katy’s comment about my use of "weasliest" here made me think of an interesting topic.  i think that she liked weasliest better than most weasly (sp?) because it sounds, well, weasly—at least i think it does.  so i tried to think of the word in english that sounds most like what it means.  i came up with one—bludgeon.  can anyone think of any others?

david

spittoon

bog

whistle

jingle

bump

squeel

roar

(Highly subjective, I know)

Sitran

hmmm, for the sake of my original mindset while starting this topic, i should have said, "buzz and other onomatopoeia are not welcome!"  i think bog is my favorite of yours…

david

Chirp.

Splat.

Plop.

[hr]

And imported from another post:

Zing!

david,

I know what you’re thinking of, and I have often thought the sounds or appearances of some words seem particularly apt, beyond onomatopoeia.  

How about hijinks?

More will come eventually…

OK, I don’t think the following are truly onomatpoeic:

hop

bumpy

round

effeminate

treacle

sneak

spikey

I think some of these are personal opinion, and the fact that I know what they mean probably colours the impression they make on me by the way they sound. Can anyone think of a word which sounds the opposite of what it actually means? Personally I think "big" is a very small-sounding word.

J.

Just remembered this thread because I used:

flimsy

And then there’s:

pompous

nag (as in henpecking, not horse-racing)

soar

And for Jonah’s question about words that sound the opposite of what they mean, how about the German word Zärtlichkeit, meaning "tenderness"?

Ed

[quote author=smitdl00 link=board=omni;num=1078874954;start=0#2 date=03/09/04 at 23:48:01]hmmm, for the sake of my original mindset while starting this topic, i should have said, "buzz and other onomatopoeia are not welcome!"  i think bog is my favorite of yours…

david

Erudite?

Obfuscation?

How about ‘scratch’...?

In this case, when you scratch something, it makes a scratching noise.  It is not onomatopoetic in origin, yet it is so naturally descriptive it seems like it is.

scratch - c.1400, probably a fusion of scratten "to scratch" and crachen "to scratch," both of uncertain origin. Slang sense of "money" is from 1914. Many figurative senses (cf. up to scratch) are from sporting use for "line or mark drawn as a starting place" (1867); meaning "nothing" (in from scratch) is 1922, also from sporting sense. Billiards sense is first recorded 1909 (also, originally, itch). Verb meaning "to withdraw (a horse) from a race" is 1865, from notion of scratching name off list of competitors; used in a non-sporting sense of "cancel a plan, etc." from 1685. Old Scratch "the Devil" (1740) is from earlier Scrat, from O.N. skratte "goblin, monster," used in M.E. for "hermaphrodite."

-Tim

How about "squeel" - the sound when you scratch the blackboard with your fingernails: the ominous sound of
tires "squeeling" before the sickening thud.