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Comment by euroclydon | Hacker News Reader

I have a friend who, every time he tell someone what onomatopoeia means, points out that, oddly enough, onomatopoeia is not itself onomatopoeic.

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Which means that onomatopoeic is a heterological adjective - an adjective which does not describe itself.

Is "heterological" a heterological adjective?

- Grelling and Nelson, 1908.

I would gladly swap 50% of the typical HN front page material for more stuff like this.

i didnt understand anything except the word pizza, which i go and order right now

>onomatopoeia is not itself onomatopoeic.

It would be very difficult to do that since onomatopoeia is a concept and concepts don't make sounds.

Some argue that "cliche" is onomatopoeic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliche#Origin

A world like onomatopoeia being onomatopoeic isn't that far-fetched. Perhaps the word could be named after a very common onomatopoeia, perhaps one that has gone out of use. A word with that sort of etymology is "shibboleth" - its current meaning is derived from what was a common shibboleth.

I've always liked the idea of "conceptual onomatopoeias": - the word "word" - the sound of the word "sound" - the thought of a thought

...etc.

which is ironic, given that a cucumber is saying it.

Hint please

Well, my thinking was: Euroclydon's friend likes to be technically correct about the term onomatopoeia, and jimmyk chimes in with the same level of technical correctness on the matter. So for levity, I point out how it is 'ironic' in a nonsensical way - hoping to hit their OCD nerve a bit. As it is clearly not an ironic statement, and we only have anecdotal evidence of cucumbers being able to mutter a sound.

Run for office.

That's because it's Ancient Greek for "to make name for": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/onomatopoeia

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