sound symbolism

noun Linguistics.

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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anchorite
a granular metamorphic rock.
a person who has retired to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion.
a hobble or fetter for a horse or other animal.
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Origin of sound symbolism

First recorded in 1875–80

Words nearby sound symbolism

sound recordist, sound shift, sound spectrogram, sound spectrograph, sound stage, sound symbolism, sound system, sound truck, sound wave, sound-and-light, sound-and-light show
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2020