Onomatopoeia

Posted by Nita on December 05, 2001

In Reply to: onomatopoeia posted by Barney on November 27, 2001

What I always thought interesting was that onomatopoeia are not universal. Cheep is not not cheep in spanish it's pio and so on

: : The word onomatopoeia descibes other words which sound like their action e.g. buzz or murmur, but I am curious to know what on earth inspired this strange word. And why the inventor made it so damn hard to spell. Can anybody sugest an origin?

:
: From my tatty old Oxford English Dictionary:

: -ORIGIN late 16th cent.: via late Latin from Greek onomatopoiia 'word-making', from onoma, onomat- 'name' + -poios 'making' (from poiein 'to make').