More than words

Can a word make you actually feel what it describes? Here's the answer

A word like "buzz" can bring a sound to mind, while "squish" can almost make you feel something soft under your fingers. You’ve probably been using these words your whole life without realizing how unusual they are: they don’t just describe an experience; they seem to recreate part of it through their sound and form. These fascinating words are called "ideophones," and they can capture everything from movement and texture to sound or light. Here are 10 surprising facts about the words you already know, but probably never thought about this way.

Unlike ordinary words such as "table" or "dog," ideophonic words are exceptionally vivid words that use sound symbolism to evoke sensory experiences. These words name something we experience through our senses, and their sounds can give us a hint of what that experience is like.

Ideophones’ forms often seem to symbolically echo or approximate their meaning. Words such as "buzz" and "splash" evoke sounds, "squish" suggests a particular texture, while "zoom" and "zigzag" suggest movement.

Ideophonic words are not the same as onomatopoeia. They don’t merely imitate a sound; they can evoke texture, temperature, light, movement, and other physical sensations. In other words, an ideophone can sometimes make you almost feel or see what it describes, simply through the way it sounds.

For example, words describing surfaces can suggest a particular texture through their sound, such as something "smooth," "sticky," or "rough." Words like "twinkle," "glimmer," and "flash," on the other hand, connect sound and structure with the way light appears to move or change.

Many languages have ideophones, but each language has developed its own set of them. In other words, ideophones are not universal, and they often don’t translate neatly from one language to another.

The same experience can have completely different "sound effects" depending on the language. For example, in Japanese, kira-kira (キラキラ) evokes the sight of repeated flashes or sparkles of light. In English, we might describe the same visual effect with words such as "sparkle," "twinkle," or "glitter". Japanese speakers, just like English speakers, can feel that these words make a symbolic connection to what they describe; the fascinating part is that each language does it with very different sounds.

As we mentioned, ideophones can represent or approximate different sensory experiences through their form and sound. And one of the most surprising is action and movement.

A great example is "zigzag." The word itself seems to move as you say it; the alternation between a front vowel (/ɪ/) and a back vowel (/æ/) forces the tongue to shift back and forth, physically echoing the turning motion of a zigzag. There are other good examples, too: "ping-pong" shifts between contrasting vowel sounds to suggest a ball traveling back and forth across a table, while "tick-tock" alternates between high and low vowel sounds, echoing the swing of a pendulum.

In addition to evoking a sensation, ideophonic words can sometimes make you move your hands or body as you say them, almost as if you were physically illustrating what the word describes.

Speakers often pair ideophonic words such as "zig-zag," "glimmer," or "flimflam" with spontaneous, iconic hand and body gestures that mimic the word’s shape, motion, or quality. This happens because both ideophones and some hand gestures rely on iconicity, the resemblance between form and meaning, to convey sensory imagery. These pairing actions suggest that ideophones can function more like depictions of an experience than arbitrary labels attached to it.

When you say words like "chit-chat" or "helter-skelter," you’re using ideophones that rely on reduplication. But what exactly does that mean?

Some ideophonic words are created through a process called reduplication, which involves repeating or echoing similar sounds, syllables, or rhyming parts of a word. The repetitive sound can mirror the repetitive, chaotic, or rhythmic quality of what the word describes. For example, "higgledy-piggledy" evokes something jumbled or chaotic, while "mumbo-jumbo" suggests confusing or meaningless language. In both cases, the word’s playful repetition helps reinforce the sense of disorder or confusion.

English has some ideophonic words, but other languages take these sound-and-sensation words much further, and use them in ways that may feel strange to English speakers.

For example, both Japanese and Korean have highly structured systems of ideophones that can describe physical states, moods, and even silent movements. In English, ideophones generally function like ordinary verbs, adjectives, nouns, or adverbs, but some African languages such as Zulu, Xhosa, and Chichewa treat them as a distinct grammatical class, with the ability to function as independent predicates or intensifiers.

Ideophonic words can be context-dependent. That means that the same word may take on different shades of meaning depending on what is happening, who is speaking, and how the word is delivered.

Because ideophones often describe sensory experiences rather than simply naming objects, speakers use context to make their image clear. Tone, facial expression, gesture, and the surrounding words can all help shape meaning. The word "pop," for example, can describe the sudden sound of a balloon bursting, but we also use it for something appearing suddenly, as in "the question just popped into my head", or for a quick, sharp movement, as in "he popped up from his chair."

The gestures that often accompany ideophones aren’t the only thing that brings them to life; they can also be accompanied by changes in tone, voice, rhythm, and facial expression. That’s because ideophones are an important part of storytelling in many languages.

Because they don’t simply name an object but can depict an experience, ideophonic words can be "acted out" in oral narratives, giving the listener a much stronger sense of what is happening. The way you pronounce, stretch, emphasize, or repeat an ideophone can make an event feel immediate and more vivid, rather than simply telling the listener what happened.

Ideophones are rebels of the language, often breaking the phonological rules that govern ordinary words.

