sound symbolism

An association between particular sound sequences and particular meanings in speech.

See also:

• Ten Titillating Types of Sound Effects in Language
• Echo Word
• Onomatope
• Onomatopoeia
• Onomatopoeia in "The Tunnel" by William H. Gass
• Phonestheme
• Reduplicative
• Symbolism

Examples and Observations:

• "Here's an experiment. You're in a spaceship approaching a planet. You've been told there are two races on it, one beautiful and friendly to humans, the other unfriendly, ugly and mean-spirited. You also know that one of these groups is called the Lamonians; the other is called the Grataks. Which is which?
  
  "Most people assume that the Lamonians are the nice guys. It's all a matter of sound symbolism. Words with soft sounds such as 'l,' 'm,' and 'n,' and long vowels or diphthongs, reinforced by a gentle polysyllabic rhythm, are interpreted as 'nicer' than words with hard sounds such as 'g' and 'k,' short vowels and an abrupt rhythm."
  (David Crystal, "The Ugliest Words." The Guardian, July 18, 2009)



• "In English, words beginning with fl-, such as fly, flee, flow, flimsy, flicker, and fluid, are often suggestive of lightness and quickness. Also, there are many words in English that begin with gl- and refer to brightness (such as gleam, glisten, glow, glint, glitter, and glimmer)."
  (M. Crabtree and J. Powers, "Arbitrariness in Language." Linguistics of American Sign Language, ed. by C. Valli and C. Lucas. Gallaudet Univ. Press, 2000)



• "Sound symbolism is often the result of a secondary association. The words glow, gleam, glimmer, glare, glisten, glitter, glacier, and glide suggest that in English the combination gl- conveys the idea of sheen and smoothness. Against this background, glory, glee and glib emanate brightness by their very form, glance and glimpse reinforce our conclusion (because eyesight is inseparable from light), and glib has no other choice than to denote specious luster, and, indeed, in the sixteenth century, when it became known in English, it meant 'smooth and slippery.'"
  (Anatoly Liberman, Word Origins And How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone. Oxford Univ. Press, 2005)



• "[W]hy is it that dints sound smaller than dents? There is presumably some sound symbolism going on here. Think of words like teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy, mini and wee. They all sound small! A chip sounds smaller than a chop. So do slits compared with slots, chinks compared to chunks and dints compared to dents. 'Many a mickle makes a muckle' is an old saying that has virtually disappeared. Even if you haven't a clue what a mickle is, I am sure you agree it has to be smaller than a muckle. In fact, historically mickles and muckles are the same word. Like dints and dents, they arose as alternative pronunciations, although I suspect their vowels have always been symbolic of size."
  (Kate Burridge, Gift of the Gob: Morsels of English Language History. HarperCollins Australia, 2011)



• "Given that we share many of our sound-symbolic aspects of language with other species, it is quite possible that in sound symbolism we are seeing the precursors of fully formed human language. In fact, it seems quite reasonable to say that in all advanced vocalizers (especially humans, many birds, and many cetateans) we can see a basic sound-symbolic communication system overlaid by elaborations which could be termed arbitrary in their relationship to meaning."
  (L. Hinton et al, "Introduction: Sound-Symbolic Processes." Sound Symbolism, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006)