Do you have those moments when you’re talking to someone and you’re perhaps sharing a humorous story or a touching moment and you can almost hear them smiling?

Yeah, I don’t either. You can’t hear a smile.

Or can you?

gizzen – to grin audibly. (C. Clough Robinson’s Glossary of Words Pertaining to the Dialect of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876)

The most famous audible grin is that of the Cheshire Cat of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I think that we can probably all agree that when you see a Cheshire cat smiling, or a person smiling like a Cheshire cat, you can just barely hear a little squeaking sound – and that’s the sound of the grin.

It’s subtle…it’s easy to miss…it’s like the green flash, you either catch it when it happens or you have to wait until the next day to try again.

So the next time you see someone with a big grin on their face, stick your ear up near their teeth and you just might hear it…or at least you’ll make a new friend.