sound symbolism

American  

noun

Linguistics.

1. a nonarbitrary connection between phonetic features of linguistic items and their meanings, as in the frequent occurrence of close vowels in words denoting smallness, as petite and teeny-weeny.

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Etymology

Origin of sound symbolism

First recorded in 1875–80

Example Sentences

This suggests a "hybrid" nature of these death whistle sounds, combining a basic psychoaffective influence on listeners with more elaborate mental processes of sound symbolism, signifying the iconographic nature.

From Science Daily • Nov. 19, 2024

With profane words, though, as in other cases of sound symbolism, the sounds themselves seem to carry meaning.

From New York Times • Dec. 6, 2022

This notion that vocal sounds carry meaning in and of themselves, and that meaning can be mapped onto the ideas they're used to represent, is called "sound symbolism."

From Washington Post • Sep. 12, 2016

An exciting avenue for future research is to find out whether sound symbolism, like synesthesia, taps into one or more of these cross-connections.

From Scientific American • Oct. 20, 2015

We call this phenomenon sound symbolism, and modern linguistic research has found support for Plato’s position.

From Slate • Sep. 21, 2014