Crossword clues for echoic
The Collaborative International Dictionary
echoic \echoic\ adj.
-
(linguistics) Formed in imitation of a natural sound; -- of words. Contrasted to nonechoic.
Syn: imitative, onomatopoeic, onomatopoeical, onomatopoetic.
-
Like or characteristic of an echo.
Syn: echolike.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1880; see echo (n.) + -ic. A word from the OED.\n\nOnomatopoeia, in addition to its awkwardness, has neither associative nor etymological application to words imitating sounds. It means word-making or word-coining and is strictly as applicable to Comte's altruisme as to cuckoo. Echoism suggests the echoing of a sound heard, and has the useful derivatives echoist, echoize, and echoic instead of onomatopoetic, which is not only unmanageable, but when applied to words like cuckoo, crack, erroneous; it is the voice of the cuckoo, the sharp sound of breaking, which are onomatopoetic or word-creating, not the echoic words which they create.
[James A.H. Murray, Philological Society president's annual address, 1880]
Wiktionary
a. 1 Of or pertaining to an echo 2 imitative of a sound; onomatopoeic.
WordNet
adj. (of words) formed in imitation of a natural sound; "onomatopoeic words are imitative of noises"; "it was independently developed in more than one place as an onomatopoetic term"- Harry Hoijer [syn: imitative, onomatopoeic, onomatopoeical, onomatopoetic] [ant: nonechoic]
like or characteristic of an echo [syn: echolike]
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "echoic".
From down the stairs came the echoic yelp of a dog, then the bang of a door.
My thoughts took on a curiously echoic quality, like a telephone line that is not properly damped at the other end.
Again the Ard-righ spoke, turning his head about so that as many might hear as possible, even in the echoic vastness of that building that could have contained many, many houses.