Meaning & use
echoic
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a nountechnical
Formed to imitate a natural sound, so that the word sounds like the thing it names.
Grammar: Usually comes before a noun: an echoic word.
Patterns
- an echoic word
- echoic of something
Buzz and hiss are echoic words.
Linguists call the name cuckoo echoic because it copies the bird's call.
The poem is full of echoic effects that mimic rain.
adjectivebefore a nounrare
Relating to or resembling an echo, such as a sound that repeats.
Grammar: Used before nouns for repeated sounds: an echoic response.
Patterns
- echoic memory
The cave produced an echoic effect on every footstep.
Psychologists study echoic memory, the brief store of sounds just heard.
Common combinations
- echoic word
- Splash is an echoic word.
- echoic origin
- The word has an echoic origin.
- echoic memory
- Echoic memory lasts only a few seconds.
- echoic speech
- Some young children use echoic speech, repeating what they hear.
Synonyms and how they differ
- onomatopoeic
- It means the same for word formation and is the more common term outside specialist writing.
- imitative
- It is wider, since it can describe any copying, not only of sounds.
- reverberant
- It describes a sound that bounces back, not a word that copies a sound.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: echoic or ecoic? echoic or eco-?
echoic vs ecoic
This is a misspelling; the correct form has the h and is echoic.
echoic vs eco-
This prefix relates to the environment and has nothing to do with sound.
Practice
Which of these is an echoic word?
Choose one answer.
Murmur imitates a soft low sound. Table, quickly and because have no connection to sounds they name.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “echoic”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.