Meaning of onomatopoietic | Babel Free

Definitions

Adjective. [C2]

Examples

“The most natural way of naming an object is by copying its characteristic mark, not that, on the onomatopoietic theory, language is due solely to the instinct of imitation, but chiefly to the activity of the intellect, which "reproduces the imitative at will as the sign of a fixed representative and so as a word, "which word "no longer calls attention to the sound, but stands for the whole conception of the object."”

“But these binomial combinations, which are often repetitions of the same character, are only onomatopoietic in the sense in which all words, sensuously descriptive at first, are applied by the mind to express its own concepts ;”

“Gossip and its original form, "klatz" (Middle High German), were as onomatopoietic interjections originally imitations of a resounding slap, such as happens with a box on the ears or the crack of a whip.”

“In mimesis, words come to be taken for the things they denote, as though they were onomatopoietic (truly mimetic).”

CEFR level