Words that sound like what they mean

[Feather]

So I was thinking the other day: "Is there a word for words that sound like they are?"
Now, the thing is, I don't think it would be onomatopoeia; that is usually for sound, like BLAM or whatever. I'm thinking of nouns. The examples that come to mind for me are ruckus (in English) and lluvia (in Spanish). It stands to reason that this would differ from person to person, but I'm curious if there's a name for "nouns that sound like what they are".

[Twelfthroot]

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_symbolism will prove to be an interesting read for you; it describes a range of phenomena that pertain to the connection of semantics and sound. I don't think you're likely to find examples quite like the ones you've selected though -- as you mention, the appropriateness of the sounds of those words is subjective. (Also, lluvia, for example comes from the Latin pluvius -- if the word objectively has a tie to the sound of rain, than somehow both lluvia and pluvius would have to be rainy. Or indeed, perhaps both would be increasingly poor approximations of the truly rainy PIE *pleu, whence lluvia winds up cognate to 'fluid'. Perhaps lluvia sounds pluvial to you because it sounds vaguely like fluid, or perhaps both or intrinsically fluid?)

Which is not to say I disagree; I for one always found raindrop and freeze to be remarkably apt. In a raindrop you have the free-falling rain which ends in a percussive drop; in freeze you have the gradual slowing of a freeee motion that gradually halts in a zzze.

[Feather]

That's really neat, thanks a bunch for the input. I don't have a lot of time to read it right now, but what I had time to read I found really neat!
It's pretty much exactly what I was talking about!

[gaurwraith]

My two cents

balloon
shaggy
sting
flash
whiplash

the three last are somewhat onomatopeic I guess, and the first two, maybe the shape of the letters does it too, or the way you put your mouth

I always use the bouba and kiki example when talking about this

[Sean of the Dead]

I've always loved that "bed" looks like a bed.

[LeftwardMovement]

So I've seen arguments for sound symbolism. Booji has quite a collection of them in his book, which is yet to be published, so I can't post the file with the list of them, but suffice to say, I will post an example that was discussed in my morphology class.

The example that he gives is that the sound /sw/ denotes swinging movement (swoop, swing, swish, sweep, etc.) or that /kr/ denotes something dirty or broken (crud, crap, crumble, etc.). He then later goes on to say that these have some sort of semantic correspondence to the phonology in the grammar. This is of course, complete nonsense. No matter how many examples given to validate the symbolism, I can always think of counterexamples which show that it's not the case that the symbolism is productive (swarm, swamp, cramp, etc.).

The reason given for there being some sort of pattern, is the idea is that it was once upon a time actually productive in someone's grammar. That is, people actually added /sw-/ onto things to have it denote swinging motions. Over time, this morphological process is lost due to some speaker reparsing that into a single morpheme instead of 2, and so that gets passed down through speakers, until it ends up in the lexicon you have today. Present, but completely unproductive. It explains something about the etymology of the word, but has no relevance to the grammar of the speaker.

[Velifer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

[Iulus Cofield]

Ideophone is probably the word you're thinking of. All onomatopoeia fall into that category, but so can other things.
Japanese is well known for its frequent use of ideophones. Most infamously しいん [ʃiːn] for the idea of silence.

I suppose the important distinction is whether the word is thought of as a sound which represents an idea or the word is thought of somehow resembling the idea it represents in a non-onomatopoeic way. Which do you mean?

[Foremorrow]

I really like the word, "wisp." I think it's a perfect representation.

[Slavaa]

I think "geek" seems to fit, it just seems to connect with computers to me.

Rumble and grumble, despite their differing meanings, both seem pretty good.

I find the elements like Unununium and ununseptium are all pretty good, but I guess they were designed to be like that.

[gaurwraith]

Velifer, those look more like shark fins to me no matter what he told me

[tastelikecoke]

fox.
fin.
chip.
stone.
adequate.
delicate.
intricate.

For me, cate sounds really cute and looks like something that when you touch just immediately disintegrates.

[TheQuestionIsYes]

Well there are still those that sounds absolutely nothing like what they are. Like Diarrhea.

[StickFigure206]

There are a lot of different terms for word play, and there are a lot of different ways to play with words. What I am seeing here I believe coincides with what Iulus said, and that is ideophone. Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideophone

[Midnight]

I thought it was called an autonym? or autological word? something like that.


my submission is: insipid.

[distractedSofty]

An autological word is a word that literally describes itself, like "short" or "multisyllabic".

My word: titillating.

[ExplodingHat]

Even after reading the caption, I still see a bunch of falling nachos. Anyway, "angry".

[Velifer]

Even after reading the caption, I still see a bunch of falling nachos. Anyway, "angry".

The point is that humans are primed to see patterns. They're just triangles, yet you see coarse corn flour, fried and salted.
Sound Symbolism is bullshit. Take any sound symbolism example, and I'll find as many exceptions as you find cases.

