In linguistics, sound symbolism or phonosemantics is the idea that vocal sounds or phonemes carry meaning in and of themselves.
Read more about Sound Symbolism: Origin, Types of Sound Symbolism, History of Phonosemantics, Relationship With Neuroscience, Relationship With Poetry
Famous quotes containing the words sound and/or symbolism:
“In spite of all her faults her name was so holy to him that it had never once passed his lips since her death, except in low whispers to himself,—low whispers made in the perfect, double-guarded seclusion of his own chamber. “Cora, Cora,” he had murmured, so that the sense of the sound and not the sound itself had come to him from his own lips.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor—they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)