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Where It Comes From
Cacophony comes from Greek kakos ("bad") plus phone ("sound") — by way of French cacophonie. It entered English in the 1650s, and has meant the same thing ever since: a harsh, jarring mixture of sounds with no harmony between them.
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Say It Around the World
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Spanish
cacofonía
kah-koh-foh-NEE-ah
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French
cacophonie
kah-koh-foh-NEE
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German
Kakophonie
kah-koh-foh-NEE
All three are direct cognates from the same Greek roots — French cacophonie is, in fact, the exact word English borrowed the term from. German capitalizes it, Kakophonie, simply because German capitalizes all nouns.
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