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Most Philologists have hitherto held the opinion that, in general, no satisfactory account can be given of the origin of language. They can trace a word from one language to another, and can account for its various forms and changes by laws now generally understood; but they confess their inability to explain what determined the original form of its root. They take that original form for granted, as a sort of intuitive truth which must be admitted as a necessity. They can explain the circumstances of its career; but of its first cause or nature they profess to understand little or nothing.

But though this is the general opinion, all linguists admit that in every language certain words, more especially those that convey ideas of sound, are formed on the principle of onomatopœia; i.e. an attempt to make the pronunciation conform to the sound. Such English words as ‘hiss,’ ‘roar,’ ‘bang,’ ‘buzz,’ ‘crash,’ &c., are of this class. One can hardly pronounce these words without, in some sense, performing the acts which they represent.

One school of linguists have lately expressed a belief that all words were formed on this principle. A very curious illustration of this view is given in Mr. Wedgwood’s ‘Origin of Language.’ Explaining the interjection Hem, he says, it was originally an attempt to stop some one. We are supposed to be walking behind some person; we wish to stop him, and we exclaim, ‘Hem!’ This is given as the primary meaning of the word. ‘The sound is here an echo to the sense.’ But hem is used in other ways; either as a noun, or a verb; always, however, retaining its original idea of restricting, or keeping back. The hem of a garment is what prevents the thread from ravelling. Again, soldiers are sometimes hemmed in by the enemy; that is, prevented from using their free will to go where they choose. This illustration is intended to prove that the principle of onomatopœia applies not only to words that represent sound, but, by analogy, to other meanings derived from that principle. There is sound implied in the interjection hem; though in the noun and the verb, both derived from that interjection, no idea of sound is conveyed.

This connection between sound and sense is certainly a natural principle; and however scornfully it may have been ridiculed by some philosophers, it has undoubtedly produced many very fine passages in the poetry of both ancient and modern times.

1. The chorus of frogs in Aristophanes, where their croaking is represented by words invented for the occasion:

Βρεκεκεξ, κοαξ, κοαξ.

This is, to say the least of it, very ingenious, and, in its way, beautiful, because true.

2. The same principle seems to apply in the πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης (poluphloisboio thalassēs) of Homer, where the first word was probably intended to represent the roaring of the wave mounting on the sea-shore; and the second, the hissing sound which accompanies a receding billow.

3. Another example of onomatopœia, in Virgil’s Æneid, viii. 452, has been often quoted:

‘Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum;’

where the succession of dactyls is admirably adapted to represent the sound of the hoofs of a galloping horse.

4. Several examples of the same figure may be found in Milton. Describing the thronging of the fallen angels in Pandemonium:

Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,

Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings.

5. Also, speaking of the gates of hell:

… open fly

Th’ infernal doors; and on their hinges grates

Harsh thunder …

Here the recurrence of the letter r is well calculated to convey the idea of a harsh, creaking, grating sound.

6. A similar effect is produced in Tasso’s ‘Gerusalemme Liberata.’

Il rauco son della Tartarea tromba.

This connection between sound and sense may very probably exist in many words where we now fail to perceive it; but in the present state of our knowledge of the subject, we can hardly pronounce positively in favour of this view as applied to the whole body of a language. The question remains, for the present, in abeyance.