As we’ve seen, ideophones generally have a perceptible relationship between their form and their meaning, something that is unusual among ordinary words. They also have a tendency to push the language’s sound system further. As with reduplication in "higgledy-piggledy," ideophones can feature unusual phonemes, unexpected consonant clusters, or even click sounds that are rarely, if ever, found elsewhere in a language’s regular vocabulary.

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Go The Distance: Unravel These Ten Laughably Long English Words!

Image: Diana Polekhina

English can sometimes be a daunting language. Think about the challenges a non-native speaker must face in order to learn that "buy", "by", and "bye" are spelled differently but sound the same, or that the word "bear" can both mean "a large mammal" and "to support the weight of something". However, we believe that this difficulty is a large part of what makes the English language so beautiful, filled with unique words and spellings that completely amaze us.

We have compiled a list of ten long words that would both terrify a Spelling Bee contestant and make the mouth of a Scrabble player water. These words range from "a few letters too long" to "ridiculously lengthy". Enjoy!

Image: Rusty Watson

We’ll begin this list with one of the longest American demonyms we could find. While the official designations for the good people living in "The Constitution State" are "Connecticuter" and "Connecticutian", the unofficial demonym "Connecticutensian" can also be used.

Interestingly, none of these above-mentioned denominations is as regularly used as the colloquial nickname "nutmeggers". This comes with the unofficial nickname of Connecticut, known as "The Nutmeg State".

Image: Caroline Veronez

Looking for new ways to tell your partner they are beautiful, but the words "pretty" or "handsome" seem to be overused? Don’t worry, we got you covered. Next time you are enjoying a candle-lit dinner, try looking into their eyes and saying, "Darling, you look absolutely pulchritudinous tonight."

Well, maybe this is not the most romantic of words, but it is still pretty interesting. It is derived from the word pulchritude, an out-of-style noun that means "beauty". In turn, this word comes from the Latin word pulcher, which translates to "beautiful".

Image: Gary Chan

Try saying this three times fast. As quirky as this word sounds, its meaning is not as fun. "Floccinaucinihilipilification" is a word that describes the act of considering something completely worthless or unimportant.

However, don’t be too discouraged by this word’s meaning: chances are it was never used in casual conversation. In fact, it is mostly quoted as an example of a ridiculously long word, and not as an actual measure of importance.

Image: Pawel Czerwinski

While the verb "tergiversate" isn’t exactly synonymous with lying, they are both cut from the same cloth. Its noun form, "tergiversation", describes the act of producing different statements, often twisting and turning facts to protect self-interest.

However, tergiversate has an accidental ring to it that lying usually doesn’t, since someone caught in tergiversation is found after stating contradictory facts that evidence his or her deceitful ways.

Image: Akira Hojo

Just like "floccinaucinihilipilification", the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" is considered one of the longest non-scientific words in the English language. However, the main difference between them is that antidisestablishmentarianism was for a while present in everyday vocabulary, albeit in 19th-century England.

This word describes a movement that advocated for the Church of England to continue to receive government patronage. In fact, it was created as a response to another movement also blessed with an extremely lengthy name called "disestablishmentarianism", which called for the separation between church and state.

Image: Umberto

While this word is definitively a mouthful, it is also rather straightforward. "Uncopyrightable" describes cultural products such as books, films, or photographs that can’t be claimed or protected under copyright laws.

The characteristics that might make something uncopyrightable are various: If the author is unknown, for instance, or if a certain item belongs to the public, like a legal code or constitution. Sometimes the matter of who is the author of a certain cultural item is disputed, and therefore no individual can truly claim ownership, so the work is deemed uncopyrightable.

Image: Sander Sammy

It is rather ironic that we try to explain the meaning of such a bewildering word as "incomprehensibleness" when it literally defines a state in which something is particularly or downright impossible to understand.

While its synonym "incomprehensibility" is far more regularly used, we must take our hats to "incomprehensibleness", a noun that took a word with an already difficult spelling and added a few extra letters just for the sake of being extra confusing.

Image: Liv Bruce

Just like with "Pulchritudinous", we believe there are warmer ways to refer to your family, but let’s explore this word on the off chance you want to show your affection at the next Thanksgiving in a more formal, slightly offputting way.

"Consanguineous" is an adjective for people related by blood and, while it is mostly used in matters related to ancestry, it is perfectly suitable to describe your immediate family. The main root of this word comes from the Latin word sanguin, which means "blood".

Image: Andreas Praefcke

We know what you are thinking: This one feels a little bit like cheating. After all, this word was first said by the legendary Julie Andrews in the timeless Disney film "Mary Poppins", and it was written as an extremely long adjective, meant to sound silly for comedic effect.

However, you might be surprised to learn that this word has been included in several renowned dictionaries: Cambridge Dictionary defines "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" as "extremely good". And while its use will forever be associated with our favorite British nanny, this wacky word has truly transcended its medium.

Image: Brett Jordan

We’ll end this article with a bit of an ironic twist. Besides being the longest word we could find, "hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia" describes an irrational fear, as all words ending in "phobia" do. However, this noun holds the dubious distinction of describing an unreasonable fear to itself, since someone suffering from this phobia is terrified of long words.

To make matters worse, some people spell this word with an extra P ("hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia"), which some believe is a humorous misspelling in order to make the word even longer.