You are now entering that cliche series of flashbacks imposed on you by some blogger. Keep your hands and feet inside the ride.
You're in the fourth grade, and a middle-aged woman in a festive sweater covered in cats with scarves is telling you what the word onomatopoeia means. You are unimpressed when she says the word sizzle in that pseudo-energetic, breathy tone. You proceed to never learn about onomatopoeia again.
If the English language was a high school yearbook, onomatopoeia would be that kid that happened to contract whooping cough on both the mainstream picture day and the make-up picture day, cursed to be remembered forever as *Not Pictured: Yournamedoesn'tevenmatterbecausenobodywillrememberyou. They are seen as the failures of the linguistic world, lacking both the potential deeper meaning of the likes of metaphor and personification and the professional air of words that aren't sizzle. The language snobs around the inverted-globe would have you believe that there is absolutely nothing all that remarkable about these noisy products of whimsical lexicographers, but perhaps there is one anomaly that would disprove that assumption:
There are, or at least must be, any number of words hidden throughout the English language that can be made onomatopoeia without any regard to their phonetic aspect whatsoever, deviating enough from the definition of onomatopoeia to not be one, all the while fulfilling the definition just enough to count. This may sound completely made up now, but consider the word hypocrite.
Hypocrite is most definitely not a sound effect; I guarantee you will never see a comic book in which the little pointy bubble floating dutifully behind the impact point of Batman's fist and the Joker's jaw says hypocrite. So, it shouldn't technically be an onomatopoeia, right? Right? Maybe?
We're forgetting that words have more dimensions than pronunciation.
Let's start by recognizing the tenet of human nature that states we are all thrice-damned lousy hypocrites. All of us. So, therefore, it stands to reason that any human calling another human a hypocrite is automatically an act of hypocrisy. Freaking ironic and all, but the real magic comes when you realize that if this is true, then the spoken word "hypocrite" is literally the noise that a hypocrite makes. The word hypocrite is an onomatopoeia.
For those of you who still aren't seeing why I'm so excited by this, let me point out another special feature of this word: its status as literary device is now constant in all languages that have an equivalent word, a feat unheard of in the realms of sizzle, boom, and whooosh! We have literally stumbled upon a word that has ascended to the ranks of phonetic-based divinity based on meaning alone. Meaning. Semantics. As in, no matter what this word sounds like, it will still be an onomatopoeia. The concept, the essence, of the word transcends all sensory details associated with it.
I feel like this is a triumph. I don't really know in what way, but I can picture the hunter-gatherers, those great fathers of language, rejoicing somewhere in the great web of human consciousness that we have all created something so great that the meaning is so absolute that it is able to free itself from the laws of the physical trappings of language, namely its need to be spoken. This calls forth new questions; what else can language, certainly the greatest achievement of our species if not the thing that sets us apart from animals itself, do? What other barriers can it break?
If you can think of any more examples of linguistic anomalies or hidden onomatopoeia (If there's one, there absolutely must be more), share it in a comment below. Please, for the love of all things holy, if you know one, share.
Human language capabilities FTW!
CORY
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