Word.ws English Dictionary

ideophone

/ˈɪ.di.(j)ə(ʊ)ˌfəʊn/

ideophone noun: 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.

Noun

ideophone (plural ideophones)

  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.
    • In insults the ideophone occurs either in its characteristic position, the verb phrase, or uncharacteristically as a modifier in a noun phrase.1969 October, William J. Samarin, The Art of Gbeya Insults, in International Journal of American Linguistics 35(4), page 325, JSTOR

ideophone meaning in Tamil

ideophone in Tamil

ஒலிக்குறிப்புச் சொல், உணர்வொலிக்கிளவி

Forms of ideophone

pluralideophones

Origin of ideophone

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.

Words formed from ideophone

Questions about ideophone

What does ideophone mean?
Ideophone means 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.
What is ideophone in Tamil?
Ideophone in Tamil is ஒலிக்குறிப்புச் சொல், உணர்வொலிக்கிளவி. See Ideophone meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ideophone?
Ideophone is a noun.
How do you pronounce ideophone?
Ideophone is pronounced /ˈɪ.di.(j)ə(ʊ)ˌfəʊn/ (UK).
What is the plural of ideophone?
The plural of ideophone is ideophones.

Words near ideophone in the dictionary

  1. ideomotor effect
  2. ideomotor effects
  3. ideonomy
  4. ideophobia
  5. ideophobias
  6. ideophone
  7. ideophones
  8. ideophonetic
  9. ideophonetics
  10. ideophonic
  11. ideophonographic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ideophone (page history and authors); ideophone (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ideophone.wav.

Cite this entry: “ideophone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ideophone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.