What is the word to describe words that are representation of sound? like "boink", "ahem"... etc.
Thanks!
It was told to me three years ago, but long words have a nasty habit to elude me.
Since I feel in a speculative mood today, I wonder if there is a term for the very possibility of articulating an unarticulated sensory impression in the same "channel", so to speak (words for sounds both address the auditory channel, but I am hard pressed to find a visual analog of onomatopoeia - not to speak of the olfactory pathway..)
> visual
you mean something (other than words - an actual, physical object) that looks like what it sounds like? or sounds like what it looks like?
Iconic? for signs that look like what they signify.
M-W has iconicity - correspondence between form and meaning <the iconicity of the Roman numeral III>
> looks like what it sounds like? or sounds like what it looks like?
Like the letter 'o', right? That sounds round, looks round and you make your mouth round to get it. I find this topic (letters > articulation > sound) fascinating but have read little associated with it as yet. I'm guessing most would agree that the shape of letters in phonetic alphebets are not entirely abstract though.
..now I've stumbled on the following...lots of reading:-)
THE ARTICULATORY BASIS OF THE ALPHABET
Pretty neat, by. It says it's from Becoming Loquens: what is loquens, please?
Loquens is the present participle of the Latin verb loquor -- speak/talk
So loquens = speaking/talking
iconicity fits the bill quite well, thank you, since I was looking for the correspondence of a visual message with a visual impression.
In case you're interested "Loquens" also yielded this definition in my mythology dictionary:
Aius Locutius
[Roman] When in 387 BCE the Gauls moved towards Rome, a certain Caedicius heard for several days a mysterious voice from the shrubbery on the Forum Romanum. The voice warned against the Gallic attack and advised to fortify the walls of Rome. Caedicius went to the Roman authorities but they did not believe his story. The attackers found Rome virtually undefended and entered without much resistance. When the enemy was finally driven out, a temple was built on this place in honor of this warning diety, who was named Aius Locutius or Loquens.
Since I feel in a speculative mood today, I wonder if there is a term for the very possibility of articulating an unarticulated sensory impression in the same "channel", so to speak (words for sounds both address the auditory channel, but I am hard pressed to find a visual analog of onomatopoeia - not to speak of the olfactory pathway..)
This word is not completely irrelevant to your question :
synaesthesia
noun
A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.
A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.
The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.
And, come to think of it, this was an idea Arthur Rimbaud addressed in his work [1] for which he coined a term... something like "discorrelation" ; damn this infernal lethologica!
[1] "The poet makes himself into a seer by a long, tremendous and reasoned derangement of all the senses." —Arthur Rimbaud
loquens = speaking/talking Ah. Thank you. And thanks for the Aius story, Logwood.
...and have you noticed how most of us tend to be more than a bit loquatious, too...
Would you extend the meaning of the word loquatious to our exchanges via keyboard? Isn't it closely linked with oral communication?
...and loquat is completely unrelated, coming from a Chinese (Canton) term for an Asiatic tree.