Word.ws English Dictionary

onomatopy

onomatopy is the archaic form 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 onomatopy

pluralonomatopies

Questions about onomatopy

What is onomatopy the archaic form of?
Onomatopy is the archaic form of onomatopoeia.

Words near onomatopy in the dictionary

  1. onomatopoiesis
  2. onomatopoietic
  3. onomatopoietical
  4. onomatopoietically
  5. onomatopoietics
  6. onomatopy
  7. onomatopœia
  8. onomatopœias
  9. onomatopœic
  10. onomatopœical
  11. onomatopœically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: onomatopy (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.

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