Onomatopoeias

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A figure of speech where words imitate natural sounds, such as rustling leaves or buzzing bees
2. auditory symbols used creatively to evoke sensory experiences
3. linguistic expressions that capture the essence of sounds in verbal form

Etymology: Ancient Greek writers had a name for the trick of making a word sound like what it names. "Onomatopoiia" was built from "onoma" ("name") and "poiein" ("to make"), so it literally meant "name-making," the coining of a word in imitation of a sound. The Greeks used the term for this device, and the Romans borrowed it as "onomatopoeia," which English later took directly from Latin. The plural "onomatopoeias" is simply the ordinary English plural of that noun, added to a word that English reached through Latin from Greek. Most of the English words that imitate sounds, such as "buzz" or "hiss," are older than the term that names them, so the label arrived long after the sounds were already in the language.

Synonyms: sound words