onomatopoeia

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ὀνοματοποιία (onomatopoiía, “the coining of a word in imitation of a sound”), from ὀνοματοποιέω (onomatopoiéō, “to coin names”), from ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”) + ποιέω (poiéō, “to make, to do, to produce”).

noun

1. (uncountable) The property of a word of sounding like what it represents.
   A woorde making called of the Grecians Onomatapoia, is when wee make wordes of our owne minde, such as bee derived from the nature of things. 1553, Thomas Wilson, Desiderius Erasmus, Arte of Rhetorique, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1909
2. (countable) A word that sounds like what it represents, such as "gurgle", "stutter", 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.