onomatopoeia

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin onomatopoeia (“the making of words”),^[2][3][4] which the OED calls classical Latin and others Late Latin,^[2][5][4][6] from Ancient Greek ὀνοματοποιία (onomatopoiía, “the making of a name or word”),^[2][3][4][7] from ὀνοματοποιός (onomatopoiós, “coiner of names”),^[5][3][6] formed from ὄνομα (ónoma, “name, word”), genitive ὀνόματος (onómatos), and ποιέω (poiéō, “to make, compose”).^[3][4][7][8] Wiktionary takes the noun from ὀνοματοποιέω (onomatopoiéō, “to coin names”).^[1] Etymonline traces the first part to Proto-Indo-European *no-men- (“name”).^[4] The OED compares Middle French onomatopée (1585), Italian onomatopea and Spanish onomatopeya.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The formation of a word from a sound associated with the thing or action it names: 1553, in Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique.^[2][9] Barnhart's first record is 1577, in Henry Peacham the elder's Garden of Eloquence,^[3] and Etymonline dates the word to the 1570s.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Its first record is in a work on rhetoric,^[2] and Weekley notes that it was used by the English poetic theorists of the 16th century.^[10] It was later also used of a single word formed in this way, from before 1831,^[2] a sense for which the OED compares onomatope.^[2] From 1895 it named the use of echoic or suggestive language for rhetorical effect, and occasionally in music the use of imitative sounds.^[2] The adjective onomatopoeic is recorded from 1860, in Farrar's Essay on the Origin of Language, borrowed from French onomatopéique and probably also formed in English.^[3]

Timeline

• 1553 – the formation of words in imitation of sounds.^[2][9]
• before 1831 – a word formed in this way.^[2]
• 1895 – the use of echoic language for rhetorical or musical effect.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The forming of words that imitate the sound of what they name, as in buzz, hiss or cuckoo.^[9][11][2]
2. A word formed in this way; an onomatope.^[2]
3. The use of echoic words for poetic or rhetorical effect.^[11][2]

Word family

• onomatopoeic
• onomatopoeically

Related words

• onomatope
• name
• poet
• poem
• noun
• nominal

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins