"Onomatopoeia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... together with inward or outward breathing, and especially the mute or liquid consonants ending words which serve to indicate abrupt or continuous motion, have corresponding meanings in so many cases as to show a fundamental connection. I thus enormously extended the principle of onomatopoeia in the origin of vocal language. As I have been unable to find any reference to this important factor in the origin of language, and as no competent writer has pointed out any fallacy in it, I think I am justified ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... especially out of place in an epitaph, which should avoid studied effects and meretricious devices. But writers in the early stages of a literature and common people of all periods find a pleasure in them. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, the pun, and the play on words are to be found in all the early Latin poets, and they are especially frequent with literary men like Plautus and Terence, Pacuvius and Accius, who wrote for the stage, and therefore for the ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... and being better compacted for human perception they seem more expressive and can be linked more unequivocally with other sources of feeling. So a given vocal sound may have more or less analogy to the thing it is used to signify; this analogy may be obvious, as in onomatopoeia, or subtle, as when short, sharp sounds go with decision, or involved rhythms and vague reverberations with a floating dream. What seems exquisite to one poet may accordingly seem vapid to another, when the texture of experience in the two minds differs, so that a given composition ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... or unusual? Are the most effective words concrete or abstract? figurative or literal? Find examples of alliteration, of onomatopoeia, of all the figures of speech ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... shameful one," the body "the veil," the hour "the swift one," the moon "the spy," a purse "the saint," alms "the rogue," a sermon "the tedious one," etc. Many words are formed as among savages, by onomatopoeia, as "tuff" (pistol), "tic" (watch), "guanguana" ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero |
