The Two Most Beautiful Words in the English Language Are "Check Enclosed"
Not Parker — a newspaper joke already in print by 1903Unknown — popularly credited to Dorothy ParkerAnonymous newspaper joke · in print by December 1903 · attached to Parker by 1958
Parker did say something close, and it is sharper than the version people repeat. Asked in December 1932 to react to a publisher’s list of the ten most beautiful words in English, she answered that the most beautiful word was cellar-door — but that the ones she liked to see best were ‘cheque’ and ‘enclosed’. That is a freelance writer’s joke about being paid, not a claim about beauty. The neat two-word version was already an old newspaper gag when she made it, and by 1958 it was circulating under her name.
“The Two Most Beautiful Words in the English Language Are "Check Enclosed"” Not Dorothy Parker. An anonymous newspaper joke, in print by December 1903; Parker’s real 1932 remark was that the words she liked to see were "cheque" and "enclosed." · Verbatim: “Enclosed please find check.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Dorothy Parker. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the themes of work and creativity. Theme: "The Two Most Beautiful Words in the English Language Are "Check Enclosed"". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The Two Most Beautiful Words in the English Language Are "Check Enclosed"". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Earliest documented
The American Hatter, December 1903
What Parker actually said
Associated Press report, 12 December 1932
Earliest example under her name
Reader’s Digest Treasury of Wit and Humor, 1958
Investigated by
Quote Investigator, 28 February 2013
A good story is being told of a prominent credit man for a New York hat house which runs thus: A Philadelphia magazine having offered a prize for the best answer to the question “Which are the four sweetest words in the English language?” our friend the credit man secured the prize by sending in a slip on which he wrote these words: “Enclosed please find check.”
The American Hatter, December 1903
The 1903 original is four words and ‘sweetest’, not two words and ‘most beautiful’. Quote Investigator tracks the count falling to three by 1906 and the phrase drifting toward the modern form over the following decades.
Quote Investigator traced the quip to The American Hatter of December 1903, where it runs as ‘the four sweetest words in the English language’ — ‘Enclosed please find check’ — nearly three decades before Parker was asked the question: quoteinvestigator.com ↗.
Parker’s actual 1932 answer appears in Wikiquote’s sourced list as ‘The ones I like … are “cheque” and “enclosed.”’, quoted from the New York Herald Tribune of 12 December 1932: en.wikiquote.org ↗. Quote Investigator cites the same day’s Associated Press story as it ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The list she was reacting to was Wilfred J. Funk’s ten most beautiful words, published in 1932 to publicise his firm’s dictionary: en.wikipedia.org ↗.
By 1958 the two-word version was circulating under Parker’s name. The earliest example Quote Investigator locates is in the Reader’s Digest Treasury of Wit and Humor, which QI reports verifying with scans — and that entry itself credits ‘Bernardine Kielty in Book-of-the-Month Club News’, so it was already in print elsewhere by then: quoteinvestigator.com ↗.
The wording on this page has no single documented source, so no rights status is asserted for it. Its earliest documented ancestor — the version printed in The American Hatter in December 1903 — is long in the public domain in the United States. The 1958 Reader’s Digest collection that first carried the two-word form under Parker’s name is not, and the status of the 1932 newspaper report of what she actually said has not been established here.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Often misattributed
This is less a fabrication than a promotion: a stock newspaper gag that eventually found a famous wit to live with.
~
The popular two-word versionDorothy Parker paraphrase
Not what she said. She named cellar-door the most beautiful word, and said the ones she liked to see were ‘cheque’ and ‘enclosed’ — a joke about getting paid, not about beauty: Quote Investigator ↗.
~
The joke itselfAnonymous newspaper humorists ancestor, not author
In print as four words in 1903 and as three by 1906, years before Parker was asked the question: Quote Investigator ↗.
~
The 1914 verse ‘Three Words’Douglas Malloch genuine, not the origin
The American Lumberman poem ending on ‘Enclosed find check’ really is Malloch’s, though Quote Investigator notes reprints that misspelled him ‘Douglass Malluch’. It is a later working of the gag, not its source: Quote Investigator ↗.
✓An anonymous newspaper joke from 1903 that was circulating under Parker’s name by 1958. What she actually said in 1932 was hers, and funnier: Wikiquote ↗.
Context
Why it mattered
In 1932 Wilfred J. Funk, president of Funk & Wagnalls, published a list of the ten most beautiful words in English — dawn, hush, lullaby, murmuring, tranquil, mist, luminous, chimes, golden, melody — and the press went looking for people to disagree with him. Parker was one of them.
Her answer worked because it refused the premise. Everyone else was nominating pretty sounds; she pointed out that a working writer judges words by what they do. That is the joke people still repeat, even though the words they put in her mouth are not the ones she used.
The ones I like … are “cheque” and “enclosed.”
Read the full story
The gag is older than it looks. A December 1903 item in The American Hatter awards a magazine prize to a credit man who answered ‘Which are the four sweetest words in the English language?’ with ‘Enclosed please find check.’ The Washington Post reprinted it the same month.
It shortened as it travelled — three words in the Boston Globe in March 1906, a Chicago Tribune verse titled ‘The Three Sweetest Words’ in 1910, and Douglas Malloch’s longer poem in American Lumberman in 1914.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1893–1967 · American poet, critic and screenwriter
Dorothy Parker was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, and a working freelance who spent her life waiting on cheques — which is exactly why this particular joke sticks to her. She is one of the great magnets of English misquotation: a line that is short, mordant and about money will find its way to her name whether or not she wrote it. In this case she has a real claim on the sentiment and none at all on the wording.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
“Which are the four sweetest words in the English language?” The American Hatter, December 1903, p. 54. Parker’s actual remark: Associated Press, 12 December 1932, as printed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, p. 1, and quoted in the New York Herald Tribune the same day.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The Two Most Beautiful Words in the English Language Are Check Enclosed’?” Last verified 5 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-two-most-beautiful-words-in-the-english-language-are/