Mellodephoneum ✪

Not in Grove. Not in Harvard’s dictionary. Not even in the footnotes of a forgotten doctoral thesis on Aeolian attachments to harmoniums.

And smile, because now it exists. Do you have a word that sounds like an instrument but isn’t? Let me hear it in the comments. mellodephoneum

In my mind, it’s a hybrid: part reed organ, part glass harmonica. A row of brass resonators sits above a wooden keyboard. But instead of hammers, silk-wound mallets brush against tuned silver rods. The sound? Somewhere between a cello played in a cathedral and a music box underwater. Not in Grove