Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. linguistics A sound that, because it appears in a number of words of similar meaning, has a recognizable semantic association.
Examples
“Householder credits J.R. Firth with the term phonestheme, which a number of us who developed the theme in the '40s and' 50s adopted; one could generalize the discipline as phonesthematics, I suppose.”
“The word phonestheme is, of course, a blending of phoneme and esthetic, indicating quite elegantly the tendency of certain sounds to acquire esthetic or emotional connotations.”
“About 30 such word constellations in a corpus of 350+ Siwu ideophones (with on average 2 members) 71 out of 353 ideophones (about 20%) partake in this kind of phonestheme networks”
“Webster's Third defines phonestheme as "the common feature of sound occurring in a group of symbolic words.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘phonestheme’.
-
Phones
Compare with "phono-, phon-, -phony"
(a list specifically "relating to sound") by hap_e_wordnik.
I'm just phoning it in these days (obviously).phone, telephone, tisiphone, homophone, allophone, xylophone, metallophone, polyphone, persephone, phoneme, anglophone, phoney and 7 more...
-
Resounding Words
great timbre
sone, sonata, resound, sonorous, consonant, unison, sonic, swan, sonant, sonnet, dissonance, scraunch and 142 more...
-
learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
-
P
pearlescent, perfidy, periphrasis, peristalsis, peristyle, phonestheme, phosphene, pleonasm, plump for, portmanteau, prelapsarian, prolix and 52 more...
-
it's rhetorical
words for talking about talk (or writing)
chiasmus, polyptoton, anaphora, parataxis, hyperbole, litotes, deictic, antanaclasis, paronomasia, synecdoche, metonymy, aporia and 28 more...
-
Language Game
and the like
sonorant, phonestheme, glossolalia, phonaesthetics, euphony, scansion, heteroglossia, ecopoetical, dithyramb, portmanteau, monophthong, elision and 19 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for phonestheme.
pterodactyl Ooh, thanks, bilby, for discovering this word! I've just created a slew of phonestheme lists, and now I know what to call them! Jan 29, 2011
gangerh But why not fonestheme? Aug 7, 2008
bilby No probs. I've had a phonestheme list in mind for a while and found this site about 6 months ago when I was digging around. He has some good lists of phonesethemes sorted by initial or final consonant cluster. Just leave me *peuk and you can have the rest!
The interesting side about phonesthetics is that it brings together the 'intuition' that is behind what words mean. Aug 7, 2008
whichbe Bilby! This is a type of document I've been wanting to read for the last 2 years but had no name for. Thank you! Aug 7, 2008
bilby "A phonestheme is a sound, sound cluster, or sound type that is directly associated with a meaning. The initial cluster /gl/ (light, shining) is often cited as an example of an English phonestheme. It occurs, to a greater or lesser extent, in the following words: glass, gleam, gleed (live coal), glisten, glow, glare, glent (glean, shine), glimmer, glimpse, glister, glitter, glim (shine, gleam), gloat, gloom, gloss, glaze from gaze, glare, glance, glint ablaut variant of glent, glower blend of glow, glare, glance, lower, glum (look sullen) probable ablaut variation of gloom, glade (a open passage through a wood; a grassy open or cleared space in a forest), moonglade (moonlight on water). The shared cultural response to a phonestheme is called phonesthesia, and the study of phonesthemes and phonesthesia is called phonesthetics."
- Benjamin K. Shisler, 'The Influence of Phonesthesia on the English Language', 1997.
Full text here. Aug 7, 2008