Onomatopoeia

An expression of feeling through sound. Most people express feelings by talking or acting a certain way. When using onomatopoeia one relates feelings to sounds, such as hearing the ocean waves along the coast, to hearing a gunshot. Both sounds are and can be expressed differently from one person to the next. Onomatopoeia is mostly used in poems, novels, and short stories. When an author uses onomatopoeia, s/he tries to give the audience a vocal and visual sense of the story. For example in these lines from Eliot’s “Dry Savages”:

When the train starts, and the passengers are settled

To fruit, periodicals, and business letters

(And those who saw them off have left the platform)

Their faces relax from grief into relief,

To the sleep rhythm of a hundred hours.

These few lines are mostly onomatopoeia, the rhythm used in the second line describes the clickety-click of wheels on rails.

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Literary Terms

Works Cited

• Cuddon, J.A. A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 1998.
• Webster, Merriam. Encyclopedia of Literature. 1995.