One has to make careful distinctions here. What the linguists call the 'transparencies' behind words (namely, the link between word and meaning that enabled the original word to be accepted) includes, among others, onomatopoeia and synaesthesia. There are examples of these that present no chance of confusion: for example, 'creak' is a SOUND-SOUND link, and is plainly onomatopoeic; Keats's line in 'Lamia' -- 'She writhed about, convulsed with scarlet pain', uses the colour scarlet as an image for a pain, which is an example of a COLOUR-PAIN link, a synaesthetic one. Synaesthesia applies to links across sensory modalities (both actual ones, for example, for those persons who have sensory experiences of colour when they hear certain musical keys, etc.) and synaesthetic links as transparencies in words ('a loud perfume', 'acacia' -- a thorny tree). However, there is a form of synaesthesia that it is easy to mistake for onomatopoeia. Thus occurs when the SOUND of the word is linked to an item in another sensory modality. Note that in the plain synaesthetic cases the sound of the word is idle -- to describe a perfume as 'loud' as John Donne did, does not depend for its effect on the sound of the word. However, if we describe a smell as 'acrid', there is no doubt that the 'sharp' phonemes bear a likeness to the sensations in the nose. This is a SOUND-FEELING link, a synaesthetic one. The 'sharpness' of the sound results from the fact that the phoneme /k/ contains a markedly rapid change of sound, the rapidity of the change matching the distinctness of the feeling. Similarly, the second of Tennyson's lines here from 'The Lotos-Eaters': 'And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff, to fall and pause and fall did seem' The second line here matches the hesitating and repeated SOUND of the words to the SIGHT of the stream falling from ledge to ledge. Carroll's 'snicker-snack' thus contains synaesthetic likenesses between the SOUND of the words and the SIGHT of the blade quickly slicing through the Jabberwock's neck. The doubling of the consonants also produces that type of half-rhyme known as 'pararhyme' (see Wilfred Owen's poem 'Strange Meeting', which uses it throughout), and this rhythm makes salient the speed and satisfactory completion of the act, like some rapid machine finishing its performance in seconds. There is, however, no rule which says that onomotopoeia and synaesthesia cannot work together, and here I do sense also that the SOUND of the words does match the SOUND of the blade as it slices. So onomatopoeia is a SOUND-SOUND transparency, and synaesthesia applies to any cross-modality one, e.g. COLOUR-PAIN, and so it does include SOUND-SIGHT, SOUND-FEELING, SOUND-SMELL, etc. If on some other planet the language-using species employed light as their medium of communication (there are sea-creatures on earth that use light to signal), then a red light would mean 'red', their equivalent of an example of onomatopoeia, and if one word used a red light for the sound of a trumpet that would be an example of synaesthesia. Edmond Dr. Edmond Wright 3 Boathouse Court Trafalgar Road Cambridge CB4 1DU England Email: [log in to unmask] Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33 Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/