Learn English – n equivalent of ‘onomatopoeia’ for words inspired by the appearance of thing

single-word-requests

'Onomatopoeia' is a reasonably common word used to describe words that sound like the sounds they're used to describe. I was wondering whether there was an analogous term for words that sound like what their meanings look like — words like 'glint' or 'shimmer'.

Best Answer

An ideophone — a word that sounds like its idea or concept.

It's quite a general term that could include onomatopoeia. There are other terms for certain types of sound symbolism.