#phonesthemes

[spankerella]

@ MerriamWebster

[renerdssanceman]

Today I learned about phonesthemes, which are pairings of syntactic form and meaning in a word. They don't rise to the level of morphemes (e.g. -s, -ing, re-) because the remaining part of the word doesn't hold any independent meaning. Perhaps an example is in order. Wikipedia points out a bunch of English words having to do with light or shining or vision that all have the phonestheme "gl-": "glitter", "glisten", "glow", "gleam", "glare", "glint", etc. Or, the example I heard this morning while listening to Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast (a delight) which prompted looking this up: "sn-" in lots of words about the nose or face: "snout", "sniff", "snot", "sneer", "snore", "snooty", or even the British English "snog."

Can you think of any other phonesthemes?