Refers to language which seems harsh, rough and unmusical - the discordancy is the combined effect of meaning and difficulty of pronunciation as well as sound (The opposite of CACOPHONY IS EUPHONY)
Discordant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables, sometimes inadvertent, but often deliberately used in poetry for effect, as in the lines from Whitman's "The Dalliance of Eagles," The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, Sidelight: Sound devices are important to poetic effects; to create sounds appropriate to the content, the poet may sometimes prefer to achieve a cacophonous effect instead of the more commonly sought-for euphony The use of words with the consonants b, k and p, for example, produce harsher sounds than the soft f and v or the liquid l, m and n (See also Dissonance) (Contrast Euphony)
You can describe a loud, unpleasant mixture of sounds as a cacophony. All around was bubbling a cacophony of voices. a loud unpleasant mixture of sounds cacophony of (kakophonia, from kakos + phone )