deeper dive into specific usages would reveal other factors that seem to consistently lead to one order versus the other, but maybe it's an interesting example of how the supposed rule (or at least particular formulations of it) does not seem to fully account for actual usage.
David B Solnit said,
May 30, 2025 @ 2:54 pm
C'est l'heure d'or?
Chas Belov said,
May 30, 2025 @ 4:44 pm
I'd say my 口頭禪, in Cantonese, is 嗱 "nah" (here) I got teased once (actually, multiple times, for years) for handing my share of a tab to a Cantonese-speaking friend and saying "Nah!" It turns out that this was a rude usage. I mistakenly picked it up from the delightful Cantonese series 安樂茶飯 "Home Menu" (available on YouTube on the ATV channel, alas without subtitles) in a scene where the female lead tears up a contract, hands it to her scheming ex-husband, and says "嗱!"
As for English, I find "nugget" to have the most pleasant mouthfeel.
Chas Belov said,
May 30, 2025 @ 4:50 pm
Actually, come to think of it, I'm surprised that the Foreign Service Institute Cantonese Basic Course (1970), which is or was used to teach diplomats, did not cover this usage matter for nàh, given that they taught us deuimhjyuh (excuse me) and mhhou yisi (I'm so embarassed) within the first few lessons.
Mai Kuha said,
May 31, 2025 @ 10:21 am
I've wondered if personality disorder could be a factor in the over-use of "beautiful" (and "love"). I asked Gemini to synthesize research that might address this, and here's what it came up with. This seems far more speculative than evidence-based, but points in a direction that would be interesting to investigate.
"A political figure with [Narcissistic Personality Disorder] would describe a piece of legislation or a successful attack as 'beautiful' because it serves to aggrandize their own achievements and project an image of superiority, aligning with their grandiose sense of self-importance. This language also actualizes their fantasies of unlimited success, power, and brilliance, where their actions are perceived as flawless and supremely effective. Such declarations are a direct means to solicit excessive admiration and attention from the public and supporters, providing essential narcissistic supply. Furthermore, it is a calculated tactic within their impression management strategy to control public perception, disarm critics, and create an illusion of perfection and success around their policies and actions. This use of 'beautiful' is instrumental, focusing on the outcome's benefit to their status rather than genuine aesthetic appreciation or concern for others, reflecting their lack of empathy."
David Marjanović said,
May 31, 2025 @ 12:06 pm
You do need to imagine it in proper RP: [ˈse̞lɑˑdɔ̝ː].
…so the strict separation of BrE cellar vs. AmE basement is more recent than that?
No. You asked Artificial Idiocy to compose a text that looks like a synthesis of research. Whether it actually is is a gamble.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 31, 2025 @ 12:49 pm
The entire underlying Washington Post article is paywalled, but did Monica Hesse really get through an entire discussion of Pres. Trump's affinity for the word "beautiful" without mentioning the "big beautiful wall" he talked up in his 2016 campaign which seems an obvious forerunner of the current "big beautiful bill." And both "wall" and "bill" are monosyllables ending with the supposedly-euphonious /l/.
Philip Anderson said,
May 31, 2025 @ 2:36 pm
When considering the euphony of “cellar door”, neither the meaning nor the spelling should come into consideration. For instance, the Archipelago in Earthsea includes the island of Selidor, which is almost the same name but without any associations with English words.
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2025 @ 4:56 am
Well, "almost the same" is stretching a point, is it not ? Different second vowel (/ɪ/ v. /ə/) and no following /r/ which I suspect would be significant to most rhotic speakers. I also suspect that the stress pattern would be different (/ˈsel ɪ dɔː(r)/ v. /ˌsel ə(r) ˈdɔː(r)/).
Stephen Goranson said,
June 1, 2025 @ 5:28 am
Rapping, tapping, remembering Poe poem, not chamber door but cellar door?
David Marjanović said,
June 1, 2025 @ 7:11 am
Not for people with the rabbit-abbot merger, which seems to be general in America.
God Bless Amer[ɨ]ca, Except Balt[ə]more
Doug said,
June 2, 2025 @ 8:56 am
Two things always strike me when "cellar door" comes up:
1. People tend to say that Tolkien said it was "the most beautiful", even though (as Josh R. noted) he merely said it was "beautiful."
2. Since "cellar door has final r's in it, the claim that "cellar door" sounds beautiful is really (at least) two different claims, depending on whether you're thinking of a rhotic or non-rhotic variety of English.