O N O 
Indicating its being fituated on the fea-coaflr, and thus 
diftinguifhing it from another Onoba, in the interior of 
the country, belonging to the Turduli. 
ONOBRO'MA, f. in botany. See Carthamus. 
ONOBRY'CHIS. See Astragalus, Campanula, 
Hedysarum, and Thesium. 
ONOCEN'TAUR, /.' A fabulous animal, fuppofed to be 
a compound of a man and an afs. y£lian (vii. 9.) fpeaks 
of onoc'entaurs. It was half-man and half-afs, as the cen¬ 
taur was half man and half-horfe.' 
ONOCPIO'RUS, in ancient geography, the name of one 
of the five principal rivers of Theffaly, according to He¬ 
rodotus and Pliny. 
ONOCLE'A, J. [fo called by Linnasus, from otot, a fort 
of veflel, and to fliut up. He appears to have 
taken" the idea from Mitchell, who gave the name of An- 
giopteris to this fern ; compofed of xyyetov, a veflel, and 
wIejjk, a fern.] In botany, a genus of the clafs cryptogamia, 
order filices, natural order of filices or ferns. Generic 
effentia! charafter—Capfules under the recurved and con¬ 
tracted pinnules of the frond, refentbling p'ericarps. There 
are two fpecies. 
1. Onoclea fenfibilis: fronds pinnate, fubracemofe at 
the tip. Fronds thin, pale green, even; thedivifions op- 
polite, wide, finuate ; fo very tender, that, on being 
touched, or ever fo little compreffed, they wither and pe- 
rifii. Native of Virginia. Cultivated in 1758 by Mr. 
Miller. It muft have been many years before in the 
Oxford garden, fince, in the third volume of the Hifloria 
Oxonienlis (1699), it is faid, that they had not been 
able to remark the fructification, though they had re¬ 
ceived it feveral years fince from Virginia, and had culti¬ 
vated it. 
2. Onoclea polypodioides : fronds bipinnate, fructifica¬ 
tions three-valved. Root creeping, filiform, Aiming, ru¬ 
fous; frond compound. Fructification as in Polypo¬ 
dium; calyx three-valved, or membranaceous, three-part¬ 
ed, cloven from the centre towards the bafe. Native of the 
Cape of Good Hope, in fiffures of the rocks near the 
top of the Table Mountain ; where it was found by 
Koenig. 
ONOL'OGY, f. [from the Gr. o>os, an afs, and \oyoq, a 
word.] A foolith way of talking. Cole. 
ONOLZ'BACH. 'See Ansfach, vol. i. 
ONOMAC'RITUS, a foothfayer of Athens. It is ge¬ 
nerally believed, that the Greek poem on, the Argonautic 
expedition, attributed to Orpheus, was written by Ono- 
macritus. The elegant poems of Mufieus are aifo, by 
fome, luppofed to be the production of his pen. He 
flourilhed about 516 years before the Chriltian era ; and 
was expelled from Athens by Hipparchus, one of the Ions 
of Pififtratus. Herodotus. 
ONOM'ANCY, f. [from the Gr. ovop.a., name, and 
fj.ufleici, divination.] Divination by a name.—Deltinies 
were fuperftitioufly, by onomancp, deciphered out of 
names, as though the names and natures of men were 
fuitable, and fatal neceflities concurred herein with vo¬ 
luntary motion. Camden. —See the article Name, vol. xvi. 
p. 514. 
ONOMAN'TICAL, adj. Predicting by names.—Theo- 
datus, when curious to know the fticcefs of his wars 
againft the Romans, an onomantical or name-wifard Jew 
willed him to fhut up a number of twine, and give fome 
of them Roman names, others Gothilh names, with feve¬ 
ral marks, and there to leave them. Camden. 
ONOMATECH'NY, f. [from the Gr. otopa, a name, 
and Tsj/pu, art.] Thefuppoled art of prognoftication front 
the letters of a name. Bailey. 
ONOMATOPCE'I A, [from the G r. oveux, name, and 
'zvoiew, I feign.] In rhetoric, a figure of Ipeech, whereby 
names and words are formed to the refemblance of the 
found made by the thing fignified. Thus, tric-trac, the 
French word tor back-gammon, is evidently formed front 
the noife made by moving the men at this game ; and 
from the fame lource arife the luz of bees, the gruntins- 
Vol. XVII. No. 1192. 3 
O N O 4f)"3 
of hogs, the cackling of hens, the fnoring of people afleep, 
the clajhing. of arms, &c. 
The fureft etymologies are thofe deduced from the 
onomatopoeia. Indeed, it is natural that a confiderable 
part of every language, in its infancy, fltould be formed 
by onomatopoeia; i. e. the imitation of things by the w'ords 
exprefiing them: but, as the machinery of language be¬ 
comes more complicated, its rules and ufages entirely ar¬ 
bitrary, and its abft'raCfiohs infinitely multiplied, the new 
terms which are from time to time introduced will pro¬ 
bably have more frequent reference td the existing no¬ 
menclature, with which all are conversant in nearly an 
equal degree, than to- any fuppofed agreement between 
the found and the fenfe, which, though founded in na¬ 
ture, muft be always loofe and uncertain, and fubjeCt to 
inceffant variations, from the different manner in vVhich 
the fenfes of different perfons are likely to be affeCted by 
external objeCts. Some dalles of words, however, which 
are formed on the principle of imitation, can fcarcely fail 
to ftand their ground, in fpite of every change ; as, when 
they are borrowed from the firftand fimpleft exclamations 
of children, from the more peculiar cries of animals, and 
from the ftriking phenomena of nature, which affeCt the 
hearing. Thus, the names deferipti ve of the parental re¬ 
lation, are almoft univerfally the fame ; the cock, the 
owl, and the cuckoo, in molt of the European tongues, 
have appellations which echo to their fereams; while 
the torrent thunders down from the mountains in founds 
correlponding to its Jlunning murmurs. Affociations like 
thefe appear to be almoft unavoidable : but many others, 
of'a more accidental nature, and wdiich are connected by 
a (lighter tie, are ealily difplaced by the various caufes 
that influence the formation of languages. Thus, in 
French, the imitative power of the verb ecrafcr (to exprefs 
the crajh that accompanies a break or fraCture) is nearly 
loll in its fynonym coffer ; the grating of the Latin J'erra 
is not dilcernible in the French Jcie, or the Englilh Jaw ; 
and the guggling or gurgling of liquor poured out of a 
bottle, in French glouglou, has no antitype in our gene¬ 
rally-received modern word, to decant. Again, it may 
be obferved that, as the imitation performed by pro¬ 
nouncing a w'ord is momentary, different parts of a fuc- 
ceflive operation will be imitated by different w’ords. 
Cracker expreffes the fame idea as to (pit; but the former 
relates to the collecting of the faliva, and the latter to its 
extrufion : toujj'er is fynonimous with to cough, but thefe 
two words are derived from two different modes of the 
fame aCtion : while it is clear that all the four words fall 
ftriCUy within the defeription of onomatopaia. 
In the year 1808, M. Nodier publiflied, at Paris, an 
“ Explanatory Dictionary of French Words formed by 
Onomatopoeia .” We were rather furprifed at finding them 
fo numerous ; fince, after all juftifiable deductions on the 
fcore of fanciful analogies and overftrained ingenuity, 
the fobereft reader will hardly deny, that a very large ma¬ 
jority of the w'ords noticed by this author belong to his 
fubjeCt. The whole number is confiderably above four 
hundred ; and it has feldom fallen to our lot to examine 
an etymological fyftem founded on a furerbafis, or con¬ 
ducted in a more reafonable manner. Without 'endea¬ 
vouring, like the ingenious. Mr. Whiter, to involve me- 
taphyfical abftraCtionsin elementary lounds, and to endow 
the unconfcious vowels and confonants with moral pro¬ 
perties, he traces all imitation to the relation fubfilting 
between certain founds and our fenlations: thofe in par¬ 
ticular that are appropriate to the hearing, to which all 
fpeech is addreffed, and by which all the Ipoken figns of 
objefls are tranfmitted. Sounds cannot of themfelves 
exprefs the fenlations of fight, of tafte, of the touch, of the 
fmell : but thefe fenlations may be compared to a certain 
point with thofe of hearing, and manifefted by their af- 
liftance ; and, by metaphors the mod natural and eafy, 
(for they abound in the primitive languages and in the 
prattling of children,) terms peculiar to one fenfe are 
made fubfervient to an exprefiion of the effeCts created 
'6K by 
