Onomatopoeia

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The sound of hitting a ball can be described as "Whack".

In rhetoric, linguistics and poetry, onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that employs a word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates, echoes, or suggests the object it is describing, such as "bang", "click", "fizz", "hush" or "buzz", or animal noises such as "moo", "quack" or "meow". They are also a very common feature of comic strip writing, where words such as "Pow", or "Ka-BOOM" help the reader to better imagine what is being described, and make up for the lack of literary description.

Onomatopoetic words exist in every language, although they are different in each. For example:-

  • In Latin, tuxtax was the equivalent of "bam" or "whack" and was meant to imitate the sound of blows landing.
  • In Ancient Greek, koax was used as the sound of a frog croaking.
  • In Japanese, dokidoki is used to indicate the beating of a heart.


Sometimes onomatopoetic words have a very tenuous relationship with the object they describe, such as bow-wow in English and wang-wang in Chinese for the sound a dog makes.
Some animals are named after the sounds they make, especially birds such as the cuckoo and chickadee. This practice is especially common in certain languages such as Māori and therefore in names for birds borrowed from these languages.

Examples and uses of onomatopoeia

Everyday sounds

Some other very common English-language examples include:

  • beep
  • boing
  • boom
  • clap
  • crackle
  • hiccup
  • ping pong
  • plop
  • poof
  • thud
  • tick-tock
  • swoosh
  • zap

Machine sounds

Aside from the above, machines are usually described with:

  • automobile - "honk" for the horn, "vroom" for the engine, "screech" for the tires
  • train - "clickety-clack" crossing a junction, "choo-choo" for the whistle.
  • cash register - "kaching"

Animal sounds

For animal sounds, these words are typically used in English:

Some of these words are used as nouns and verbs when describing the noise.

See also http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html for information on animal sounds throughout the world.

Note: "beep beep" for the Roadrunner was transferred from the television cartoon and is not the call that the natural bird makes.

Examples in literature

Examples in literature often strive to be more suggestive than imitative:

  • "Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark innyard". Alfred Noyes The Highwayman
  • "My days have crackled and gone up in smoke..." Francis Thompson The Hound of Heaven
  • "And ere three shrill notes the pipe he uttered, / You heard as if a army muttered; / The muttering grew to a grumbling; / And the grumbling grew to mighty rumbling; / And out of the house the rats came tumbling." Robert Browning The Pied Piper Of Hamelin
  • "The moan of doves in immemorial elms, / And murmuring of innumerable bees. Alfred Lord Tennyson

Onomatopoeia in music

Onomatopoeia-based music uses the mouth and vocal cords (that is, voice) as the primary musical instrument. A common musical tool in European and American cultures is a method of voice music, technically called a solfege. A solfege is a vocalized musical scale that is commonly known as Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti. A solfege may be sung, spoken or used in a combination. A variety of similar tools are used in voice improvisation found in scat singing of jazz, Delta blues and also rock and roll and the ska variation of reggae music (especially in the form of ska called Two Tone). Asian music, especially carnatic music employs onomatopoeia to a large extent.

It should be noted that historically, some forms of onomatopoeia served as a mnemonic and a mimetic tool for musicians around the world, for example kuchi shōga, a Japanese system for pronouncing drum sounds. See Voice instrumental music.

According to Dick Higgins, "Three basic types of sound poetry from the relative past come to mind immediately: folk varieties, onomatopoetic or mimetic types, and nonsense poetries. The folk roots of sound poetry may be seen in the lyrics of certain folk songs, such as the Horse Songs of the Navajos or in the Mongolian materials collected by the Sven Hedin expedition." (Primary reference: Henning Haslund-Christiansen, "The Music of the Mongols: Eastern Mongolia" 1943:New York, Da Capo Press:1971; secondary reference: "A Taxonomy of Sound Poetry" by Dick Higgins, From "Precisely: Ten Eleven Twelve", 1981).

Non-auditory onomatopoeia

It is sometimes the case that an item of onomatopoeia describes a phenomenon apart from the aural. The Japanese language is especially notorious for utilizing onomatopoeia to describe soundless concepts. For instance, Japanese bara bara is an onomatopoeic form reflecting a scattered state, and is considered to be imitative without being auditory. Perhaps amusingly, shiiin in Japanese stands for the "sound" of silence. (See Japanese sound symbolism.)

While almost all examples in common English usage imitate sounds, the language is not entirely devoid of non-auditory onomatopoeia. A few such words have gaining parlance recently, including bling bling, the sound of light reflecting off diamonds, and the Simpsons-inspired yoink, the sound of someone stealing something.

Onomatopoeia in advertising

Advertising uses onomatopeoia as a mnemonic so consumers will remember their products:

  • Rice Krispies - "Snap, crackle, pop" when you pour on milk.
  • Alka-Seltzer - makes a "plop, plop, fizz, fizz" noise when dunked in water.
  • Cocoa Puffs - a wacky bird is "cuckoo" for them.
  • Road safety: "clunk click, every trip" (click the seatbelt on after clunking the car door closed; UK campaign)

Onomatopoeic names

Occasionally, words for things are created from representations of the sounds these objects make. In English, for example, there is the universal fastener which is named for the onomatopoeic of the sound it makes; the zipper. As another example, young children and their parents often refer to a locomotive as a "choo-choo"

A number of animals, especially birds, also get their names from the onomatopoeic link with the calls they make, such as the Chickadee, the Cuckoo, the Whooping Crane, and the Chiffchaff.

Onomatopoeias in pop culture

  • The images Blam (1962) & Whaam! (1963) by Roy Lichtenstein are two of the earliest examples of pop art, featuring empty fighter aircrafts being struck by rockets with dazzling red and yellow explosions.
  • In Mario games, Thwomp is the sound that the big crush block makes, and is also the name of the monster. Whomp is Thwomp's brother, and WHOMP! is the onomatopia that Whomp would make. In the original Japanese, Thwomp is called Dossun, which has a similar aural connotation.
  • The chorus of Kid Creole and the Coconuts' "Annie, I'm not Your Daddy", is a repetition of the word "Onomatopoeia ".
  • The song "Onomatopeoia" appeared on the 1978 release "The Hermit of Mink Hollow" by Todd Rundgren and contained various examples of the title.
  • In Batman, Onomatopias such as "WHACK" and "CRUNCH" appear on-screen when said-sounds are made during fight scenes.

See also

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