onomatopoeia

noun [ˌɑnəmætəˈpiə]

pronunciation

Editorial team; lemma onomatopoeia absent from CMUdict (pipeline/ipa-en.mjs: onomatopoeia BRAK); IPA derived from CMU variant onomatopeia AA2 N AH0 M AE0 T AH0 P IY1 AH0 via pipeline/ipa-en.mjs; stress also checked against Webster On`o*mat`o*poe"ia; confirm with a phonetician; no frequency figure, open source

Onomatopoeia names a word or figure whose sound imitates the thing named; alliteration foils the head sound, assonance foils the mid vowel, anaphora and epiphora foil the lexeme.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Definitions

ling. / rhet. / lit. Rhetorical and lexical figure: choosing or coining words whose sound recalls the sound of the thing. Axis sits at that sound echo. Alliteration joins the head sound. Assonance joins the mid vowel. Anaphora and epiphora fasten a lexeme. Letter likeness without sound echo is not this axis.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
hist. lex. Arct 1921 opens Onomatopeja: imitative harmony; choosing or coining words whose sound recalls natural noises (huk, grzmot). Brückner 1927 skips onomato*. Webster 1913 keeps ONOMATOPOEIA, ONOMATOPE, ONOMATOPOEIC, ONOMATOPOETIC. Skeat 1910 leads ONOMATOPOEIA from Greek (ὄνομα + ποιεῖν).

source
Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Onomatopeja); A. Brückner 1927 (no onomato*); Webster 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA; ONOMATOPE; ONOMATOPOEIC; ONOMATOPOETIC); W. W. Skeat 1910 (ONOMATOPOEIA), open source
didact. / rhet. In class, onomatopoeia keeps sound imitation beside alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epiphora, metaphor, onomastics, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, hyperbole, and simile. Borders among sound-of-thing echo, head-sound echo, vowel echo, and lexeme echo need review.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
colloq. Loose talk may dump every noisy word under this tag. This card keeps one axis: purposeful mapping of a thing's noise onto the word's sound. Foils: alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epiphora. Apart from accidental letter coincidence.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Examples

Webster's buzz, hiss, and crackle yield onomatopoeia; shared head sound in wild winds whip white waves is already alliteration, not this card.

source
Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA: buzz, hiss, crackle), open source
Morning drill ran on sound-of-thing echo; alliteration returned on the initial-sound side, assonance on the shared-vowel side, anaphora on the opening-lexeme side.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Source shelf: Arct Onomatopeja (1921), Webster ONOMATOPOEIA (1913) beside ONOMATOPE, ONOMATOPOEIC, ONOMATOPOETIC, Skeat 1910 (ONOMATOPOEIA, Gk.), Brückner with no onomato* lemma.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
A worksheet that stamped every noisy word as onomatopoeia erased the split between a deliberate sound echo and accidental letter coincidence.

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
Board labels: onomatopoeia | alliteration | assonance | anaphora | epiphora | clash without a figure, keeping sound-of-thing echo apart from head sound, mid vowel, lexeme, and loose coincidence.

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Usage

Casual notes may brand any noisy word as onomatopoeia with no named axis. Seminar peels the stack: deliberate word sound that echoes the thing named; alliteration as head-sound foil; assonance as mid-vowel foil; anaphora and epiphora as lexeme foils; plus lexicon notes. Arct keeps Onomatopeja on imitative harmony and examples huk, grzmot. Webster keeps ONOMATOPOEIA on coinages that imitate sounds and on the speech figure (buzz, hiss, crackle). Skeat traces Greek ὄνομα + ποιεῖν. Brückner skips onomato*. Without those layers only a hollow slogan about a noisy word remains.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Open-book record. In Arct (1921) Onomatopeja marks imitative harmony and the choosing or coining of words that echo sounds of nature (huk, grzmot). Webster 1913: ONOMATOPOEIA, stress On`o*mat`o*poe"ia; Philology: formation of words in imitation of sounds; speech figure with word sound copying the thing (buzz of bees, hiss of a goose, crackle of fire); ONOMATOPE (imitative word), ONOMATOPOEIC, ONOMATOPOETIC apart. Skeat 1910: ONOMATOPOEIA from Gk. ὀνοματοποιία (ὄνομα name + ποιεῖν to make); Der. onomatopoetic. Brückner 1927 leaves the Polish lemma blank. Derivation under etymology.

