This is a list of onomatopoeias , i.e. words that imitate, resemble, or suggest the source of the sound that they describe. For more information, see the linked articles.
For sounds listed by the name of the animal, see List of animal sounds.
English words for animal noises include:
Onomatopoeia is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as oink, meow, roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ by language: it conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system. Hence, the sound of a clock may be expressed variously across languages: as tick tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian, see photo, dī dā in Mandarin, kachi kachi in Japanese, or ṭik-ṭik in Hindi, Urdu and Bengali.
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from straightforward language use or literal meaning to produce a rhetorical or intensified effect. In the distinction between literal and figurative language, figures of speech constitute the latter. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into schemes, which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and tropes, where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify.
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons, first appearing in 1949 in the theatrical short Fast and Furry-ous. In each episode, the cunning, devious and constantly hungry coyote repeatedly attempts to catch and eat the roadrunner, but is humorously unsuccessful. Instead of using animal instinct, the coyote deploys absurdly complex contraptions to try to catch his prey. They comically backfire, with the coyote often getting injured in slapstick fashion. Many of the items for these contrivances are mail-ordered from a variety of companies implied to be part of the Acme Corporation. TV Guide included Wile E. Coyote in its 2013 list of "The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time".
The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo is a zoo in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. Since opening in 1965, the 1,000-animal zoo has been located on 40 acres (16 ha) in Fort Wayne's Franke Park. The Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo is operated by the non-profit Fort Wayne Zoological Society under a cooperative agreement with the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department. The zoo receives no tax funding for operations and operates solely on earned revenue and donations.
Pepé Le Pew is an animated character from the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, introduced in 1945. Depicted as a French anthropomorphic striped skunk, Pepé is constantly on the quest for love and pursuit of romance but typically his skunk odor causes other characters to run away from him.
Sheep in the Big City is an American animated television series created by Mo Willems for Cartoon Network. The 9th of the network's Cartoon Cartoons, the series' pilot first premiered as part of Cartoon Network's "Cartoon Cartoon Summer" on August 18, 2000, before its official debut on November 17, 2000. It aired until April 7, 2002, with repeats airing until 2003.
Colchester Zoo is a zoological garden situated near Colchester, England. The zoo opened in 1963 and celebrated its 60th anniversary on 2 June 2023. The zoo is home to many rare and endangered species, including big cats, primates and birds as well as many invertebrates and fish species.
Kachi-kachi Yama, also known as Kachi-Kachi Mountain and The Farmer and the Badger, is a Japanese folktale in which a tanuki is the villain, rather than the more usual boisterous, well-endowed alcoholic.
Timbuctoo is a series of 25 children's books, written and illustrated by Roger Hargreaves, better known for his Mr. Men and Little Miss series. It was published from 1978 to 1979, with selected reprints in 1993 and 1999. The books tell the stories of a group of animals, each of whom is named after the sound that their particular animal makes. An animated series of Timbuctoo was shown on CITV which ran from 9 January 1998 to 5 January 2000, narrated by Ronnie Corbett.
"Old MacDonald Had a Farm" is a traditional children's song and nursery rhyme about a farmer and the various animals he keeps. Each verse of the song changes the name of the animal and its respective noise. For example, if the verse uses a cow as the animal, then "moo" would be used as the animal's sound. In many versions, the song is cumulative, with the animal sounds from all the earlier verses added to each subsequent verse.
Aesop's Fables is a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Produced from 1921 to 1934, the series includes The Window Washers (1925), Scrambled Eggs (1926), Small Town Sheriff (1927), Dinner Time (1928), and Gypped in Egypt (1930). Dinner Time is the first cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack ever released to the public.
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? is a children's book written and illustrated by Theodor Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss and first published by Random House in 1970.
The Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band was a humorous musical group of amateur and professional musicians living in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, area who played a repertoire of polkas and light classical music while adopting a persona of mild confusion and wearing self-created uniforms once described as rejects from the Franco-Prussian War. The group originally formed one Christmas season in 1949 to play carols in Sausalito, California, and someone brought a book of polka music, possibly one of the "Hungry Five" books by Harry L. Alford whose music became a basic part of the Guckenheimer repertoire. The group became increasingly popular in northern California, often invited to play at wine festivals and openings and in later years for such august occasions as opening night of the San Francisco Symphony and the opera.
I'd Do Anything is a 2008 talent show-themed television series produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom and broadcast on BBC One. It premièred on 15 March 2008. The show centred on a search for a new, unknown lead to play Nancy and three young performers who would play Oliver Twist in the 2009 West End revival of the British musical Oliver!.
"All the Pretty Little Horses" is a traditional lullaby from the United States. It has inspired dozens of recordings and adaptations, as well as the title of Cormac McCarthy's 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses.
Sheep or domestic sheep are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female is referred to as a ewe, an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a young sheep as a lamb.
Because of the nature of onomatopoeia, there are many words which show a similar pronunciation in the languages of the world. The following is a list of some conventional examples:
Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The d'Antin Manuscript, published in 1967 by Luis d'Antin van Rooten, is purportedly a collection of poems written in archaic French with learned glosses. In fact, they are English-language nursery rhymes written homophonically as a nonsensical French text ; that is, as an English-to-French homophonic translation. The result is not merely the English nursery rhyme but that nursery rhyme as it would sound if spoken in English by someone with a strong French accent. Even the manuscript's title, when spoken aloud, sounds like "Mother Goose Rhymes" with a strong French accent; it literally means "Words of Hours: Pods, Paddles."