Monday 30 September 2013

Onomatopoeia from my students

In my first-year introductory seminar, I had the students coming up with new onomatopoeic words, which we then tried to guess the meaning of (spoilers: you usually can't guess, despite the supposed relation of the sound of the word to the sound it describes). Some of the words seemed quite useful, so here they are:
frip: the sound of flicking or rifling through a sheet or sheets of paper.
shplup: the sound of dropping something damp onto a hard surface.
zhoom: the sound of a car going by at high speed.
ouge (pronounced like 'rouge'): the noise of a washing machine.
mmm: the noise a fridge makes.
shlup: the noise it makes when you drink from a bottle with a 'sports cap'.
twing: the melodious jingling of windchimes or bracelets. 
I thought there were some very nice creative ones, and some interesting similarities in words or definitions.

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