Onomatopoeia

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".

Examples and uses of onomatopoeia

Everyday sounds

Some other very common English-language examples include:

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• beep
• boing
• boom

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• clap

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• crackle

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• hiccup

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• ping pong
• plop
• poof
• thud
• tick-tock
• swoosh
• snore
• zap

Machine sounds

Aside from the above, machines are usually described with:

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• 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:

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• bee - "buzz"
• cat - "mereow" (U.S.) / "miaow" (UK), "meow" (U.S.) / "miow" (UK), "purr", and the entire Cats Duet by Rossini
• bird - "chirp", "tweet"
• chickadee - "chickadee"
• chicken - "cluck", "cackle", "bawk,"
• crow - "caw"
• dove - "coo"
• duck - "quack"
• owl - "hoo" or "hoot"
• Rooster - "cockadoodledoo"
• cow - "moo"
• dog - "woof", "arf", "grrr" (see bark (dog))
• dolphin - "click"
• insects - "buzz"
• frog - "ribbit". Note: many species of frog make different calls.
• lion - "roar"
• horse - "neigh", "whinny", "snort"
• human - "prattle", "blab", "blah blah", "murmur", "brouhaha", ""
• mouse - "squeak"
• snake - "hiss"
• pig - "oink"
• sheep - "baa"
• wolf - "howl"

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

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

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

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Examples in literature

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

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• "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.

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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.

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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).

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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.)

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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 ', the sound of light reflecting off diamonds, and the Simpsons-inspired yoink, the sound of someone stealing something. "Zzzzzzz" is often used as a non-auditory onomatopoeia for someone who is sleeping.

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Onomatopoeia in advertising

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

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• 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"

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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.

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Rhetoric: Rhetoric (from Greek ?????, rh?t?r, "orator") is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture. In ancient and medieval times, both rhetoric and dialectic were understood to aim at being persuasive. The concept of rhetoric has shi...

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