Words that sound like what they mean? That's onomatopoeia. THWACK!

[goofy]

Examples of Japanese ideophones:
uja uja: "many small things gathered together and moving, such as a swarm of insects or a crowd of people seen from a distance"
waza waza: "doing something difficult on purpose, even though there is no need to, such as swimming across a river instead of taking the bridge"

There's a lot of wishful thinking when we think about "words that sound like what they mean".

[qvasi]

For someone to which English is not the native language, very few of the examples in this thread actually "sound" like what they mean.
The only words that are not onomatopoeia that kind of sounds like what they mean are "borderline onomatopoeia"; words that describe actions (or stuff caused by actions) that actually make a sound. Such as "sqush", "crunch", "splat" etc. But on the other hand lots of words could sound like that and not be related to the sound in any way.

Even words that are onomatopoeia such as the word for animal sounds, and other sounds, don't really resemple the original sound that much either:
Does a pig really say "oink-oink" in English speaking counties, or "nøff-nøff" (sounds like "nough" in "enough") in Norway?

If you listen carefully most non-animal sounds don't have any vowels at all (theres no "a" sound in a pistol shot) and most animal sounds consists mostly of strange vowels and sometimes hissing, gurgling, not any human consonants (the "oink" of a pig is really not voiced at all, just a gurgling intake of air). The feeling that a word sounds like what it means I think is just an illusion caused by your brain, you may have subconsciously created a convoluted connection between a part of the sound of a word, and some sound you associate with it's meaning as a way of making connections, but that doesn't mean that the connection is a real one. I think learning a second or more languages teaches you that the sounds you think are very "describing" is really just a convention in your native language. I remember when I first started learning English (my native language is Norwegian) and becoming aware that most animals doesn't say what the English words for that sound was, and neither did they say the Norwegian word for it.

[Turnpikelad]

Nevertheless Qvasi, I think it's interesting that speakers of English have remarkably similar ideas about what aspects of a word cause it to actually sound like what it means. For example, tastelikecoke and I share an aesthetic reaction to the last syllable in the word "delicate" - it puts one in mind of a thin pattern that might fall apart if disturbed at all. The fact that this impression is in fact closely related to the meaning of the word isn't remarkable... but our shared association with the same _element_ of the word is.

Could you give us examples of words the sound of which you find to give an aesthetic impression of their meaning in Norwegian? I'd like to see if as a non-speaker I agree with your trained association.

[Qaanol]

<image of school of sharks>

I support everything qvasi is saying here.

[Iulus Cofield]

Nevertheless Qvasi, I think it's interesting that speakers of English have remarkably similar ideas about what aspects of a word cause it to actually sound like what it means. For example, tastelikecoke and I share an aesthetic reaction to the last syllable in the word "delicate" - it puts one in mind of a thin pattern that might fall apart if disturbed at all. The fact that this impression is in fact closely related to the meaning of the word isn't remarkable... but our shared association with the same _element_ of the word is.

Could you give us examples of words the sound of which you find to give an aesthetic impression of their meaning in Norwegian? I'd like to see if as a non-speaker I agree with your trained association.

The problem with this is that for any segment/segment cluster/syllable that matches a (non-morphemic) pattern, there will be at least as many if not more exceptions.

Assuming you pronounce the last syllable of <delicate> as [kɪt], then do you find any of the following words to bring to mind a thin pattern that might fall apart if disturbed at all?

Kit. Kitten. Affricate. McKittrick. K.I.T.T. (the Knight Rider car). Kitsap (a county in Washington).

Incidentally, delicate does bring to mind the idea of something smaller than a breadbox, fine, and expensive for me. But I think this is from the (perceived) morphemic connection to delicacy and delectable.

[Turnpikelad]

Assuming you pronounce the last syllable of <delicate> as [kɪt], then do you find any of the following words to bring to mind a thin pattern that might fall apart if disturbed at all?

Kit. Kitten. Affricate. McKittrick. K.I.T.T. (the Knight Rider car). Kitsap (a county in Washington).

The syllable being unstressed is a big part of my aesthetic reaction to it, so yeah I get that impression a bit from "affricate" and "catastrophe" (to a lesser degree as the "t" is pronounced as the start of the next syllable.) But I'm not really arguing that certain sounds and syllables have definite inherent semantic associations (aside from any dictionary meaning.) My point is just what I said in my post, that at least in this one case two people who have a similar aesthetic reaction to the sound of a multisyllabic word mapped that reaction to the actual syllables of the word in very similar ways. Both of us have a semantic connotation with that sound in that particular context.

[Iulus Cofield]

You pronounced <catastrophe> with a [kɪt]? I have a schwa there. Is it possible you're assigning this phonaesthetic meaning to any unstressed /kVt/?

