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Apr 22, 2013
This week's themeOnomatopoeic words This week's words bombilate fanfaron cachinnate fillip brouhaha 
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with Anu GargBees buzz, clocks go tick-tock, and train engines hiss (or used to). Where there's sound there is onomatopoeia -- our interpretation of the sound in the form of a word (from Greek onoma: name + poiein: to make). This week we'll see five words coined by imitating the supposed sound of what is being described. bombilate
PRONUNCIATION:
(BOM-bi-layt)
MEANING:
verb intr.: To make a humming or buzzing noise.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin bombilare to (hum, buzz). Earliest documented use: 1600s.
USAGE:
"The entire building was bombilating like a cicada." Matt Cantor; Some Cures for Noisy Neighbors; The Berkeley Daily Planet (California); Oct 9, 2008. See more usage examples of bombilate in Vocabulary.com's dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. -Washington Irving, writer (1783-1859)
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