ideophone

An ideophone is a word or a small set of words that directly conveys sensory imagery or perceptual characteristics through its form. Ideophones encode experiences such as sound, motion, manner, texture, shape, color, or intensity, and they often function as a complete lexical unit rather than merely as modifiers of other words. They can serve as adjectives, adverbs, or verbs, depending on the language, and their phonology or prosody is frequently shaped to imitate or evoke the experience they describe.

In many languages ideophones constitute a distinct word class with its own morphosyntactic behavior. They are especially prominent in the languages of Africa and the Americas, as well as in several Asian and Pacific languages, where speakers rely on ideophonic expression to convey vivid sensory detail. Common formal tendencies include reduplication to intensify meaning, systematic sound-symbolic patterns, and marked prosody or tone associated with the sensory domain.

Ideophones are related to, but distinct from, onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia typically imitates a natural sound, while ideophones often encode broader perceptual experiences, including manner of action, texture, or visual qualities, and may not correspond to a single literal sound. Some linguists group ideophones under the broader umbrella of mimetics, a category that encompasses various forms of sound-symbolic and imageable language across languages.

Although the inventory and use of ideophones vary by language, they are widely recognized as a means of enriching discourse with vivid, directly perceptible imagery, complementing more propositional or descriptive expressions.