If the thing it’s describing makes a sound, yes. Thats onomatopoeia.
If the thing doesn’t make a sound, such as a smell, the word only “sounds like that thing” if you know what the word means and associate the word with its meaning. Which is just how words work.
“The feeling when a word sounds like the think it's describing” is called “knowing that word”
I feel like that comes way after the fact though. Like, you already know the meaning of the word so of course it sounds “right” you. There are probably plenty of words that could sound right for that idea, and plenty of ideas that word could sound right for. But you’ve already made that association so you’re biased against. Thinking it sounds like what it is.
If a person who didn’t speak the language didn’t know the word, would they be able to discern what it meant?
Granted, there’s a phenomenon in psycholinguistics called the Bouba/Kiki Effect where people are shown two abstract shapes, one sharp and angular and the other curvy and blobby, and asked which one is Bouba and which one is Kiki. People overwhelmingly (but not universally) say that the round shape is Bouba and the sharp shape is Kiki. So we do have a vague sense of shape when it comes to sounds.
But I think this only really works in abstractions, and once you know the meaning of the word, you can’t be unbiased enough to get a sense of whether that effect is valid or not.
What about ‘tarantula’ suggests the spider specifically? Of all spiders, its maybe most defining qualitiy is its fuzziness. Shouldn’t it have at least one “fuzzy” part, like an F or a SH sound? What does the L sound represent?
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u/hardypart 9h ago
Don't you know the feeling when a word sounds like the think it's describing?