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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

ideophone.

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.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɪ.di.(j)ə(ʊ)ˌfəʊn/Received-Pronunciation
  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.

Where this word 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.

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ideophone has 9 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

ideophone studioideophone workshello, ideophone

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.