Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as "oink", "meow" (or "miaow"), "roar" and "chirp". Onomatopoeia can differ between languages: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system; hence the sound of a clock may be expressed as "tick tock" in English, "tic tac" in Spanish and Italian (shown in the picture), "dī dā" in Mandarin, "katchin katchin" in Japanese, or "tik-tik" in Hindi. Although in the English language the term onomatopoeia means 'the imitation of a sound', the compound word onomatopoeia (ὀνοματοποιία) in the Greek language means 'making or creating names'. For words that imitate sounds, the term ὴχομιμητικό (ēchomimētico) or echomimetic) is used. The word ὴχομιμητικό (ēchomimētico) derives from "ὴχώ", meaning 'echo' or 'sound', and "μιμητικό", meaning 'mimetic' or 'imitating'.