There's a whole lot of onomatopoeia around my house these days.


Why? Because I've got a grandbaby whose interests revolve around objects and the sounds they make. He's learned to point, and pointing means he wants to know what something is. If he wants to know what it is, he wants to know what sound it makes, too. It's kind of natural memorization activity, I suppose.

Onomatopoeia refers to words that suggest the sounds they describe...
For example...

oink
meow
arf
woof
moo
ribbit
roar
clunk
chirp
thunk
baa
cockadoodledoo
whap
thump
kerplunk
whack
wallop
thwap
bap
thwack
whump
squeak

For all the words listed, you can probably picture a corresponding action within seconds. That's the power of onomatopoeia: the ability to engage more than one part of the brain at a time. 

The possibilities are almost endless ... every action has a corresponding sound. Some actions have never been put into onomatopoeia, but they could be. It's interesting to consider the fictional application of onomatopoeia in descriptive narrative. Does it throw you for a loop when you run into onomatopoeia in fiction, or does it amp up the imaginative perspective?

What's your favorite onomatopoeia word?

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