40 Fun Facts About Onomatopoeia

Which arcade hero is named after a Japanese sound word for a mouth opening and closing?

Pac-Man comes from paku paku, the Japanese sound of a mouth opening and closing. In Japan it was first Puck Man, renamed for North America over fears that vandals would alter the P.

Which Ferrero mint, first sold as Refreshing Mints, is named for the click of its pack opening?

Tic Tac replaced the original name in 1970, a year after the mints launched. The new name copied the click of the pack being opened and closed.

Which 1960s superhero TV series splashed Pow, Bam and Zonk across the screen during fistfights?

Batman superimposed the words on each episode's climactic brawl to mimic comic-book fight panels. Its narrator was the uncredited executive producer, William Dozier.

Hummingbirds are named for a humming sound that comes from which part of their bodies?

Wings beating at high frequency make the hum, which other birds can hear as well as people. Hovering in particular produces the hum, which works as an alert.

Which Kellogg's cereal has three elf mascots named after the noises it makes in a bowl of milk?

Rice Krispies collapse when milk is added, making the sounds that named Snap, Crackle and Pop. The noises are written differently in other countries and languages.

Which fastener, named for its sound, was christened by B.F. Goodrich for a new line of rubber boots?

Zipper was Goodrich's 1923 name for galoshes that closed with Gideon Sundbäck's fastener, and the word stuck to the device. In Britain it is simply a zip.

Which three-wheeled taxi, a common sight in Bangkok, is named after the sputter of its small engine?

Tuk-tuk mimics the sound of a small two-stroke engine. In Delhi, a Harley-Davidson-powered cousin was called the phat-phati for the noise it made.

Which Pokémon's name joins two Japanese sound words, one for a sparkle and one for a mouse's squeak?

Pikachu combines pika, a sparkling sound, with chu, the noise a mouse makes. Series director Junichi Masuda called it one of the hardest names to create.

The French shout cocorico as a victory cry; it is their version of which farm animal's call?

Rooster crows are written cocorico in French. The bird is one of the French Republic's emblems, which is why its call doubles as a cheer.

Which sport's sound-imitating nickname became a Parker Brothers trademark in the United States?

Table tennis became ping-pong, a word that copies the sound of the game. Parker Brothers enforced its American trademark in the 1920s, which pushed clubs and associations to use the name table tennis.

Which laughing Australian kingfisher takes its name from a Wiradjuri word imitating its call?

Kookaburra comes from the Wiradjuri guuguubarra. Its call became a stock jungle sound effect in old films, including ones set in Africa and South America.

Which Aboriginal Australian wind instrument has an English name thought to imitate its own sound?

Didgeridoo is not a word from any Aboriginal Australian language. It is considered an imitation of the sound the instrument makes.

Which group scored a first Billboard Hot 100 number one with the sound-effect title Boom Boom Pow?

The Black Eyed Peas held the top spot for 12 weeks with the song. It was finally knocked off by the group's own follow-up, I Gotta Feeling.

In Marvel comics, which X-Man's weapons slide out with the metallic sound effect snikt?

Wolverine extends his claws with a snikt. The sound is so tied to him that Marvel titled a 2003 miniseries by manga artist Tsutomu Nihei Wolverine: Snikt!

Kachi kachi in Japanese and dī dā in Mandarin are both sound words for which household object?

A clock also goes ṭik-ṭik in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. Sound words follow each language's own phonetic rules, so one noise ends up with many spellings.

The game KerPlunk is named for the sound of which pieces tumbling to the bottom of its tube?

Marbles rest on a lattice of plastic straws inside the tube, and players pull the straws out one at a time. Whoever drops the fewest wins.

Which American poet popularised tintinnabulation in The Bells, a poem printed only after his death?

Edgar Allan Poe is often wrongly credited with inventing the word, which is built on the Latin for bell. The poem ran in a magazine in November 1849, weeks after he died.

Which lizard's English name comes from a Malay word imitating the call some species make?

Gecko is traced by dictionaries to the Malay gekoq, said to copy the call of species such as the tokay. Most of the family chirp or click to one another, unusually for lizards.

Which word for outsiders began with ancient Greeks imitating foreign speech as meaningless babble?

Barbarian comes from bárbaros, the Greeks' echo of speech that sounded to them like 'bar bar'. Sanskrit has a similar sound word, barbara, for foreigners' stammering.

