phonaesthesia

English

Alternative forms

• phonesthesia

Etymology

Apparently coined by British linguist John Rupert Firth.

Noun

phonaesthesia (uncountable)

1. (linguistics) Any correspondence between the sound of a word and its meaning; examples include onomatopoeia and the use of phonaesthemes.
   • 1984, Laurence Picken, Musica Asiatica, Volume 4, page 214,

     For this latter term, phonaesthesia is doubtless at work, since kring is also ‘the sound of a small bell’.

   • 2010, Katie Wales, Northern English in Writing, Raymond Hickey (editor), Varieties of English in Writing: The written word as linguistic evidence, page 74,

     In contrast, writers of bucolic dialogues, like George Meriton, for instance, and lively song-writers like Robert Anderson in Cumberland, seem drawn to expressive lexis, marked by sound patterns of reduplication, alliteration and phonaesthesia.

   • 2011, Prue Goodwin, The Literate Classroom, page 41,

     Phonaesthesia refers to the vaguer phenomenon whereby families of words with shared phonemes sometimes evoke related meanings in a not-quite-echoic manner.

   • 2011, Jean Boase-Beier, A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies, page 11,

     Those in (1.15) illustrate a weaker type of iconicity, generally known as phonaesthesia: the consonant cluster ‘fl’ seems to suggest quick movement, but it is not a direct representation of movement, or speed.

Synonyms

• sound symbolism
• synaesthesia

Derived terms

• phonaesthetic
• phonaesthetics

Related terms

• ideophone
• phonaestheme