interjectionsonomatopoeiasingle-word-requests
I saw this other question, but it's not quite what I'm asking.
A bell makes a sound. How would you write that sound in English? As an interjection, e.g. "boom!"
I'm sure it varies with the type and size of bell. I'd be happy to hear any and all variations.
The first line of an old question of mine reads: Scottish dogs used to waff
Further on, I quote:
The onomatopoeic waff (17th C) which means to bark or to yelp like a dog is, sad to say, virtually obsolete but its modern-day counterpart, woof (19th C), still thrives.
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary
- adj Waff waf (Scot.) weak, worthless, paltry
- n Waff a worthless person
- n Waff waf (Scot.) a slight hasty motion: a quick light blow: a sudden ailment: a faint but disagreeable odour: a ghost.
- n Waff waf an obsolete form of wave.
- v.i Waff waf (prov.) to bark
Source: The English Dialect Dictionary By Joseph Wright
There's nothing new under the sun, people have been bestializing man's behaviour and personality since antiquity, the Scots used the onomatopoeic waff to describe someone worthless, someone who would leave no mark or visible trace of their existence after death.
Hence (1) Waffinger, (2) Waffipoke, sb. a vagabond; a worthless, good-for-nothing person;
(3) Waffish, adj. disreputable; immoral;
(5) Waff-looking, ppl.adj. of a disreputable, suspicious appearance. [. . . ]
- Wauf-like painted women, STEVENSON Catriona (1893) xxiii
As can be seen, women were not exempt from being compared to canines. Perhaps wauff-like gave rise to the expression she's a real dog, a highly unattractive and unpleasant girl or woman.
This sound is used as an actual phoneme in many African languages such as Xhosa. In other words, in many languages this sound appears as part of a word. The technical name for a sound of this type is an unvoiced alveolar lateral click. In English speaking cultures, this sound is only used non-verbally, where it can have a variety of meanings. For example, English speaking horse-riders will use this sound to encourage their horses to start to move, or speed up. We also sometimes use this when winking as a gesture of camaraderie with the person we're winking to.
For an audio example of a voiceless alveolar lateral click see here.
For instructions on how to make them, see this video here.
If unvoiced alveolar lateral click is too long, you could of course, refer to it simply as a click.
Best Answer
Ringing sounds (nouns)
bell – the sound that a bell makes when it rings
bong – a long deep sound that a bell makes
chime – a ringing sound made by a bell, or by a clock with a bell inside it
ding – the short sound that a bell makes
ding-dong – the sound that a bell makes
jingle – the sound that small metal objects make when they hit each other
peal – a sound of several bells ringing
ping – a short high sound like the sound of a small bell
ring – the sound that a bell produces
ring – a sound like a bell
ting-a-ling – the high clear sound that a small bell makes
tinkle – a high ringing sound
tintinnabulation – the sound of bells
tocsin – a warning signal made by the sound of a bell
toll – the loud slow repeated sound of a large bell
—“Ringing Sounds” at Macmillan Dictionary and Thesaurus