# Is there a word for this?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 21, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649 "2005-12-21T17:30:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/1 "2005-12-21T17:30:11Z")
Forgive the vague title–couldn’t think of a concise way to say it.
Is there a word for “a word that seems to phonetically represent that which it actually represents?” I’m not talking about onomatopoeia. For example, many Yiddish words “sound right.”
Shmuck - jerk
Shlep - trudge
Dreck - crap
Shmates - ragged clothes
nosh - snack
I don’t know how to spell this but:
Gih-SHNA-vld - messed up
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### Author:  [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/2 "2005-12-21T17:40:32Z")
I don’t think so. I’m not so sure about your theory, either. To me “shmates” doesn’t evoke old clothes, for example.
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### Author:  [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/3 "2005-12-21T17:52:16Z")
> [@Sal Ammoniac](#):
>
> I don’t think so. I’m not so sure about your theory, either. To me “shmates” doesn’t evoke old clothes, for example.
I could see your issue with this one, but have you heard it pronounced? Also, it’s really not a theory.
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### Author:  [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/4 "2005-12-21T17:53:55Z")
That’s probably a very subjective thing, more a factor of social conditioning than anything. North Americans routinely usurp foriegn words to use as synonyms for common English terms. “Schlep” is one example that we are very accustomed to as it is used almost as often as “Lug” or “Carry.” It “sounds right” simply because it’s such a common way to express one who is laboriously carrying something around.
A word that sounds like what it represents would be an _onomatope_. Examples of onomatopoetic words would be “Bang,” or “Meow,” or “Crash.”
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### Author:  [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/5 "2005-12-21T17:59:16Z")
Of course I skipped the bit where you mentioned you weren’t looking for an onomatope, so … just ignore that part.
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### Author:  [@Sal\_Ammoniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sal_Ammoniac)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/6 "2005-12-21T18:24:29Z")
> [@KidCharlemagne](#):
>
> I could see your issue with this one, but have you heard it pronounced? Also, it’s really not a theory.
Well, when I said theory, I meant that any inherent connection between the sound of the words you cite and their actual meaning is theoretical. Which is to say that if I didn’t actually know the meaning of the words, I would not be able to guess the meaning from just hearing them.
Look at one of your examples – “schmuck.” You give the meaning of this word as “jerk,” but if you trace its origin, “schmuck” comes from the German word meaning “jewels” or “treasure.” So there’s no reason inherently why the sound of the word should evoke “jerk” as opposed to “jewels.”
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### Author:  [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/7 "2005-12-21T20:00:51Z")
> [@Sal Ammoniac](#):
>
> Well, when I said theory, I meant that any inherent connection between the sound of the words you cite and their actual meaning is theoretical. Which is to say that if I didn’t actually know the meaning of the words, I would not be able to guess the meaning from just hearing them.
>
> Look at one of your examples – “schmuck.” You give the meaning of this word as “jerk,” but if you trace its origin, “schmuck” comes from the German word meaning “jewels” or “treasure.” So there’s no reason inherently why the sound of the word should evoke “jerk” as opposed to “jewels.”
Schmuck literally means “penis” in Yiddish (though I understand you were going back further.
I once read something about an experiment conducted wherein subjects were presented with two shapes, one quite angular, and another with smoother curves. A googling just came up with it:
[http://www.ayre.ca/?cat=7](http://www.ayre.ca/?cat=7)
> [@](#):
>
> Is all this sound nonsense simply a matter of “a fortuitous result of phonetic evolution” ? Lexicon has an example of a psycolinguistic experiment on their website. An image of two shapes is displayed [one angular, the other smooth)
> The reader is then asked to assign one of two nonsense words to each image, taketa and naluma. According to their study, most people chose “taketa” as being the name for the more angular shape, and “namula” for the more rounded one. Why ? For most people, sounds which are “obstruents” (a linguistic term for a consonant sound formed by obstructing the airway, eg. “t”, “p”, “k” sounds) are associated more with words which are harder and sharper than “sonorants” (sounds made by an unrestricted air flow, eg. vowels, “m”, “n” sounds) which are associated more with softer, smoother things.
>
> It’s not completely clear why this is the case, but it has been well established over the last century by various linguists that there is a strong correlation between specific phonemic sequences (the signifiers) and the specific physical, auditory and movement attributes of a signified object. If you are devilishly into details, Hans Marchand’s “The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation”(1960) is one of the more cited books on the topic, and more recently Margaret Magnus’s “Gods of the Word: Archetypes in the Consonants“.
>
> So what about our sweet mellifluous Swiffer® ?
>
> ```
> * SW- a prefix associated with swaying or swinging motions (swing, sway, sweep, swag, swoosh)
> * I - short vowels like “i”, in relation to movement/motion, usually represent quick rapid movements (flit, titter, tickle), longer vowels typically go with slower more lengthy movements (eg. swoon, teeter, float, flow).
> * FF - associated with thinness, lightness, softness (fizz, fuzz, furr)
> * ER - this suffix is expressive of repetitive or continuous sound or movement (”flutter, flicker, shimmer”), also means “connected with” (eg. baker - one who bakes, swiffer - one who swiffs), also representative of a tool/implement as in (blotter, bailer, boiler, eraser etc).
>
> ```
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### Author:  [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2005, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-word-for-this/336649/8 "2005-12-21T20:04:15Z")
I believe “Shlep” is Yiddish for carry.