Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Onomatopœia

On′o·mat′o·pœ′ia, n. [L., fr. Gr. ὀνοματοποιΐα; ὄνομα, ὀνόματος, a name + ποιεῖν to make.] (Philol.) The formation of words in imitation of sounds; a figure of speech in which the sound of a word is imitative of the sound of the thing which the word represents; as, the buzz of bees; the hiss of a goose; the crackle of fire.

☞ It has been maintained by some philologist that all primary words, especially names, were formed by imitation of natural sounds.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.