Sound Symbolism - Origin

Origin

In the 18th century, Mikhail Lomonosov propagated an idiosyncratic theory that words containing the front vowel sounds E, I, YU should be used when depicting tender subjects and those with back vowel sounds O, U, Y when describing things that may cause fear ("like anger, envy, pain, and sorrow").

However, it is Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) who is considered to be the founder of modern 'scientific' linguistics. Central to what de Saussure says about words are two related statements: First, he says that "the sign is arbitrary". He considers the words that we use to indicate things and concepts could be any words — they are essentially just a consensus agreed upon by the speakers of a language and have no discernible pattern or relationship to the thing. (This was not an entirely new concept. As early as 1595 Shakespeare included the line "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" in his play Romeo and Juliet.) Thus, the sounds themselves have no linguistic meaning. Second, he says that, because words are arbitrary, they have meaning only in relation to other words. A dog is a dog because it is not a cat or a mouse or a horse, etc. These ideas have permeated the study of words since the 19th century.

Saussure himself is said to have collected examples where sounds and referents were related. Ancient traditions link sounds and meaning, and some modern linguistic research does also.