Cacophony means
harshness or discordancy of sound. It's
the opposite of euphony. Usually the result of awkward alliteration
as in tongue-twisters, it is sometimes used by poets for deliberate effect, as
in these lines from Robert Browning's 'Caliban upon Setebos':
And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top.
