onomatopoietic

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ὀνοματοποιία (onomatopoiía, “the coining of a word in imitation of a sound”) +‎ -ic.

Adjective

onomatopoietic (comparative more onomatopoietic, superlative most onomatopoietic)

1. Alternative form of onomatopoetic
   • 1866, The Anthropological Review - Volumes 3-4, page 137:

     The most natural way of naming an object is by copying its characteristic mark, not that, on the onomatopoietic theory, language is due solely to the instinct of imitation, but chiefly to the activity of the intellect, which "reproduces the imitative at will as the sign of a fixed representative and so as a word, "which word "no longer calls attention to the sound, but stands for the whole conception of the object."

   • 1885, The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism:

     But these binomial combinations, which are often repetitions of the same character, are only onomatopoietic in the sense in which all words, sensuously descriptive at first, are applied by the mind to express its own concepts ;

   • 1993, Jörg R. Bergmann, Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip, page 62:

     Gossip and its original form, "klatz" (Middle High German), were as onomatopoietic interjections originally imitations of a resounding slap, such as happens with a box on the ears or the crack of a whip.

   • 2008, Roy Arthur Swanson, Blue Margin: Versions of Rhetoric, page 93:

     In mimesis, words come to be taken for the things they denote, as though they were onomatopoietic (truly mimetic).

Noun

onomatopoietic (plural onomatopoietics)

1. An onomatopoietic word.
   • 1866, Oliver Spencer Halsted, The Theology of the Bible, page 15:

     The Heb. ruh, sounded in two syllables, ru-ach, is an onomatopoietic.

   • 1886, Johann Georg Heck, The Iconographic Encyclopaedia of the Arts and Sciences:

     This is not the case, but there is often such a similarity in the onomatopoietics of the most remote languages that scientific linguists are unanimous in discarding them from service in ethnological comparisons.

   • 2019, Gérard Deledalle, Michel Balat, Janice Deledalle-Rhodes, Signs of Humanity:

     Yet in onomatopoietics intrinsic signifier-signified relations persist, and coins and even paper money have intrinsic value beside their role as signifiers (e.g., a bank note has a small opportunity cost as wallpaper or even in lighting a cigar!)