Phonaesthesia

For this latter term, phonaesthesia is doubtless at work, since kring is also ‘the sound of a small bell’.

In contrast, writers of bucolic dialogues, like George Meriton, for instance, and lively song-writers like Robert Anderson in Cumberland, seem drawn to expressive lexis, marked by sound patterns of reduplication, alliteration and phonaesthesia.

Phonaesthesia refers to the vaguer phenomenon whereby families of words with shared phonemes sometimes evoke related meanings in a not-quite-echoic manner.

Those in (1.15) illustrate a weaker type of iconicity, generally known as phonaesthesia: the consonant cluster ‘fl’ seems to suggest quick movement, but it is not a direct representation of movement, or speed.