Onomatopoeia

This article is about the category of words. For other uses, see Onomatopoeia (disambiguation).

A sign in a shop window in Italy proclaims these silent clocks make "No Tic Tac", in imitation of the sound of a clock.

Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism)[1] is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as oink, meow, roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system.[2][3] Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian (in both languages "tac" is pronounced like the English "tock"), see photo, dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or ṭik-ṭik in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali.

  1. ^ "Definition of ECHOISM". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
  2. ^ Onomatopoeia as a Figure and a Linguistic Principle, Hugh Bredin, The Johns Hopkins University, Retrieved November 14, 2013
  3. ^ Definition of Onomatopoeia, Retrieved November 14, 2013