Writing with Dazzle and Pizzazz
Kathryn Wilkens -- December 27, 2008
Writers--poets especially--have long made use of onomatopoeia, words like chirp, drip, fizz, hiss, jingle, knock, neigh, oink and rattle. Also called echoic, these words came into existence as humans attempted to mimic sounds in nature with their voices.
But hearing is only one of our senses. Are there words that appeal to other senses, like sight and touch? Yes, there are hundreds of expressive words that we can use to enliven our writing.
Only a few words actually look like what they mean. Most of them are single-letter words, like V in "The geese flew overhead in a V." Others seem to have a visual element, although I'll admit it's probably coincidental. The word foam contains two vowels that look to me like air bubbles. Strength is a fortress of consonants. The word curlicue looks sort of curly, and monotonous with its four o's looks rather boring.
How about sense of touch? Are there words that feel like what they mean? Yes--the word itch is a good example. Chilly, fluffy, gooey, scratchy and squishy all have a tactile quality. And if we extend our definition of touch to include movement as well, then a whole world of expressive, kinetic words opens up. Consider wobble, oomph, squirm, teeter and zigzag. They sound like what they mean; they appeal to our senses rather than our intellect.
This phenomenon is called sound symbolism. One of the best examples is the word puff. Its definition is "a short quick blast, as of wind or breath." And how do your lips form the word? By emitting a short quick blast of breath with the p, then extending the sound with the airy f's.
You can probably think of many words whose meanings seem inherent in their sounds. How about swoon? I get a sense of falling from the sw and the double o's seem like eyes rolling back, and the n is like a soft landing on a divan. Or ooze. It sounds like the o's are an opening for a viscous liquid to leak out slowly.
Maybe my imagination is working overtime, and it's coincidental that certain words evoke a vivid image. But don't shiver and shudder give the sensation of shaking shoulders? Don't crinkle and wrinkle evoke small turnings or bendings? When you hear sputter, spatter and splatter, don't you visualize flying drops of liquid?
Others are not coincidental; their meanings are related to the letters that comprise them. Since the sounds represented by r, l, and m are easy to articulate, words like roll, mellow and loll have a relaxed feel. The multiple g's of gargle, gag, and giggle are sounded deep in the throat where gargling, gagging and giggling take place. Gush, rush, flush, swoosh and whoosh incorporate the feel of flowing water or air because of the final /sh/ sound.
What is the minimal sound you could make with your mouth? Something like mum, so it's appropriate that its definition is "silent." The words mumble, mutter and murmur have the same sense of small or unintelligible sound. It takes more effort to make the complex /j/ sound, and many words that start with it have a jarring feel: jiggle, jittery, jog, jolt, jounce and jerky.
Twirl, whirl, curl and swirl incorporate a circular motion, perhaps because your lips form a circle and your tongue curls when you say them. In contrast, there's a lurching, uneven quality to jagged, ragged and stagger.
Violent pressure is connoted by crash, crush, crunch, squash and squelch, all single-syllable words heavy with consonant clusters. Words ending in -le often refer to repeated actions or movements: chuckle, haggle, jiggle, wiggle, tickle, twinkle and many others.
Many words that start with fl- are related in meaning to flow which means "to move along in a stream." The stream might be water, as in flood, fluent, fluid, flume; light, as in flame, flare, flicker, flash; or air, as in fleet, fling, float, flutter and fly.
An oblique or sneaky movement runs through slither, slide, slip, slick, slink, sling and slash. There's a wavering or curliness in dazzle, frazzle, frizz, fuzz, fizzle and swizzle. You can almost see the light bouncing off shimmer, shine and sheen.
Several words that start with gl- also seem to emit light: gleam, glow, glare, glint, glitter, glisten, glossy and glimmer. But before we decide there's a rule that all words starting with gl- pertain to light, we have to realize there are many words that do not fit the pattern, such as glop and glitch. These word groups show an intriguing tendency toward a common meaning, but they don't conform to hard-and-fast rules.
Sets of rhyming words sometimes contain similar ideas. There's an element of awkwardness in the meanings of bumble, crumble, fumble, jumble, stumble and tumble; and an unpleasantness in bump, chump, dump, hump, lump, plump, rump and stump.
Words for people we dislike usually contain offbeat sounds. Twit, twerp, jerk, nerd, dweeb, creep, doofus, kook and schmendrick all have a negative connotation. Similarly, words that refer to unsavory things may have disagreeable sounds--zit, slop, vomit, tumor and carbuncle.
Developing an awareness of words' sounds and feelings will help fine-tune your diction. A mouse scampers, but an elephant lumbers. The sound of scamper connotes smallness, whereas lumber sounds deep and large. When you are deciding between two synonyms, consider which is more vivid and lively. Choose swerve over deviate, soothe over pacify, sparkle over coruscate and squeeze over compress.
Many naturally suggestive words have been around for centuries, tracing their histories back to Old English or even Indo-European. Some are blends of other expressive words. Twiddle comes from twitch and fiddle, and squiggle blends squirm and wriggle. If you look up the etymologies of others, you'll find "of imitative origin" or "of expressive origin."
But most of these words you never have to look up in the dictionary. They're like old friends you've known since childhood. They may not be as highbrow as the fancy words you learned in college, but they are cozy and comfortable. When I began writing, I thought I had to demonstrate my erudition by using big words. I racked up a lot of rejections before I switched to a more informal style.
Your readers will gobble up these acoustic, tactile and kinetic words. Such words seem to jump off the page. They spark instant recognition, bypassing the part of the brain that has to grapple with words derived from Latin and Greek. We writers are often admonished to "show instead of tell." Expressive words do just that--each one is a glittering gem of imagery.
So if you want to dazzle your readers and add pizzazz to your poetry and prose, consider not only the meanings of words, but also the way they sound, feel and move.