This week’s theme
Words differing by a letter

This week’s words
androgenic
ideophone
idiophone

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(ID-ee-uh-fon)

MEANING:

noun: A vivid, evocative word that depicts sensory experiences.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek ideo- (idea) + -phone (sound). Earliest documented use: 1881.

NOTES:

While onomatopoeia relates to sound (e.g., gnar), ideophones encompass a wider array of senses, including color, action, smell, and movement. Examples: shimmer and zig-zag.

USAGE:

“The very word barbarism is rife with danger. It seems to have emerged in ancient Greek as an ideophone, a word that expressed what the Greeks heard when they listened to someone speaking a language that wasn’t Greek: bar-bar-bar.”
Philip Kennicott; Trump’s Threat to Cultural Sites Is Also a Threat to Our Culture; The Washington Post; Jan 7, 2020:

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: