Eloquence

I absolutely love the word eloquence. The way it rolls off of one's tongue is very beautiful. Any word that has the "qu" sound found in the word eloquence feels expensive and important. Take for example the word quail. Quail meat and quail eggs are considered a delicacy: both expensive and highly sought out for. Another characteristic of the world eloquence comes down to its lack of hard sounding consonants. The main consonant sounds of "l", "kw", and "s" all are very soft sounding; this contrasts with other consonants like "d", "t", or a hard "g". Words that contain those aforementioned sounds sound quite ugly, and often have ugly meanings associated with them. Words such as spite and bitter and come to mind. 

Though the formal definition of eloquence relates to oral speech and written speech, by virtue of the sound of eloquence, it can be used in various contexts outside of that. Often the mannerisms in which one employs can be appropriately described with the word eloquence. For example "His walking has a certain eloquence to it." Obviously walking doesn't have anything to do with the intended use of the word eloquence, but it fits. 

Outside of a linguistic analysis behind the word eloquence, the word has some significance to me. Someone had complimented me about the eloquent way in which I explain things; hearing the word spoken for the first time made it sound very beautiful. I consider that adjective to be a second-class word. The noun complement of eloquent, eloquence, doesn't have that distasteful hard "t" sound and has replaced the word eloquent as the most beautiful word in the English language.