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Definition
creating or using words that imitate the sound they denote — such as zoom- The comic book is filled with muscular heroes and onomatopoeia.
- Few words are onomatopoeic, and even those often sound very different in different languages. Where we say quack-quack, the French say cancan and the Dutch say rap-rap.
- She coined "Anoop" as the official onomatopoeia for the sound of a TiVo fast-forwarding.
- The context helped, but more than that, the word was at one with its meaning, and was almost onomatopoeic.Ian McEwan -- Atonement
- But it is probably also somewhat onomatopoeic, imitating someone who speaks in an incomprehensible tongue.Neal Stephenson -- Snow Crash
- She considered saying onomatopoeia, a word that had enabled her to win a spelling bee in the fifth grade.Amy Tan -- The Bonesetter's Daughter
- This word, which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a masterly onomatopoeia the whole of La Fontaine's admirable verse:— Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche.Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables
- But onomatopoeia was a jumble of syllables, not at all like the simple sounds it was supposed to represent.Amy Tan -- The Bonesetter's Daughter
- This prefix and its onomatopoeic daughters have been borrowed by the English, but Thornton and Ware agree that it is American.Henry L. Mencken -- The American Language
- ...(parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest or vindication: the inanity...James Joyce -- Ulysses
- Yet others seem to have been produced by onomatopoeia, /e. g./, /to fizzle/, or to have arisen by some other such spontaneous process, so far unintelligible, /e. g./, /to tote/.Henry L. Mencken -- The American Language
- ...debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary...James Joyce -- Ulysses
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