542. ENGLISH - Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia

 

The onomatopoeic Snap, Crackle, and Pop!

Definition:

The use of words (such as hiss or murmur) that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. Adjective: onomatopoeic or onomatopoetic.

Etymology:

From the Latin, "make names"

Examples and Observations:

• "Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong. The little train rumbled over the tracks."
  
  
• "Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room."
  
  
• "I'm getting married in the morning!
  Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime."
  
  
• "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is."
  
  
• "Plink, plink, fizz, fizz"
  
  
• "'Woop! Woop! That's the sound of da police,' KRS-One famously chants on the hook of 'Sound of da Police' from 1993's Return of the Boombap. The unmistakable sound he makes in place of the police siren is an example of onomatopoeia, the trope that works by exchanging the thing itself for a linguistic representation of the sound it makes."
  
  
• "Hark, hark!
  Bow-wow.
  The watch-dogs bark!
  Bow-wow.
  Hark, hark! I hear
  The strain of strutting chanticleer
  Cry, 'cock-a-diddle-dow!'"
  
  
• "Onomatopoeia every time I see ya
  My senses tell me hubba
  And I just can't disagree.
  I get a feeling in my heart that I can't describe. . . .
  
  It's sort of whack, whir, wheeze, whine
  Sputter, splat, squirt, scrape
  Clink, clank, clunk, clatter
  Crash, bang, beep, buzz
  Ring, rip, roar, retch
  Twang, toot, tinkle, thud
  Pop, plop, plunk, pow
  Snort, snuck, sniff, smack
  Screech, splash, squish, squeak
  Jingle, rattle, squeal, boing
  Honk, hoot, hack, belch."
  
  
• "Klunk! Klick! Every trip"
  
  
• "[Aredelia] found Starling in the warm laundry room, dozing against the slow rump-rump of a washing machine."
  
  
• Jemimah: It's called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
  Truly Scrumptious: That's a curious name for a motorcar.
  Jemimah: But that's the sound it makes. Listen.
  It's saying chitty chitty, chitty chitty, chitty chitty, chitty chitty, chitty chitty, bang bang! chitty chitty . . ..
  
  
• "I have a new book, 'Batman: Cacophony.' Batman faces off against a character called Onomatopoeia. His shtick is that he doesn't speak; he just mimics the noises you can print in comic books."
  
  
• "Bang! went the pistol,
  Crash! went the window
  Ouch! went the son of a gun.
  Onomatopoeia--
  I don't want to see ya
  Speaking in a foreign tongue."
  
  
• "A sound theory underlies the onomaht--that we read not only with our eyes but also with our ears. The smallest child, learning to read by reading about bees, needs no translation for buzz. Subconsciously we hear the words on a printed page.
  
  "Like every other device of the writing art, onomatopoeia can be overdone, but it is effective in creating mood or pace. If we skip through the alphabet we find plenty of words to slow the pace: balk, crawl, dawdle, meander, trudge and so on.
  
  "The writer who wants to write 'fast' has many choices. Her hero can bolt, dash, hurry or hustle."
  
  
• "He saw nothing and heard nothing but he could feel his heart pounding and then he heard the clack on stone and the leaping, dropping clicks of a small rock falling."
  
  
• "It went zip when it moved and bop when it stopped,
  And whirr when it stood still.
  I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will."
  
  
• "I like the word geezer, a descriptive sound, almost onomatopoeia, and also coot, codger, biddy, battleaxe, and most of the other words for old farts."
  
  
• Russian Negotiator: Why must every American president bound out of an automobile like as at a yacht club while in comparison our leader looks like . . . I don't even know what word is.
  
  

• Sam Seaborn: Frumpy?
  Russian Negotiator: I don't know what "frumpy" is but onomatopoetically sounds right.
  Sam Seaborn: It's hard not to like a guy who doesn't know frumpy but knows onomatopoeia.
  
  
• "Linguists almost always begin discussions about onomatopoeia with observations like the following: the snip of a pair of scissors is su-su in Chinese, cri-cri in Italian, riqui-riqui in Spanish, terre-terre in Portuguese, krits-krits in modern Greek. . . . Some linguists gleefully expose the conventional nature of these words, as if revealing a fraud."