PSA: It's not 'syphilis' anymore.

Dr. Downing, beloved English professor at my alma mater, was wrong when she said "syphilis" was the most mellifluous word in the English language -- or said that it would be, if it didn't have such a distasteful meaning.

Those of you who advocate "cellar door" as the phrase winner are also mistaken.

In today's New York Times, I saw a word I can't remember ever seeing before, one that instantly captured my heart: asylee.

But since not everyone has the same taste in sounds, here's my case for asylee as most mellifluous.

It sounds cool. Say it a few times and you'll see what I mean.

But the meaning is just as important. The article it ran in is about a Sundanese refugee student in a school in Atlanta, and it describes another teacher who fled Rwanda as a refugee as "an asylee."

Think about what that would be like, and think about the relief attendant in becoming "an asylee" instead of a casualty. There's a lot of grace in this word.

And there's redemption: Consider its roots in "asylum," that schizophrenic word that means both "sanitarium" and "sanctuary." "Asylee" takes none of the horror of the mental hospital, tending instead toward the sanctuary, but it doesn't take the grandeur of the cathedral, either -- it feels like a comfortable word to me, and just big enough to hide in. (Maybe it's all the sharp vowels.)

Now spread the word.