The subjects tended to match words with a high vowel (such as ee) to the small object and those with a low vowel (such as the o in 'cot') to the larger object. He points to a 1929 experiment by Edward Sapir in which Sapir's subjects were asked to match nonsense words with small and large versions of the same object.The common feature of sound occurring in a group of symbolic words 1 Several 2 of the words you are describing feature a phon(a)estheme 3 which contributes to your sense that their meaning is somehow reflected in their sound. I believe you could say that these words are phon(a)esthemic. Thanks in advance for the help, let me know if I can clarify this at all!

'The word Twinkle is a - because it sounds sparkly and light when spoken which is appropriate to its meaning, but not directly connected' Since I have tagged this as a single word request here is a sample sentance: I am convinced that at some point I knew the answer to this question but I have since forgotten it. These words sound like the things they mean when spoken without explicitly meaning their sound.Ĭontrast this to onomatopoeias whos meaning is only their sound: Splash (this might just be an onomatopoeia).This is hard for me to explain (also hard to google) so I am going to give some examples: To my understanding this would differ from an onomatopoeia in that onomatopoeia's deal with the denotation of a word. What I am looking for is a word that describes words that are read with a sound representative of their connotation. Hi this is something I've been looking for an answer to for a while now,

Iword sounds like goonthita