![]() ‘Clanging’ is the perfect storm of syllables. Onomatopoeia is often at its most potent when it comes to impact sounds. You might notice that it’s kind of hard to shout the word ‘murmur.’ It’s possible, but it feels wrong, because the sounds are so soft.Įxample: “When I thought my head couldn’t hurt worse, the city bells started clanging.” This combination, when spoken aloud, sounds soft and a little blended together, much in the way murmuring does. In the word ‘murmured,’ we have the ‘m’ sound and the ‘ur’ sounds doing some heavy sensory work for us. This makes the word ‘snap’ evoke the sound of a snap.Įxample: “‘You’re safe now,’ she murmured.” Here, the onomatopoeia is ‘snap.’ Like with ‘pop,’ we have a short word, which automatically gives the word a clipped, quick feel. This combo of sounds mimics the sound of popcorn crunching underfoot, which is a great sensory experience to put the reader right in the scene!Įxample: “I snap my fingers. ![]() This is why popcorn is fun to say, and it’s why it’s so evocative! We also have the hard ‘c’ and the ‘ch’ in ‘crunch,’ which sound a bit like something crunching. We actually have two here-’pop’ and ‘crunched.’ The ‘p’ sounds, as well as the short percussive structure of the word ‘pop,’ mimic a popping sound. This is a lot more lively than saying something like “onions cooked on the stove,” because with the onomatopoeia, we have that textural element from the ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds.Įxample: “ Popcorn crunched under their feet in the dark theater.” Sizzled sounds like sizzling, which is how we know this is an onomatopoeia. In the word ‘sizzled,’ the ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds sort of mimic the way food cooking in a skillet sounds. Let’s take a look at some examples of onomatopoeia that might be helpful in your writing adventures!Įxample: “The onions sizzled on the stove.” Not only do they describe the object to your reader, but they’ll also add a textural element that’s super satisfying when done right. These words evoke the thing they’re describing, so they’re super useful in making your descriptions and scenes come to life. The word ‘pop,’ for example, sounds like something popping. There might also be more subtle uses of onomatopoeia in writing. These are your comic book phrases: Bam!, *slurp*, and Pow! are all examples of this. Some of them are single word phrases accompanied by an exclamation point. The examples I learned growing up are things like Zap! Bang! Pop!īut as it turns out, onomatopoeia includes a much wider umbrella of words than you may think. They’re fun, but they’re always accompanied by an exclamation point, and they’re not really useful for anything above middle grade fiction. If you’re like me, you might have learned that onomatopoeia is reserved for writing comic books and writing children’s literature. An onomatopoeia, plainly put, is a word that sounds like the thing it’s describing.
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