Word.ws English Dictionary

onomatopeia

onomatopeia is the obsolete spelling of onomatopoeia.

Meaning of onomatopoeia

Noun

onomatopoeia (countable and uncountable, plural onomatopoeias or onomatopoeiae)

  1. (uncountable) The property of a word that sounds like what it represents.
    • A woꝛde makinge called of the Grecians Onomatopeia is when we make woꝛdes of oure owne mynde, ſuche as be deriued from the nature of thinges.1553 January, Thomas Wilson, “Word Making”, in The Arte of Rhetorique, […], London: Richardus Graftonus, […], →OCLC, folio 92, verso
  2. (countable) A word that sounds like what it represents, such as gurgle, stutter, or hiss.
    1. (countable) A word that appropriates a sound for another sensation or a perceived nature, such as thud, beep, or meow; an ideophone, phenomime.
  3. (rhetoric, uncountable) The use of language whose sound imitates that which it names.

Forms of onomatopeia

pluralonomatopeias

Words formed from onomatopeia

Questions about onomatopeia

What is onomatopeia the obsolete spelling of?
Onomatopeia is the obsolete spelling of onomatopoeia.

Words near onomatopeia in the dictionary

  1. onomatology
  2. onomatomancy
  3. onomatomania
  4. onomatomantic
  5. onomatope
  6. onomatopeia
  7. onomatopeias
  8. onomatopeic
  9. onomatopes
  10. onomatophobia
  11. onomatophore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: onomatopeia (page history and authors); onomatopoeia (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.

Last updated:

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