source

Editorial team; facts: M. Arct 1921 (Onomatopeja); Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA; ONOMATOPE; ONOMATOPOEIC; ONOMATOPOETIC); W. W. Skeat 1910 (ONOMATOPOEIA); A. Brückner 1927 (no lemma), open source

Scholarly English marks sound imitation for clarity and rhythm. Careful editors discard worksheets that treat every alliteration as onomatopoeia and discard glosses that never name the sound-of-thing axis. The onomatopoeia / alliteration / assonance / anaphora / epiphora border stays debated in seminars. Chronology of the label stays blank until a primary page is cited. Polish counterpart: onomatopeja (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Classrooms revisit sound-imitation talk among tropes and place onomatopoeia next to alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epiphora, antithesis, oxymoron, irony, euphemism, hyperbole, litotes, simile, metaphor, allegory, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, onomastics, rhetoric, and semantics. CMUdict lacks onomatopoeia (editorial IPA from CMU variant onomatopeia). Polish onomatopeja sits in SGJP. Live neighbours include those tropes. Without the sound-of-thing axis the label collapses.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA); CMUdict (onomatopoeia absent; onomatopeia present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (onomatopeja present), open source

Word forms

Countable noun: singular onomatopoeia / plural onomatopoeias (editorial regular plural; Webster indexes the singular under ONOMATOPOEIA). Nearby Webster forms: onomatope (n.), onomatopoeic (a.), onomatopoetic (a.). CMUdict lemma onomatopoeia absent; variant onomatopeia present.

forms in use

przypadek	forma
singular	onomatopoeia
plural	onomatopoeias (editorial regular plural)
related noun (Webster)	onomatope (Webster ONOMATOPE: imitative word)
related adjectives (Webster)	onomatopoeic; onomatopoetic (Webster ONOMATOPOEIC; ONOMATOPOETIC)
foil neighbour (Webster)	alliteration (Webster ALLITERATION); assonance (Webster ASSONANCE)

Word forms: Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA; ONOMATOPE; ONOMATOPOEIC; ONOMATOPOETIC; ALLITERATION; ASSONANCE); CMUdict (onomatopoeia absent; onomatopeia present) · source

Collocations

literary onomatopoeia

source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
onomatopoeia against alliteration

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
sound-imitating words

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
rhetorical onomatopoeia

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)
distinguish onomatopoeia from assonance

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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Synonyms · Antonyms

Synonyms onomatopeja (Polish counterpart; SGJP present; Arct Onomatopeja; check scope at review), imitative word (loose descriptive neighbour; Webster ONOMATOPE; check scope at review), sound-imitating formation (approximation; Webster ONOMATOPOEIA; Skeat ONOMATOPOEIA; check scope at review), imitative harmony (approximation; Arct Onomatopeja: harmonia naśladowcza; check scope at review)

source

Editorial team; facts: SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (onomatopeja present); M. Arct 1921 (Onomatopeja), open source

Antonyms plain narration without sound imitation (contrast: no echo of a thing's sound in the word; check scope at review), alliteration (axis contrast: shared sound at word starts, not sound-of-thing imitation; Webster ALLITERATION; not a clean antonym of the label alone), assonance (axis contrast: shared mid-word vowel, not sound-of-thing imitation; Webster ASSONANCE; check at review)

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

Etymology

English onomatopoeia rests on Webster's ONOMATOPOEIA card: formation of words in imitation of sounds; a speech figure in which word sound copies the named thing (buzz, hiss, crackle); neighbouring cards cover ONOMATOPE and the adjectives ONOMATOPOEIC / ONOMATOPOETIC. Skeat 1910 treats ONOMATOPOEIA as Greek ὀνοματοποιία (ὄνομα name + ποιεῖν to make) and lists Der. onomatopoetic. Arct 1921 indexes Onomatopeja. Brückner 1927 does not index onomato*. We avoid copying dictionary wording. Polish counterpart: onomatopeja.

source

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA; ONOMATOPE; ONOMATOPOEIC; ONOMATOPOETIC), open source

also

W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910 (ONOMATOPOEIA), open source

also

M. Arct, Słownik wyrazów obcych, 9th ed., Warsaw 1921 (Onomatopeja), open source

also

A. Brückner, Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, Kraków 1927 (no onomato* lemma), open source

Related words

alliteration , axis foil (head sound, not sound-of-thing imitation); EN pair already live
assonance , axis foil (mid-word vowel, not sound-of-thing imitation); EN pair already live
anaphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at openings, not sound-of-thing imitation); EN pair already live
epiphora , axis foil (shared lexeme at closings, not sound-of-thing imitation); EN pair already live
onomastics , domain neighbour (science of names; Arct Onomatyka beside Onomatopeja); EN pair already live
antithesis , trope neighbour (opposing members); EN pair already live
oxymoron , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
irony , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
hyperbole , foil along the scale axis (overstatement); EN pair already live
litotes , trope neighbour (understatement); EN pair already live
simile , foil along the likeness axis (open pairing with like / as); EN pair already live
metaphor , trope neighbour (transfer); EN pair already live
allegory , foil along the construct axis (image chain); EN pair already live
personification , trope neighbour; EN pair already live
euphemism , trope neighbour (etiquette softening); EN pair already live
metonymy , trope neighbour (contiguity transfer); EN pair already live
synecdoche , trope neighbour (part for whole); EN pair already live
rhetoric , domain of tropes; EN pair already live
semantics , sense and reference neighbour; EN pair already live
onomatopeja , Polish counterpart (SGJP present; Webster ONOMATOPOEIA)

Related entries

The same entry in Polish: onomatopeja

Questions and answers

What does onomatopoeia mean?

It names a figure and word type whose sound imitates the sound of the thing. Alliteration joins a row with a head sound. Assonance joins mid-word vowels. Anaphora and epiphora fasten a chain with one lexeme. Loose letter coincidence without sound echo does not replace this card.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)

How does onomatopoeia differ from alliteration and assonance?

Onomatopoeia keeps a mapping of a thing's noise onto word sound. Alliteration (Webster ALLITERATION) keeps one sound at word starts. Assonance (Webster ASSONANCE; Arct Asonancja) keeps one mid-word vowel. Sound-of-thing axis differs from head-sound axis and vowel axis; casual speech and school shortcuts blur the labels often.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA; ALLITERATION; ASSONANCE); M. Arct 1921 (Onomatopeja; Asonancja), open source

How does onomatopoeia differ from anaphora, epiphora, and onomastics?

Under onomatopoeia the word sound imitates the thing. Anaphora (Webster ANAPHORA Rhet.) places a shared lexeme at openings. Epiphora (Webster EPIPHORA Rhet.) places it at closings. Onomastics (Arct Onomatyka) is the science of names, not a sound-echo figure. Axis foil: sound-of-thing versus lexeme versus naming, not a synonym of the label alone.

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913 (ONOMATOPOEIA; ANAPHORA; EPIPHORA); M. Arct 1921 (Onomatopeja; Onomatyka), open source

Where does the word onomatopoeia come from, and what forms sit with it?

Webster 1913 ties ONOMATOPOEIA to sound-imitating word formation and the figure of speech; ONOMATOPE, ONOMATOPOEIC, ONOMATOPOETIC sit nearby. Skeat 1910: ONOMATOPOEIA (Gk. ὀνοματοποιία: ὄνομα + ποιεῖν; Der. onomatopoetic). Arct 1921: Onomatopeja. Brückner 1927: no lemma. Forms: onomatopoeia / onomatopoeias (editorial). IPA editorial from CMU variant onomatopeia: /ˌɑnəmætəˈpiə/ (CMUdict lemma absent). Polish pair: onomatopeja (SGJP present).

source

Editorial team; facts: Webster 1913; CMUdict (onomatopoeia absent; onomatopeia present); SGJP / Morfeusz 2 (onomatopeja present), open source

Is onomatopoeia just another word for any noisy word?

No. Any noisy word can be coincidence without a figure. Onomatopoeia holds deliberate sonic mimicry of the thing named. Without that axis the label collapses into alliteration talk, assonance talk, or loose letter coincidence.

source

Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)