Onomatopoeia is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, sea, thunder, etc), by things (machines or tools, etc), by people (sighing, laughter, patter of feet, etc) and by animals. Combinations of speech sounds of this type will inevitably be associated with whatever produces the natural sound. Therefore the relation between onomatopoeia and the phenomenon it is supposed to represent is one of metonymy.
There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect. Direсt onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate natural sounds, as ding-dong, buzz, bang, cuckoo, tintinabulation, mew, ping-pong, roar and the like.
These words have different degrees of imitative quality. Some of them immediately bring to mind whatever it is that produces the sound.
Others require the exercise of a certain amount of imagination to decipher it.
Onomatopoeic words can be used in a transferred meaning, as for instance ding-dong, which represents the sound of bells rung continuously, may mean 1) noisy, 2) strenuously contested. Examples are:
a ding-dong struggle, a ding-dong go at something.
In the following newspaper headline:
DING-DONG ROW OPENS ON BILL, both meanings are implied.
Indirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense. It is sometimes called "echo-writing". An example is:
'And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain' (E. A. Poe),
where the repetition of the sound [s] actually produces the sound of the rustling of the curtain.
Indirect onomatopoeia, unlike alliteration, demands some mention of what makes the sound, as rustling (of curtains) in the line above. The same can be said of the sound [w] if it aims at reproducing, let us say, the sound of wind. The word wind must be mentioned, as in:
"Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet
A man goes riding by."
(R. S. Stevenson)
Indirect onomatopoeia is sometimes very effectively used by repeating words which themselves are not onomatopoetic, as in Poe's poem "The Bells" where the words tinkle and bells are distributed in the following manner:
"Silver bells... how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle"
and further
"To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."
Alongside obviously onomatopoetic words as tinkle, tintinnabulation and jingling the word bells is drawn into the general music of the poem and begins to display onomatopoetic properties through the repetition.
Here is another example:
"Mostly he moved in urgent, precise, clipped movements –
go, go, go – and talked the same way – staccato sentences."
The onomatopoetic effect is achieved by the repetition of the unonomatopoetic word 'go' the pronunciation of which is prompted by the word 'clipped', suggesting short, quick, abrupt motions. One seems even to hear the sound of his footsteps.
A skilful example of onomatopoetic effect is shown by Robert Southey in his poem "How the Water Comes down at Ladore." The title of the poem reveals the purpose of the writer. By artful combination of words ending in -ing and by the gradual increase of the number of words in successive lines, the poet achieves the desired sound effect. The роеm is rather too long to be reproduced here, but a few lines will suffice as illustrations:
"And nearing and clearing,
...............
And falling and crawling and sprawling,
...............
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
...............
And in this way the water comes down at Ladore."
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