Meanings
plural ideophones
- grammarA word that uses sound symbolism to express aspects of events that can be experienced by the senses, like smell, color, shape, sound, action, or movement.
1969 October, William J. Samarin, The Art of Gbeya Insults, in International Journal of American Linguistics 35(4), page 325, JSTOR In insults the ideophone occurs either in its characteristic position, the verb phrase, or uncharacteristically as a modifier in a noun phrase.
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
From ideo- + -phone. James F. Fordyce (The Ideophone as a Phonosemantic Class: The Case of Yoruba, in Current approaches to African linguistics, Ivan R. Dihoff (ed.), page 263) credits C. M. Doke with introducing the term in 1935.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Chinese Mandarin 摹擬音 /摹拟音
- 摹擬音 /摹拟音 (mónǐyīn)sound symbolic word
Dutch ideofoon
- ideofoonsound symbolic word
Finnish ideofoni
- ideofonisound symbolic word
French idéophone
- idéophonesound symbolic word
German Ideophon
- Ideophonsound symbolic word
Greek ιδιόφωνο
- ιδιόφωνο (idiófono)sound symbolic word
Italian ideofono
- ideofonosound symbolic word
Japanese 擬態語, 擬音語
- 擬態語 (gitaigo)sound symbolic word
- 擬音語 (giongo)sound symbolic word
Korean 의태어, 의성어
- 의태어 (uitaeeo)sound symbolic word
- 의성어 (uiseong'eo)sound symbolic word
Polish ideofon
- ideofonsound symbolic word
Portuguese ideofone
- ideofonesound symbolic word
Russian идеофо́н
- идеофо́н (ideofón)sound symbolic word
Spanish ideófono
- ideófonosound symbolic word
Swedish ideofon, ideofoni
- ideofonsound symbolic word
- ideofonisound symbolic word
Cite this entry
ideophone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ideophone
“ideophone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ideophone. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ideophone,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ideophone.
Source: ideophone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.