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ideophone

noun /ˈɪ.di.(j)ə(ʊ)ˌfəʊn/

  1. A word that uses sound symbolism to express aspects of events that can be experienced by the senses, like smell, color, shape, sound, action, or movement.

    In insults the ideophone occurs either in its characteristic position, the verb phrase, or uncharacteristically as a modifier in a noun phrase.

    1969 October, William J. Samarin, The Art of Gbeya Insults, in International Journal of American Linguistics 35(4), page 325, JSTOR

Where it comes from

From ideo- + -phone. James F. Fordyce (The Ideophone as a Phonosemantic Class: The Case of Yoruba, in Current approaches to African linguistics, Ivan R. Dihoff (ed.), page 263) credits C. M. Doke with introducing the term in 1935.

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry ideophone (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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