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Came across this word today in volume one of Janet Frame's autobiography. Here's the context:
" … and the mournful bagpipe melodies that spiraled and shirrgled and moaned up into the sky … "
What a wonderfully descriptive word!
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Was that made up just for describing a bagpipe sound here?
It made me think of the being dongled awake thread.
Really, this is kind of related to Emanuela's post under
languageless thought, about language being limited. Sounds are an excellent example of this! One exception to this limit that I know of was in Jean Auel's book--The Valley of the Horses, I think. The young cave-dwelling girl finds and raises a foal, and names it Whinny. But she doesn't
speak the name: she imitates the sound the horse makes.
This is an interesting series of books, not only for the
extreme detail of prehistoric life, but because the main character spoke until she was about 5 years old, then her
parents were killed and she was raised by a clan that used
sign language, with virtually no spoken words. There were rigid rules of politeness about not looking at others so as not to invade their privacy--no need to worry about eavesdropping. She had to re-learn communication entirely.
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Joined: Nov 2000
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old hand
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old hand
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Aren't you hunting for the term, "onomatopoeia?" "Shirrgled" is surely an onomatopoeic term. English, as well as all other languages, is replete with such words. One that comes to mind is "cricket." In French, it's "cricri." A literary one is in Poe's poem, "The Bells," i.e. "...The tintinabulation of the bells bells bells bells..." Of course, Auel used the device in having Ayla, her heroine use onomatopoeia in naming her horse.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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English, as well as all other languages, is replete with such words. One that comes to mind is "cricket." In French, it's "cricri."
I'm a bit slow this morning, and my British Empire background is showing. I struggled for a few seconds to reconcile the sound of willow on leather with the word 'cricket', and struggled even more with why the sound would be so different in France (where the game not played at all as far as I know!), before I realized you were referring to insects!
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Marty struggled for a few seconds to reconcile the sound of willow on leather with the word 'cricket'
Oddly enough, I seem to remember something somewhere suggesting that the name of the game was, indeed, onomatopoeic.
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