Word.ws English Dictionary

bouba/kiki effect

/ˌbubə ˈkiki əˌfɛkt/US/ˌbubə ˈkiki ɪˌfɛkt/

bouba/kiki effect noun: a non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.

bouba/kiki effect: a non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects
Image: Monochrome version 1 June 2007 by Bendž Vectorized with, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

the bouba/kiki effect

  1. A non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.

Forms of bouba/kiki effect

alternative formbouba–kiki effect
alternative formkiki/bouba effect
alternative formkiki–bouba effect

Origin of bouba/kiki effect

Bouba and kiki were the pseudowords used in a 2001 experiment on this topic, carried out by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard. See picture.

Questions about bouba/kiki effect

What does bouba/kiki effect mean?
Bouba/kiki effect means a non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.
What part of speech is bouba/kiki effect?
Bouba/kiki effect is a noun.
How do you pronounce bouba/kiki effect?
Bouba/kiki effect is pronounced /ˌbubə ˈkiki ɪˌfɛkt/ (US).

Words near bouba/kiki effect in the dictionary

  1. Botzes
  2. Botzrah
  3. bou bhat
  4. Bouaké
  5. Bouarfa
  6. bouba/kiki effect
  7. boublik
  8. boubliki
  9. boubliks
  10. boubou
  11. boubous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bouba/kiki effect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bouba/kiki effect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bouba%2Fkiki_effect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.