syllable

He’d make up fake s—, just syllables and vowels, like songwriters do.

Each syllable burns like an ember, every word tinged with new possibilities.

It’s hard to think of another actor who could do more with syllables than Maggie Smith.

“Raiiiiii-nieeeeeer,” they sang, each syllable sounding off as the bike reached a higher gear.

They spoke on a recent day in their Berlin studio as they giggled and tripped over their own stanzas — which exploit a feature of German grammar that crams nouns together into strings of syllables.