different between arbitrary vs onomatopoeia

English

Etymology

From Middle English arbitrarie, Latin arbitr?rius (“arbitrary, uncertain”), from arbiter (“witness, on-looker, listener, judge, overseer”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /???.b?.t??.?i/, /???.b?.t?i/
• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /???.b?.t??(?).?i/

Adjective

arbitrary (comparative more arbitrary, superlative most arbitrary)

1. (usually of a decision) Based on individual discretion or judgment; not based on any objective distinction, perhaps even made at random.

2. Determined by impulse rather than reason; heavy-handed.
   • 1937/1938, Albert Einstein, letter to Max Born

   • 1906, Gelett Burgess, Are You a Bromide?

3. (mathematics) Any, out of all that are possible.

4. Determined by independent arbiter.
5. (linguistics) Not representative or symbolic; not iconic.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Noun

arbitrary (plural arbitraries)

1. Anything arbitrary, such as an arithmetical value or a fee.

Further reading

• arbitrary in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• arbitrary in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• arbitrariness on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

English

Alternative forms

• onomatopeia, onomatopœia

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ???????????? (onomatopoiía, “the coining of a word in imitation of a sound”), from ???????????? (onomatopoié?, “to coin names”), from ????? (ónoma, “name”) + ????? (poié?, “to make, to do, to produce”).

Pronunciation

• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /??n??mæt??pe??/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /??n??mæt??pi??/
• (US) enPR: än'?-m?t'?-p??? or än'?-mät'?-p???, IPA^(key): /??n??mæt??pi??/, /??n??m?t??pi??/
• (US, chiefly Midwestern) IPA^(key): /??n??m?n??pi??/
• Rhymes: -i??

Noun

onomatopoeia (countable and uncountable, plural onomatopoeias or onomatopoeiae)

1. (uncountable) The property of a word of sounding like what it represents.
2. (countable) A word that sounds like what it represents, such as "gurgle" or "hiss".
   1. (countable) A word that appropriates a sound for another sensation or a perceived nature, such as "thud", "beep", or "meow"; an ideophone, phenomime.
3. (uncountable, rhetoric) The use of language whose sound imitates that which it names.

Synonyms

• echoism
• imitative harmony
• mimesis
• sound symbolism

Related terms

Translations

See also

• Wiktionary's category of English onomatopoeias

Latin

Alternative forms

• onomatopoeïa

Etymology

From the Ancient Greek ????????????? (onomatopoií?).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /o.no.ma.to?poe?.i.a/, [?n?mät???poe?iä]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /o.no.ma.to?pe.i.a/, [?n?m?t???p??i?]

Noun

onomatopoeia f (genitive onomatopoeiae); first declension

1. (rhetoric) onomatopoeia (the forming of a word to resemble in sound the thing that it signifies)

Declension

First-declension noun.

Descendants

• French: onomatopée
• English: onomatopoeia
• Italian: onomatopea
• Portuguese: onomatopeia
• Spanish: onomatopeya

References

• ?n?m?t?poeïa in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• ?n?m?t?pœ?a in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette, page 1,080/2
• onomatopoeia in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “onomatopoeia” on page 1,250/1 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st ed., 1968–82)