# Onomatopoeia > A word that imitates the sound it names: buzz, hiss, crash, sizzle, meow. Writers use it to put a sound straight into the reader's ear, and screenwriters use it in action lines to cue the sounds a scene depends on. Also known as sound words, onomatopoeic words, sound effect words ## In practice Onomatopoeia puts the sound itself on the page. "The door creaked" works faster than "the door made a long, high noise as it opened" because the reader hears the creak in the word before they have pictured the door. That is the device's whole power: it skips description and goes straight to the ear. Screenwriters use it more than most writers, because a screenplay has to tell the sound department what the audience will hear. Action lines traditionally capitalize important sounds ("a GUNSHOT cracks across the yard"), and a well-chosen sound word sets the rhythm of a scene the way a cut does. A THUD, a hiss of air brakes and a phone's buzz on a nightstand each tell the reader where to look next. The common mistakes are cartoon sound words in a scene that wants to be taken seriously ("KA-BLAM!" in a quiet drama), a sound word on every line until none of them land, and inventing a spelling so unusual the reader stops to decode it. Use the plainest word that makes the sound, save it for the sounds that matter, and let the rest of the line do the describing. ## Sound words that run a scene **A night shift in a hospital, told through what we hear** ``` INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR - NIGHT Fluorescent tubes HUM. Somewhere a monitor BEEPS, steady. NURSE ADAEZE (30s) pushes a squeaking cart past an empty nurses' station. ADAEZE (to the cart) One more lap and you get oil. I promise. The beeping stops. Silence. Then a long, flat TONE. Adaeze lets go of the cart. It rolls on without her, squeak, squeak, into the dark. She runs. ``` The scene is built from sound words: the hum, the beeps, the squeak of the cart. They set a routine so the reader feels its break before anyone says what happened. The flat tone needs no explanation, and the cart squeaking on alone keeps the sound going while the character leaves. Capitals mark the sounds the mix has to deliver; the last squeaks stay lowercase because they are texture, not a cue. ## What onomatopoeia is Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it names: buzz, hiss, sizzle, bang, thump, crackle, meow. Say one aloud and you make a version of the sound. The word comes from the Greek onomatopoiia, "the making of a name," from onoma (name) and poiein (to make), and it is pronounced on-uh-mat-uh-PEE-uh. Some sound words are pure imitation (boom, tick-tock, achoo). Others are ordinary words whose sound suits their meaning, such as murmur, whisper, slap and rumble, which grew out of imitation and became part of the language. Many animals and things are named for the sound they make: the cuckoo for its call, the whip-poor-will for its song, the ping-pong ball for its bounce. Onomatopoeia is usually counted among the sound devices, with alliteration, assonance and consonance, rather than among the figures of speech that compare, such as metaphor and simile. It does not compare one thing to another. It makes the word itself sound like the thing, which is why young readers learn it first and poets keep using it. ## Types of onomatopoeia Impacts and machines: bang, crash, thud, clang, whir, click, vroom. These carry most of the weight in action writing, because each one implies a size and a force. A thud is heavy and soft, a clang is metal, a crack is fast and sharp, so the word choice alone tells the reader what hit what. Voices and bodies: whisper, mumble, giggle, sniff, hiccup, gulp, sigh. These are the sound words a reader barely notices as sound words, and they do quiet work in dialogue and action: "she sniffs" and "he gulps" say how a character feels without a line of explanation. Nature and animals: drip, splash, rustle, howl, buzz, chirp, croak, and the animal calls children learn, from moo to quack. The same animal sounds different in every language: an English dog says woof, a German dog wau wau, a Spanish dog guau, a French dog ouaf, a Japanese dog wan wan and a Korean dog meong meong. Each language hears the bark through its own sounds. Some languages go further than sound. Japanese has a large family of mimetic words (giongo for sounds, gitaigo for states and movements, such as doki doki for a racing heart), and Korean has a similar pair (uiseongeo and uitaeeo). Manga and webtoons draw these words into the art, which is why translators of comics treat sound words as part of the picture. ## Onomatopoeia examples in literature and film Poets have built whole lines from it. