A Word: Onomatopoeia
Saturday, February 7, 2009

Onomatopoeia - using words that imitate the sound they denote, like “miaou” or “hiss”.

Onomatopoetic was one of the first “complicated” words I remember learning as a kid (in Swedish of course, but it’s almost the same word).

I almost had onomatomania about it.

Onoma - name
Poeia – to make, to create

Onomatopoeia – to create a name. That is a good word. You make a sound imitating a cat – Miaaaoooou – and you have created a name for that sound.

I think of my two-year-old who says “wooom” every time he sees a bus.

What I find interesting with this word is that it is not a word you use in common language. You don’t write “He used an onomatopoeia as he waited for the bus”. It is simply a word to name a group of words.

It’s not a word that really adds something to a description, because that’s not where it is used. It’s a word for language nerds.

Sources:
WordWeb
Wiktionary

Painting "A Black Cat" by Jahn Henne
Used under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
Image edited by the writer