Word Woman

Welcome to another astounding installment of Word Woman's Weekly Work-Out! Keep your brain in tip-top Olympic form with life-long learning. This week's word is one of my personal favorites, and one that is often misspelled and mispronounced, being of that difficult greek root persuasion:

on·o·mato·poe·ia

Pronunciation:

\ˌä-nə-ˌmä-tə-ˈpē-ə, -ˌma-\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Late Latin, from Greek onomatopoiia, from onomat-, onoma name + poiein to make — more at poet

Date:

circa 1577

1 : the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it (as buzz, hiss) 2 : the use of words whose sound suggests the sense

— on·o·mato·poe·ic \-ˈpē-ik\ or on·o·mato·po·et·ic \-pō-ˈe-tik\ adjective

— on·o·mato·poe·i·cal·ly \-ˈpē-ə-k(ə-)lē\ or on·o·mato·po·et·i·cal·ly \-pō-ˈe-ti-k(ə-)lē\ adverb -- "onomatopoeia." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008.
Merriam-Webster Online. 27 August 2008

Example: Poets often utilize onomatopoeia in order to make their prose more descriptive and life-like.