Transcript of “Words that Looks Like What They Refer to”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Dan and I’m calling from Elmira, New York.
Hi, Dan. Welcome to the show.
Hi, Dan. What’s up?
Well, I’m calling about something that I call structural onomatopoeia.
And I was wondering if you could help me with whether this is a real thing or not.
Structural onomatopoeia. Okay, help us out with what that is.
Well, unlike regular onomatopoeia where the sound would suggest a meaning, in structural onomatopoeia, the structure or the architecture, the anatomy of the word would suggest a meaning.
I imagine you want an example.
Yes, please.
So, oh, probably three or four decades ago, I just realized that the word polysyllabic is pleasingly polysyllabic.
And it got me wondering about whether when people, when whoever coins a word, if they ever take into consideration the structure of the word when they’re crafting it.
So since then, every once in a while, I would just hear a word or read a word and realize that there was something about the structure of the word that would suggest the meaning.
And so some examples, a few examples, a radar as a palindrome sort of reflects forward and backward on itself the way a radar does.
Oh, yeah.
I was just talking to my son, and he mentioned that his girlfriend said that the word bed resembles a bed.
Right. Yeah. That’s a famous one.
The best one that I’ve ever heard is the word level, which is a palindrome with a fulcrum in the middle.
The V is the fulcrum. Gotcha.
Right. Right.
I’m wondering if this is a thing, if there’s a word for it, apart from my awkward construction, and if you have any other examples.
I have a couple of thoughts about this. Some people have suggested the word llama in lowercase letters, which sort of looks like, you know, the first two L’s look like the neck of the llama, and then there’s the body behind it.
And I’ve even seen people talking about how the word dog, again, in lowercase letters, if you kind of squint, it kind of looks like maybe a little dog curled up.
Maybe.
What about the word giraffe?
Does that resemble a giraffe in any way?
I thought about that, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch.
No, I think that looks like a python that swallowed something, actually, if you think about it.
But there’s a really big difference between this and onomatopoeia.
As you suggested, onomatopoeia involves words that are formed specifically because they imitate a sound like buzz or whoosh or something like that.
But what we’re talking about is words that are already in existence that just happen to have a resemblance to this or that.
But it’s kind of in the eye of the beholder.
So I think the word for what you’re talking about is just coincidence.
Well, in a couple of the word playbooks, some people have called it logological, but I don’t know that that term is actually stuck.
Just like polysyllabic being a polysyllabic word is known as autological or sibilant is sounding sibilant or terse being terse.
Those are all autological words where it’s like bed or level or radar because we’re the structure.
That is the structure of the letters themselves, their physical form kind of seems like the word itself.
Those might be called logological.
So just to surmise, it’s not really a thing apart from being a game.
Right.
I can’t think of a way that a word has been formed because of what it looks like.
Dan, our listeners include tons of people who love wordplay and puzzles.
I am sure that we’re going to get a lot of contributions towards this and maybe some ideas on what to call it.
So stay tuned.
I certainly will.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for bringing this bit of wordplay to our attention.
My pleasure.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Thanks, Dan.
Bye-bye.
Do you know any more words like the ones that Dan came up with where the form of the word itself looks like the thing that the word refers to, like radar or level or bed?
Let us know.
Email words@waywordradio.org or go to Twitter @wayword.