[Turnpikelad]

You pronounced <catastrophe> with a [kɪt]? I have a schwa there. Is it possible you're assigning this phonaesthetic meaning to any unstressed /kVt/?

No, now that you mention it, I realize I pronounce "delicate" with a schwa as well.

[Tanegashima_]

Kill;

Moon;

Ticket (i know it's frenchie, but I think it makes more the sound of the machine in english);

Flute;

Pen and Pencil;

Sword;

These are the ones I can come with. I'm portuguese, so I can think a little different.

[Rheum]

Phlegm.

[qvasi]

Nevertheless Qvasi, I think it's interesting that speakers of English have remarkably similar ideas about what aspects of a word cause it to actually sound like what it means.

It would be remarkable if non-English speakers got the same feeling. Or if most English speakers agreed on the meaning of a word they don't know just from the sound of it, if the agreed upon meaning were an abstract concept with no actual sound.

If a particular sound is used in a language for a thing or concept that triggers strong emotions, that sound may eventually be associated with that emotion; think the concept is called "phonetic cliché" or something. This effect may explain some of the feelings you get of a word sounding like what it means, even if the concept it describes has no sound.

In Norwegian for instance: adjectives/adverbs (and some substantives) starting with "sl" (often pronounced with a "sh" sound instead of s in many dialects) often has a slightly negative, disgusting, wet or soft/lazy, value, such as "slange" (snake), "sleip" (slippery, or figuratively: sleazy/dishonest etc), "slaps" (wet snow), "slim", (slime), "slurpe" (slurp), "slapp" (limp/soft, tired, lazy), "sløv" (not sharp, dim witted, dazed), etc, etc..
Theres a lot of neutral words starting with "sl" too, but it seems if you create a nonsense word starting with "sl" it would automatically be considered a slightly negatively charged word. In fact it's hard to come up with a short new word with typical letter combinations starting with "sl", because this process has been used to create adjectives etc. for so long.

(I noticed while translating that many of these have a common Old Norse origin in both English and Norwegian, so this "sl" association might also occur in English, but I'm not sure if it is so.)

Could you give us examples of words the sound of which you find to give an aesthetic impression of their meaning in Norwegian? I'd like to see if as a non-speaker I agree with your trained association.

I have a problem thinking of any. All words I know the meaning of, "feels like" what they mean in the sense that it triggers my memory of what it means. Words I don't know, will the first time I hear/notice them don't feel like anything or sound like it could mean something (probably based on similarity to words I do know or to an actual sound something makes) but this feeling turns out to be wrong just as often as you'd expect if the feeling were picked at random (unless the word is actually related to a word I already know and thus making it "sound like" what it actually means). Many of those "sl" words I mentioned, really feel like they sound like what they mean, but I know it's mostly because of the "sl" sound it feels like that.

Thoug "slaps" (wet snow, slurry) may actually be partly based on an onomatopoeia for the sound it makes if you step in it.

[Iulus Cofield]

I hear /sm-/ in English is similar to /sl-/ in Norwegian, in that it's phonaestheme is said to mean "gross". There's smog (bad pollution), smear (to spread a liquid carelessly), smegma (don't ask, it is indeed gross), smelly (smells bad), smoosh (to crush something small), smut (semi-obscene), smoulder (to burn slowly), and smudge (a blurred mark of something). But then there is:

smelt (to extract pure metal from an ore), smile (to show happiness), smirk (to show some amusment), smite (to be killed by a holy power), smitten (to be in love), smith (someone who works with metals, arguably a gross profession), smock (a low-quality dress), smooch (to affectionately kiss), smooth (to lack bumps), smore (a delicious snack, apparently a contraction of "some more"), smurf (a tiny blue cartoon communist), smidgen (a little bit of something), smatter (a little bit of something).

Smoke is probably the most interesting thing here. It's good if your food is smoked or if you like the smell of it, it's bad if it gets in your eyes or if you don't like the smell of it.

Yes, I did comb through a dictionary for all the /sm-/ onset words in English. My point is that our brains look for connections and patterns even when they aren't really there. Phonaesthemes will always break down under real analysis. If there was a consistent meaning to a group of segments, they would be morphemes and follow morphological rules. Phonaesthetics are the astrology of linguistics. It endures because the idea exploits the fundamental limitations of your brain.

[ertobi]

Kratzer wich means scratch in german is a nice example.

Also words like:
rund - ecking
spitz - stumpf
lang- kurz
schnell - langsam

[TheWhiteDeath]

"Blunt" is what immediately came to mind when I read the title. There are others I always think of, but they're escaping me right now-- I'll come back if they strike me again.

[Qaanol]

How about words that “sound like” something they don’t mean? As in, the sort of word that, when native speakers encounter it for the first time, they have a propensity to assume the word means something it does not?

This came up in another thread regarding the word “nonplussed”. I would say “bemused” is another. Are there others?

[VanLeeroy]

for me such a word is "blatant"