sound symbolism

== English == === Noun === sound symbolism (countable and uncountable, plural sound symbolisms)(linguistics, phonology) Phonetic symbolism. Synonyms: mimologics, phonosemantics The phenomenon by which some speech sounds are associated with the meanings they convey, either intrinsically or by a recurring phono-semantic association, or an instance thereof; an ideophone. (more specifically) speech sound that is neither arbitrary with respect to meaning nor an onomatopoeia that imitates a real sound the property of such a sound or sequence of sounds ==== Usage notes ==== Linguists use the concept of sound symbolism as a counterexample to the basic principle that the set of sounds constituting a given word are generally arbitrary (and by implication effectively random) with respect to meaning (as opposed to etymology). Thus, the sound itself can be a nonrandom symbol of meaning. It is often an explanation for the origin of groups of similar words and roots that share similarities which are otherwise difficult to explain by random chance. This can be specific to a language—as in English sneeze, snort, snore, sniff, snuff, snout, snot—or more general, as a linguistic quasi-universal such as the Bouba–Kiki effect. Often the distinction between onomatopoeia and (non-onomatopoeic) sound symbolism is not clear. ==== Synonyms ==== ideophone, ideophonics phonaesthesia sound symbolics ==== Hypernyms ==== iconicity ==== Hyponyms ==== expression, expressivity ideophone (any non-arbitrary sound): onomatopoeia phonestheme ==== Coordinate terms ==== expressive imitative onomatopoeia ==== Derived terms ==== sound-symbolic === See also === sound symbolism in the Wiktionary glossary