The Slurpee, a frozen drink named for the sound of drinking it, is sold by which store chain?

7-Eleven licensed the slushy drink from the Icee Company and renamed it in 1966. Bob Stanford, an advertising agency director, coined the new name.

The word onomatopoeia comes from an Ancient Greek compound with which literal meaning?

Name-making is the literal sense, from ónoma, name, and poiéō, making. Linguists also call words that copy sounds echoic or imitative.

Doki doki, the Japanese sound word in Doki Doki Literature Club!, imitates which everyday sound?

A heartbeat, or rather two of them, is what doki doki copies. Japanese speakers use the phrase to say that someone's heart is throbbing.

In the bouba/kiki experiment, most people match the made-up word kiki to which kind of shape?

A spiky one gets kiki, while bouba goes to the rounded blob. One explanation is that the mouth itself makes a rounder shape to say bouba.

Which pop artist painted Whaam!, a comic-book diptych of a fighter plane firing a rocket?

Roy Lichtenstein first showed the painting in New York in 1963. London's Tate bought it three years later, over the objections of some of its own trustees.

Which North American songbird is named for an alarm call that adds notes for deadlier predators?

Chickadee copies the bird's chick-a-dee-dee-dee alarm. The more dangerous the predator, such as a small owl, the more dees get added.

According to poet Robert Southey in 1812, the fizzy drink pop was named for the sound of what?

A cork being drawn made the pop, Southey told his wife in the earliest known use of the word. Soda pop joined the two terms in 1863.

Which mocking name did Max Müller give the idea that language began as imitations of natural sounds?

Bow-wow theory was Müller's label for an idea he criticised, one held by Rousseau and Herder among others. It has since been widely discredited.

Borborygmus, from a Greek word thought to be imitative, is the medical name for which bodily noise?

Stomach rumbling is borborygmus, made as muscle contractions push the gut's contents along. Writers have borrowed the word to describe noisy plumbing.

Which author wrote the story of Gerald McBoing-Boing, a boy who speaks only in sound effects?

Dr. Seuss first told the story on a children's record. The 1950 cartoon made from it won the Oscar for best animated short.

The English word ribbit imitates which North American amphibian, whose call is often heard in films?

Pacific tree frog males give the call to advertise themselves. Other species sound different, which is why English also has croak, for the common frog.

Which ancient playwright gave a chorus of frogs the croaking refrain brekekekex koax koax?

Aristophanes wrote the Greek refrain for his comedy The Frogs, where it greatly annoys the god Dionysus. Yale later borrowed it for a long-running sports cheer.

Which Irish novelist coined the palindrome tattarrattat for the sound of a knock on the door?

James Joyce used the word in Ulysses in 1922. At 12 letters it is the longest single-word palindrome in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Which filmmaker behind Clerks created Onomatopoeia, a DC Comics villain who speaks sounds aloud?

Kevin Smith introduced the villain in Green Arrow with artist Phil Hester. He said he chose the name simply because he loved the word, and it shaped the character.

The toy company Wham-O took its name from the sound of which first product hitting a target?

Slingshot shots striking home made the wham that founders Knerr and Melin named their firm after. The Hula Hoop and Frisbee came years later.

The Japanese sound word shiin, used where English might mention chirping crickets, represents what?

Silence gets its own sound word in Japanese. The language's mimetic words describe states and feelings as well as noises, so even the absence of sound has one.

Which French word for a stale phrase is said to imitate the click of a printing plate being cast?

Cliché is the participle of clicher, to click. Printers used it for a ready-made stereotype plate, and the sense spread to ready-made phrases.

Which linguistic term covers vivid sensory words, listed in their thousands in Japanese and Zulu?

Ideophone is the name for words that depict sound, movement, colour or shape. Some stand alone as a whole utterance, like English ta-da.

What do linguists call a sound cluster with a shared meaning, like the gl- in glitter and gleam?

Phonestheme was coined in 1930 by the British linguist J. R. Firth, from Greek words for sound and perception. The gl- family, tied to light, also includes glow and glint.

Which Captain Easy cartoonist is credited with pioneering comic-strip sound effects such as bam, pow and wham?

Roy Crane added the words to what had been an almost entirely visual vocabulary. He had fun with it too, tossing in an occasional ker-splash.

Karsten Solheim named the golf brand Ping after the sound of which club striking a ball?

Putter heads rang against the ball when Solheim tested the first club he built in his garage. He later muffled the sound on purpose.