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells" is the most famous: the bells make a "tintinnabulation," and in the alarm stanza they "clang, and clash, and roar!" Alfred Tennyson's "The moan of doves in immemorial elms, / And murmuring of innumerable bees" in The Princess uses moan and murmuring so that the line itself hums. Comics made sound words visible. The 1960s Batman television series flashed POW!, BAM! and WHAM! across the screen during fight scenes, borrowing straight from the comic page, and Roy Lichtenstein's 1963 painting Whaam! turned a comic-book explosion word into pop art. Superhero films still nod to it, but most screen action now leaves the sound to the mix. In fiction, onomatopoeia often sets a place. Prose that opens on the drip of a tap or the tick of a clock in an empty house makes the silence around it audible. In screenplays, it sets pace: a sequence written as THUD, then a pause, then a second THUD tells the reader, the director and the editor exactly how long the beat between them should feel. ## Onomatopoeia in a screenplay Screenplay convention capitalizes sounds that matter in action lines: "a car HORN blares," "the safe CLICKS open." The capitals tell the sound team which effects the story depends on, and they help a reader skim to the beats. Spec scripts use them more sparingly than shooting scripts do, so pick the sounds the plot or the tension actually turns on. Write the sound in the plainest word that fits, and attach it to its source so the reader knows what made it: "Glass SHATTERS in the kitchen" rather than a bare "SHATTER." A sound with no source can be a deliberate mystery, as in a horror scene where something THUMPS overhead, but then the missing source is the point of the line. Let sound words carry rhythm. Short action lines with one sound each read like cuts ("Footsteps. Closer. A KNOCK."), while a long sentence with a sound buried in the middle reads like a single, steady shot. The same few words, arranged differently, give the editor a different scene. ## How to use onomatopoeia well Choose the sound word for its exact size. A door can creak, groan, click, slam or bang, and each word is a different door, a different person behind it and a different moment. If you find yourself adding an adverb ("slammed loudly"), the verb is probably the wrong sound. Match the register of the story. Comic-book sound words suit comedy, children's books and stylized action; in realistic fiction the same words can break the spell. In literary prose, the quietest sound words (rustle, tick, hum) usually do the most, because they make the reader listen harder. Then read the passage aloud. Onomatopoeia is written for the ear, so test it with the ear: if a sound word makes you stumble, sounds sillier than the moment or repeats a sound you already used, change it or cut it. ## Official sources & context Sources reviewed Oct 29, 2026 - [Merriam-Webster — Onomatopoeia](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/onomatopoeia) ## Common questions ### What is onomatopoeia in simple terms? Onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like the thing it describes. When you say "buzz," "pop" or "splash," the word itself makes the sound, so the reader hears it as they read. ### What are some examples of onomatopoeia? Common examples include bang, boom, buzz, click, crash, drip, fizz, hiss, hum, meow, moo, pop, sizzle, splash, thud, tick-tock, whisper and zoom. Famous literary ones include Poe's bells that "clang, and clash, and roar" and Tennyson's "murmuring of innumerable bees." ### How do you pronounce onomatopoeia? Say it as on-uh-mat-uh-PEE-uh, with the stress on the "pee." The spelling is the hard part: it is o-n-o-m-a-t-o-p-o-e-i-a, with "poe" in the middle, from the Greek for "making a name." ### Is onomatopoeia a figure of speech? It is usually grouped with the figures of speech in a broad sense, but it is more precisely a sound device, like alliteration and assonance. It works through the sound of the word rather than through a comparison, which is how metaphor and simile work. ### Is "haha" an example of onomatopoeia? Yes. Words that imitate human sounds, such as haha, achoo, hiccup, gulp, shh and mm-hmm, are onomatopoeia. They are among the most common, and readers rarely notice them as a device. ### Do other languages have onomatopoeia? Every language does, and each hears sounds differently. A rooster says cock-a-doodle-doo in English, kikeriki in German, quiquiriquí in Spanish, cocorico in French, kokekokko in Japanese and kkokkio in Korean. Japanese and Korean also have large families of mimetic words for feelings and movements as well as sounds. ### Should you write sound effects in a screenplay? Write the sounds the story depends on, in the action lines, usually with the key sound in capitals: "the phone RINGS." Leave out sounds the scene implies, and avoid comic-book spellings unless the tone is comic. A few precise sound words help the reader; dozens become noise. ## Related terms - [Action](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/action): The descriptive prose of a screenplay — what the audience sees and hears, written in present tense. Also called description. - [Diegetic sound](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/diegetic-sound): Sound that comes from inside the story's world, so the characters can hear it: dialogue, a car radio, a band in the room. Non-diegetic sound is added for the audience alone, like the score or a narrator talking to us. - [Alliteration](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/alliteration): The repetition of the same starting sound in words close together: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," "busy as a bee." It makes names, titles, slogans and lines of dialogue stick. - [Figurative language](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/figurative-language): Words used beyond their literal meaning to create an image, a feeling or an idea: metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, irony and the other figures of speech. "It's raining cats and dogs" is figurative; "it's raining hard" is literal. --- Canonical page: