onomatopoeia

• the forming of a word to resemble in sound the thing it signifies, onomatopée, Charis. p. 245 P.

(ὀνοματοποιΐα) and Onomatopoeēsis (ὀνοματοποίησις), called by the Roman linguists fictio nomĭnis (Quint. viii. 6, 31). Literally, “word-making”; (1) the coining of a word to imitate some natural sound; and

(2) a word so made. Both Greek and Latin possess many imitative words, the greater part of which mimic the sounds made by animals, birds, and insects. Such are the Greek βῆ βῆ (the English “baa”), κρώζω (“to croak”), γρῦ (“a grunt”), πιπίζω (“to peep,” of birds), κοάξ (the sound made by frogs), κοι·, κοΐζω (of swine, “queek”), ὠρύω (“to roar”), τιτίζω (“to twitter”), ὑλάω (“to howl”). Other excellent imitative words are βαβάζω (“to babble”), βόμβος (“a booming”), κρόταλον (“a rattle”), χάω (“to yawn”), πτύω (“to spit”), χρέμπτομαι (“to hawk”), πτάρνυμαι (“to sneeze”), ῥοφέω (“to suck”). In Latin, though Quintilian (l. c.) regards the language as poor in onomatopoeias, the number is really very large. Good examples are baubor (“bow-wow”), bee (“baa”), bubo (“owl”), cachinno (“to cackle”), cocococo (“cluck”), crocio (“croak”), flo (“to blow”), glut-glut (“gurgle”), hinnio (“whinny”), minurrio (“to coo”), raucus (“hoarse”), stloppus (“a slap”), susurrus (“a whisper”), zinzala (“a mosquito”).

Onomatopoeia of a higher type than mere wordmaking is found in literature, where the poets, especially, often make the sound of their lines harmonize with the sense most effectively. Homer is rich in such verses. Thus, the falling of the sea has been much admired (Il. i. 34): βῆ δʼ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοισβοῖο θαλάσσης

and this of the galloping of horses (Il. x. 535): ἵππων μʼ ὠκυπόδων ἀμφὶ κτύπος οὔατα βάλλει.

The latter is imitated and surpassed by Vergil (Aen. viii. 596): Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.

The following (Georg. iv. 174) is written of the Cyclopes at the forge, and is the Anvil Chorus of antiquity: Illi inter sese magna vi bracchia tollunt.

Again, Vergil writes of the flight of a dove (Aen. v. 217): Radit iter liquidum celeres neque commovet alas;

where the dactylic movement and the recurrent liquids give the exact effect desired.

A late Latin poem, called De Philomela, collects all the words used in imitation of the sounds made by animals; and Suetonius, in his Pratum, made an even longer list, which is preserved in a fragment edited by Reifferscheid (Leipzig, 1890).

On the mimetic vocabulary of the Greeks and Romans, see Lenormant, Comment. sur le Cratyle de Platon (Athens, 1861); Nodier, Dictionnaire des Onomatopées (Paris, 1828); Wackernagel, Voces Variae Animantium (Basel, 1869); and H. T. Peck, Onomatopoetic Words in Latin (in Classical Studies in Honour of Henry Drisler) (N. Y. 1894). On the theory which makes onomatopoeia the original principle of language-making (the so-called “bowwow theory”), see Voigtman, Die Bau-wau Theorie (Leipzig, 1865); Steinthal, Der Ursprung der Sprache (Berlin, 1858); id. Philologie, Geschichte und Psychologie (Berlin, 1864); and Strong, Logeman, and Wheeler, Principles of Language (New York, 1893).