Word.ws English Dictionary

sound-symbolic

sound-symbolic adjective: characterized by sound symbolism.

Adjective

sound-symbolic (not comparable)

  1. characterized by sound symbolism
    • Wagner proposes a sound-symbolic origin, after the sounds these insects [grasshoppers] make. Although this cannot be fully excluded, this word exhibits suspiciously little formal variation for a sound-symbolic formation.2025, Cid Swanenvleugel, The Pre-Roman Elements of the Sardinian Lexicon, page 198
    1. (more specifically) (of a unit of sound or meaning such as a word, morpheme, phoneme, syllable, etc.) composed of speech sounds that are not arbitrary but also not overtly onomatopoeic
      • "Bouba" and "Kiki" are sound-symbolic labels, not directly imitating any actual sound but nonetheless carrying strong intrinsic associations with roundness and pointiness, respectively.

Synonyms of sound-symbolic

Forms of sound-symbolic

alternative formsound symbolic

Origin of sound-symbolic

From sound symbolism + -ic.

Questions about sound-symbolic

What does sound-symbolic mean?
Sound-symbolic means characterized by sound symbolism.
What part of speech is sound-symbolic?
Sound-symbolic is an adjective.

Words near sound-symbolic in the dictionary

  1. sound wave
  2. sound waves
  3. sound-alike
  4. sound-alikes
  5. sound-on-film
  6. sound-symbolic
  7. sound-track
  8. sound-tracked
  9. sound-tracking
  10. sound-tracks
  11. sounda

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sound-symbolic (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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