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

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

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

The idea of sound symbolism went back to at least Plato’s “Cratylus,” in which he associated sounds with physical characteristics, but linguists tended to discredit it.

From New York Times • Jan. 15, 2015

The frequency code isn’t the only kind of sound symbolism.

From Slate • Sep. 21, 2014