00LANGUAGE, BY THE EVIDENCE

Words that make
the noise.

A small shiny brass service bell on a wooden counter, a finger just about to press it — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

Say bing, and you can almost hear the bell.

Onomatopoeia, from Greek for name-making, is a word that imitates the sound it names. It is the most obvious place where a word's sound matches its meaning, but large studies now suggest the link runs further through language than linguists once thought.

NAME-MAKINGin Ancient GreekUpdated 19 October 2026

Test a word

01Principles

Words can echo sounds
Each language spells it differently
Sound hints at meaning
An independent plain-English guide

02THE SHORT ANSWER

Most words are arbitrary.
Some are not.

There is nothing tree-like about the word tree.
But bang sounds like a bang.

ONOMATOPOEIA

Imitating a sound

Wikipedia's article gives English examples like oink, meow, beep and hiccup, words that phonetically imitate or suggest the sound they refer to.

Test a word

ACROSS LANGUAGES

Same tick, new spelling

Sound words follow each language's own sound rules: a clock goes tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and kachi kachi in Japanese.

Sound words in comics

SOUND SYMBOLISM

Round or spiky?

In tests across 25 languages, people tended to match the made-up word bouba to a round shape and kiki to a spiky one.

Try the test

03HOW MUCH DOES IT ECHO?

From bang
to tree.

Some words copy a sound outright, some hint at a feeling or shape, and most have no link at all. Pick one to see where it sits. The bar shows how closely the word's sound resembles what it means.

Based on Wikipedia's Onomatopoeia article, Blasi et al. (PNAS, 2016) and Ćwiek et al. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2022).

Echo check

Choose a wordBang, peepTick tock / kachi kachiJapanese barabaraWords for smallTree, Baum, shu

Bang, peepPure imitation

Classic onomatopoeia: words that imitate the sounds they denote. Researchers long thought this was where resemblance between sound and meaning stopped.

Tick tock / kachi kachiImitation, local style

The same sound, written to fit each language's sound system: tick tock in English, dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese.

Japanese barabaraSound for a state

An ideophone: a sound-like word for something that is not a sound. Barabara reflects things in disarray or scattered apart.

Words for smallA statistical lean

Across thousands of word lists, words for small tend to contain an i sound. It is a tendency, not a rule, and only shows up in very large samples.

Tree, Baum, shuArbitrary

Nothing about the sound of tree is tree-like, and German, Spanish and Chinese use completely different words. Most vocabulary works this way.

Sources: Wikipedia, Onomatopoeia; Blasi et al., Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages (PNAS, 2016); Ćwiek et al., The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems (2022).

04TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

Big samples,
small biases.

One study looked at most of the world's languages;
another tested speakers of 25.

62%

Share of the world's languages covered

Blasi and colleagues analysed 6,452 word lists covering 62% of languages and about 85% of lineages. Unrelated languages often used the same sounds: tongue with l, nose with n, small with i.

WORD LISTS · PNAS 2016

17 of 25

Languages with a reliable effect

Ćwiek and colleagues tested 917 speakers of 25 languages and 10 writing systems. Speakers of Roman-script languages matched 75% of the time, other scripts 63%.

BOUBA/KIKI · ROYAL SOCIETY 2022

The 2022 study found the writing system had only a weak influence, suggesting the bouba/kiki link comes from the sounds themselves rather than the shapes of the letters.

05TRY BOUBA/KIKI AT HOME

Two shapes,
two words.

This follows the set-up of the 2022 study in a simple form. It is a fun demonstration, not a scientific test: you will need several people who have not heard of the effect.

Draw two shapes
Draw a soft rounded blob and a sharp spiky star side by side, without labels.
Say the words aloud
Say bouba, then kiki, rather than writing them down, since letter shapes can nudge the answer.
Ask which is which
Ask each person which shape fits each word. In the study, only matching both correctly counted.
Swap the order
Start with kiki for some people. The researchers found bouba gave the stronger, more consistent match.

Two shapes drawn side by side on paper, one a soft rounded blob and one a sharp spiky star — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

06SOUND WORDS IN COMICS

Bam, pow,
on the page.

An ink pen drawing a jagged starburst shape inside a blank comic-strip panel on white paper — AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

Comic strips make heavy use of onomatopoeia, often drawn into the picture so the lettering itself shows the noise. Wikipedia quotes the popular culture historian Tim DeForest crediting the cartoonist Roy Crane (1901–1977) with pioneering sound effects such as bam, pow and wham.

Old sound words also live on in everyday names. Wikipedia notes the zip is named for the sound it makes, and that many birds are named after their calls, from the cuckoo and chiffchaff to the kookaburra.

07Questions

Questions people ask

What does onomatopoeia mean?

It comes from Ancient Greek onomatopoiía, name-making. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as creating or using words that include sounds similar to the noises the words refer to.

Why do animals sound different in other languages?

Sound words have to fit each language's own sounds and spelling rules. Frogs also differ: English ribbit comes from North American species, while croak describes the common frog.

Are sound words only about sounds?

No. Many languages have ideophones, sound-like words for feelings, textures or states. Japanese barabara describes things scattered or in disarray.

Is bouba/kiki the same everywhere?

It is strong overall but not universal. In the 2022 study the share of matching answers ranged from 100% for Swedish speakers to 36% for Romanian speakers.

Do sound links help children learn?

The 2022 paper reviews research suggesting highly iconic words, where sound resembles meaning, are easier to learn.

08Sources

Words that make
the noise.