December 1, 1887.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGK 



27 



iisty, and, figuratively, pleasant to the niind. The Chinese 

 child-word for eating is yuan, English nim. The Swedish 

 dictionary recognises nam-nam as a word for tit-bit, and I 

 well remember in the first pantomime I ever saw — " Puss 

 in Boots " — the Puss, which had stolen some honey, making 

 use of the expression : — 



Nnm-num, isn't it nice, 



A flavour far superior to mice ? 



an expression which, by the by, found its way into my 

 family on that occasion, and has survived witli us ever 

 since. A little tbree-year-old friend of mine calls everytliing 

 that she considers nice munmi/na. Such imitative words 

 are readily formed by children, and sometimes survive by 

 being taken up and repeated by the elders of the family ; 

 but they generally disappear when the ordinary word ap- 

 plied to the object indicated is fcxught to the little ore. 



As regards the second class, that of words derived by 

 imitation of sounds produced by animals other than man, a 

 great deal has been said by all writers on language, so much 

 so indeed that a favourite theory of the origin of language 

 has been nicknamed by Professor Max Miiller the " Bow- 

 wow theory." A very few instances will therefore suffice 

 for my present purpose. 



In Enghsh, animals are rarely named from their sounds, 

 except in the language of the nursery, as mov, cow ; baa, 

 lamb, sheep ; botv-icoic, dog ; and similar instances might be 

 cited from other European languages. To show how general 

 this tendency is we may observe that the natives of the 

 north-east coast of Papua call a dog hoir-voir ■, in Au.s- 

 tralian iu-onk is frog ; in Coptic leio, ass ; in Chinese maou, 

 cat. Corresponding with the English bumble-bee we find 

 Sanskrit banibhardti, a fly ; Greek bombulos, Australian 

 humberoo, from the buzzing sound produced by the motion 

 of the creature's wings through the air. Corresponding 

 with our cock, nursery cockadoodeldoo, we find in the 

 Spanish nursery language qtdqiiiriqui, Yoruba koHo, Ibo 

 okoko, Zulu kiiku, Finnish kiikku, Sanskrit kukkiilta. M. 

 Taine's little girl used the word koko for chicken (in French 

 nursery language this is a general word for bird), mia-ova 

 for dog, and mia for cat, imitating as nearly as possible the 

 utterances of the creatures themselves. When the cat was 

 introduced into Egypt from Xubia, the Egyptians called it 

 miaii. 



The third class mentioned in my l^st article, that of 

 words derived from imitation of sounds produced by motions 

 of inanimate things, is obviously a very large one, far 

 exceeding the other two classes in extent. Thus we have 

 the rush of air, the sv-ish of water against obstacles, the roar 

 of waves, the sigh of the breeze, the min'mtir of the sea at 

 rest, the jAash of its wavelets on the pebbles of the beach, 

 and so on. To come to less poetical examples, we have 

 the crasli of broken glass, the slaj) of flesh again.st flesh, the 

 bang of a door or explosion, the ^«'?i;/ of a bullet, the sriap of 

 fingers or a clasp, the tingling o/ an ear which las been 

 boxed (a subjective sound, the imitation of which Las given 

 a name to the tingling of any part of the body, other than 

 the ear, that has been struck), the pop of a pop-covn or /'Cj7- 

 gun — a word which by similarity, based on the idea of 

 quick motion, has been applied to the poji/ting of anything 

 into one's pocket or elsewhere; and by similarity, lased on 

 the idea of explosive force, to the jwpping of a certain 

 momentous question. Again, we have the blazing of a fire, 

 and " Go to blazes ! " is a polite intimation that the person 

 addressed may retire to warmer regions. Then we have 

 " the smasher-and-banger " school of musicians. To kick is 

 a seemingly imitative word, as also to grumble, grov:l, moan, 

 groan ; to dot, as with a pencil on paper and jot down 

 notes; to brrish, ivash, sireep, rub, clap the hands, /o/^ out 

 the tongue — a word applied also to lolling on a sofa, for 



example, the idea of limpness giving rise to this transference. 

 From the imitation of the sound of rapid revolution in 

 air we have the word p-hirr, whence German trirren, to 

 twist ; French virer, English veer, as a ship or weather- 

 cock : ichirl, whorl, varp, vorm, in the sense of icriggler, 

 whence, also, the derivative vorm of a screw oi- helix. 

 The sound is heard also in %mthe, wreath, lortnch, wrest, 

 wrist, wring, v:rap, wry ; Latin, varus (with crooked 

 legs), varices ; English, varicose veins, vermis, verminari, 

 to breed worms or wi-ithe in pain — the Latin sound, 

 which we represent by v, being more properly a iv. Our 

 words vermilion, carmine, and crimson, which now ex- 

 press pure ideas of sight, are due to a word which appears 

 in Latin as vermis, in Sanskrit as krimi, a worm, the 

 colour being anciently obtained from a shell-fish, which, 

 when removed from the shell, resembles a worm in appear- 

 ance. To take another example, the sound of scratching 

 may be represented by kar or cliar (Greek x) ; in Latin, 

 car-ere or c«j'pere lanam is to card wool; crn-duus the teasel, 

 German krompal. The participle castus from this verb, 

 ca)'-ere, in the sense of to purify, gives rises to our chaste, 

 an abstract word, which at first sight certainly does not 

 appear to have an imitative origin. In Greek, from the 

 same sound come the woi'ds charasso, charakter, skariphiio — 

 our scar, scrape, scarify, scratch ; Norse scratha ; German 

 kraizen ; French gratter, whence our grate, and the Greek 

 grnphv, to write (really to scratch with a stylus) ; Latin 

 scrib-ere; German graben; Dutch krabelin; and English 

 scribble ; with a host of other derivatives, many of which 

 have by phonetic change lost all apparent sign of their 

 origin. Endless examples of this kind might be adduced 

 both from ancient and modern languages, and the process of 

 making words by imitation of natural sounds is stiU 

 adopted. 



New words imitative of sounds are coined every day 

 among ourselves. A curious instance of this struck me some 

 time ago, and I noted it down. Mr. E. J. Shepherd, 

 writing to the Za?ice< (December 12, 1884) the description 

 of an operation for strangulated hernia, said: "The stric- 

 ture was at the neck and yielded to the edge of the knife 

 with an audible snick." * The italics are my own. In 

 " Numa Roume-stan " M. Daudet depicts an old French lady 

 who is somewhat original in her speech, and refers for 

 example to "Cent mille francs en bon argent <iH-i^!«," thus 

 illustrating the ring of the true metal, and the fact of the 

 money being paid cash down. She also calls a certain 

 musician " Ce joueur de tutu- pan pan," upon which Daudet 

 remarks, " Ce ' tutu-panpan ' rendait si bien le double 

 instrument, fifre et tambour, que Eoumestan se mit a rire" 

 (p. 65). The word tambour is itself imitative of the sound 

 produced by the striking of parchment or some similar 

 membrane ; it is also seen in our tambourine, drum. The 

 sound of bleating is also expressed by the Eastern tom-tcm, 

 Javan tumbvk, Coptic tinno, to pound in a mortar, Malay 

 timpa tamjKi, to beat out, hammer, forge ; Chinook jargon 

 tmn-tiim, the heart, ium-Uiita, waterfall. The Gallas of East 

 Africa say, " tum-ium bufa-lvfti," the workman blows the 

 bellows, a phrase which would be similarly rendered by an 

 English child as: "The turn luvi (or man that hammers) 

 puffs the puffer." To smile or strike is in Sanskrit tup, 

 tubh, Greek tup, tump, whence tympanum, a drum. The 

 Gallas call a box on the ear tub-djcda (to say tub), while 

 luma with them means to beat, and fiimtu, as I have 

 said, a workman. Our word to patter is evidently imita- 

 tive, French pattatra. In Australian, badbadin equals 

 our pitpatting. The old word patterero, an old-fashioned 



* There is an obsolete English word snicJi, meaning a small cut 

 or notch, the origin of which is suggested by the above. It is not 

 at all likely that Mr. Shepherd had it in his mind, however. 



