It is widely known that words invented to imitate the sound that they describe are known as onomatopoeia, a Greek term literally meaning ‘the making of names’. As can be seen by the ten examples listed here, however, onomatopoeic words are not just limited to such simple words as boom, pop, pow and whizz, but can instead be used as the names of animals (BOOBOOK), as the name of musical terms (RATAMACUE, FANFARE) and as words in their own right (BOMBINATE, ULULATE). It has even been suggested that some innocuous words like rake, owl, roar, laugh, rook and even pebble – perhaps echoing the sound of a stone being dropped in water – could all have originally been intended to be imitative when they were first used in the Old English period.
Dating from the nineteenth century, the verb bombinate means ‘make a buzzing sound’. It is derived from the equivalent Latin verb bombitare, which is itself a derivative of the Latin word for a humming or buzzing sound, bombus. This earliest Latin form is presumably intended to resemble the low droning sound to which it refers, and is thought to be the source of a whole host of similar English words including boom, bomb and bombard.
The boobook or buckbuck is a medium-sized owl native to central Australia, whose name is supposedly meant to be imitative of its somewhat unusual call. The bird is one of a vast number whose (often highly unusual) English names are said to emulate their calls, with other examples including the wompoo, an Australasian fruit dove; the chiff-chaff, a small migratory warbler found throughout Britain in summer; the huia, a now extinct bird of New Zealand with a long down-turned bill; the kiewiet, a South African lapwing; the chowchilla, a small thrush-like bird found in the tropical forests of Queensland; the querquedule, another name for the teal or pin-tail duck; the dickcissel, a North American meadow lark; and, perhaps most famously of all, the cuckoo.
The extraordinary word brekekekex was first recorded in English in the early 1600s. It was borrowed directly from The Frogs, a play by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes first performed in 405 BC, in which the Greek god Dionysus travels into Hades to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. Whilst crossing a lake in the Underworld, Dionysus engages in a lengthy debate with a chorus of frogs, who repeatedly call out brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax! Ultimately the word has been adopted into English as imitative of the croaking of frogs.
Derived from Scots English and first recorded in the early 1700s, the word clishmaclaver means ‘idle, empty talk’ or ‘prattle’, or else can be used as a verb meaning simply to ‘chat’ or ‘gossip’. It is believed to be formed from two earlier Scots verbs, clish-clash and claver, both of which also mean to ‘talk’ or ‘chatter’, with all three terms supposedly intended to imitate the sound of a casual, gossipy conversation.
A short, rousing or flourishing tune, typically played by bugles or horns, the word fanfare was first recorded in English as famphar in the early 1600s. Adopted into the language from French, the word is presumed to be of imitative origin, with the earlier equivalent French verb fanfarer perhaps intended to sound like the playing of a fanfare itself. At its very earliest, the word could be descended from the earlier Spanish word fanfarrón, meaning ‘braggart’ or ‘swaggerer’ (from which the obscure English words fanfaron and fanfaronade, meaning ‘boastful, precocious blather’, are both derived), which is itself perhaps intended to emulate to sound of bragging, blustering chatter.
Imitating the repetitive, marching musical beat typically performed on a deep brass instrument, the word oompah dates from the late nineteenth century in English. More recently, it has come to be applied to the brash, bouncy style of music that characteristically uses this kind of jaunty bass rhythm, whilst oompah has even been used as a verb (meaning to ‘perform an oompah’) since the 1910s. The derived term oom-pah-pah dates from the 1930s and is intended to imitate a three-beat rhythm pattern, like that of a waltz.
Pachinko is the name of a Japanese mechanical game similar to pinball, in which a small ball or series of balls is dropped through a vertical field of pins or pegs and into any one of a number of holes or slots below, with players aiming to capture as many of the balls as possible. Played primarily as a gambling game similar to a Western slot machine, pachinko is a hugely popular pastime in Japan with so-called ‘pachinko parlours’ often housing hundreds of individual devices. Its name, which dates from the 1920s or 1930s in Japan but has not been recorded any earlier than the 1950s in English, is said to be imitative of the sound of metal balls being struck and ricocheting away.
Originating in Irish English, the unusual word planxty refers to a lively piece of music – or else a dance performed to such a tune – typically with a triplet beat and a quick tempo, and often played on a fiddle or a harp. Dating from the early 1700s, the precise origin of the word is unclear but it has been suggested that it is simply intended to imitate of the sound of the plucked strings of a harp. If this is not the case, however, planxty could instead be descended from the Latin verb plangere, meaning ‘to strike’ or ‘to beat’, or else it is perhaps a corruption of the Irish phrase phlean an tí, meaning ‘from the house of’, implying that such tunes were originally written and performed in domestic surroundings.
In music, the ratamacue is one of the most basic patterns or so-called ‘rudiments’ of drumming. Its name is supposedly imitative of the sound that the pattern itself produces, namely a triplet rhythm (the ra-ta-ma) followed by an accented fourth beat (the cue). Indeed, the ratamacue is just one of a number of similar standard rhythmic patterns used in drumming that have been given equally descriptive names, with others including the flam (a single drumbeat, in fact formed from two distinct beats played in quick succession); the flamacue (a set of four beats wherein the first and last are flams, and the second beat is accented); the pataflafla (a pattern of four repeated beats, the first and last of which are flams); and the paradiddle (four even beats, all but the second of which are played with the same hand). With the exception of flam, which dates from as far back as the eighteenth century, the majority of these terms are relatively recent additions to the language, with ratamacue itself dating from the early 1900s.
The verb ululate means simply ‘howl’ or ‘wail’, and dates in English from the early seventeenth century (although a related adjective, ululative, is recorded as far back as the 1400s). It is derived from an earlier Latin word of identical meaning, ululare, which was likely coined in imitation of the sound of a plaintive or lamenting cry and is thought to be related to the Latin name for the tawny owl, ulula, which is known for its screeching call.