onomatopoeia
/ˌɑnəˌmætəˈpiːə/noun
onomatopoeia is spelled O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-O-E-I-A. The wrong spelling people search most is onomatapoeia: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 526 of all searches for the word. Onomatopoeia is a noun meaning “The property of a word that sounds like what it represents”. The plural of onomatopoeia is onomatopoeias or onomatopoeiae.
How many letters and syllables are in onomatopoeia?
| Letters | 12: O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-O-E-I-A |
|---|---|
| In writing | about once in every 7 million words; the 79,518th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, onomatapoeia, about 20 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell onomatopoeia?
Onomatopoeia is spelled O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-O-E-I-A. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 529 of the searches for onomatopoeia in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is onomatopoeia?
Onomatopoeia appears about once in every 7 million words in written English, the 79,518th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce onomatopoeia?
- UK /ˌɒnəˌmætəˈpiːə/
- /ˌɒnəˌmɛtəˈpæɪə/
- US /ˌɑnəˌmætəˈpiːə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-onomatopoeia.ogg, En-au-onomatopoeia.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Back_ache-onomatopoeia.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with onomatopoeia?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as onomatopoeia from its last stressed vowel (/iə/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of onomatopoeia
- onomatopoeias plural
- onomatopoeiae plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does onomatopoeia mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The property of a word that sounds like what it represents.
- 2
A word that sounds like what it represents, such as gurgle, stutter, or hiss.
- 3
A word that appropriates a sound for another sensation or a perceived nature, such as thud, beep, or meow; an ideophone, phenomime.
- 4
The use of language whose sound imitates that which it names.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Onomatopoeia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense property of a word that sounds like what it represents:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | onomatopée |
| German | Lautmalerei, Klangnachahmung, Lautnachahmung, Schallnachahmung, Onomatopöie, Onomatopoesie |
| Portuguese | onomatopeia |
| Spanish | onomatopeya |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.