5 Examples of Onomatopoeia

Answer 1

Hugh Bredin (1996) points out that you can put all the onomatopoeic words into three types. The first and most obvious type for him is direct onomatopoeia, as he calls. He suggests that it "occurs whenever two criteria are satisfied: (1) the denotation of a word is a class of sounds; and (2) the sound of the word resembles a member of the class." To explain it simply, the sound of the word resembles the sound that it names. Some typical examples are hiss, moan, cluck, whirr, and buzz. However, he also suggests that none of these words is exactly like the sound that it denotes. There are higher and lower degrees of onomatopoeic resemblance, and the number of words, such as hiss, which have quite a high degree of resemblance, is relatively small. The second type, he has suggested, is associative onomatopoeia. It occurs whenever the sound of a word resembles a sound associated with whatever it is that the word denotes. Some examples of this are: cuckoo, bubble, smash, whip. None of these words has a sound that resembles the objects or actions that they denote. For instance, cuckoo is the bird's name, but its acoustic resemblance is to the song that it produces, not the bird itself. The same applies to the other examples. When searching through materials I found an interesting example of associative onomatopoeia. The word barbarian, by which some foreigners called ancient Mongolians, is an example of this type. Its root, the Greek word barbaroi, was devised as a name for non-Greeks because their strange languages sounded to Greek ears like the stuttered syllables "ba-ba." Association is just as much a matter of degree as is acoustic resemblance. There is a close association of sound and object in the case of cuckoo, but a very slight association in the case of scratch or spatter. The third and final type of onomatopoeia is, as Bredin names, exemplary onomatopoeia. Its foundation rests upon the amount and character of the physical work used by a speaker in uttering a word. Words such as nimbleand dart require less muscular and pulmonary effort than do sluggish and slothful. Also, their stopped consonants encourage a speaker to say them sharply and quickly, whereas the latter two words can be drawn out slowly and lazily. The word sound nimble does not sound like anything that can be denoted by the word, and it cannot resemble the idea connoted by it, since sounds and concepts cannot "sound alike"; concepts have no sound. Instead, the word sound instantiates or exemplifies nimbleness, since it is itself a nimble sound.
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Answer 2

# direct onomatopoeia: the sound of the word resembles the sound that it names

examples- pop, hiss, whirr, splash, rustle, zoom, bang, shriek, thud, ding-dong, gargle, crunch

# associated onomatopoeia: the name of an object resembles a sound associated with it

examples- cuckoo(and other birds), bubble, whip, scratch, splatter, cackle, cough, whisper # exemplary onomatopoeia: the amount and character of the physical work used by a speaker when verbalizing a word matches its meaning

examples- nimble, dart, slothful, sluggish, mumble

Answer 3

Onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like the way it is pronounced. Bang! Buzz. Roar. Screech. Zap.