Fromideo- +-phone. James F. Fordyce (The Ideophone as a Phonosemantic Class: The Case of Yoruba, inCurrent approaches to African linguistics, Ivan R. Dihoff (ed.), page 263) credits C. M. Doke with introducing the term in 1935.
ideophone (pluralideophones)
- (grammar) Aword that usessound symbolism toexpressaspects ofevents that can beexperienced by thesenses, likesmell,color,shape,sound,action, ormovement.
- 1969 October, William J. Samarin,The Art of Gbeya Insults, inInternational Journal of American Linguistics 35(4), page 325,JSTOR
- In insults theideophone occurs either in its characteristic position, the verb phrase, or uncharacteristically as a modifier in a noun phrase.
