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sound symbolism

American

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.

Etymology

Origin of sound symbolism

First recorded in 1875–80

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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

Christiansen's work pushes sound symbolism back to the forefront.

From Washington Post • Sep. 12, 2016

Human languages are rich in words that sound like what they mean and the sound-meaning associations, or sound symbolism, are surprisingly similar across languages.

From Scientific American • Oct. 20, 2015

For Shore, sound symbolism was only the beginning.

From New York Times • Jan. 15, 2015

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

From Slate • Sep. 21, 2014

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023