pare American bobolink); bomboloza, 'to rumble in the bowels, to have a bowel-complaint;' bubula, 'to buzz like bees,' bubulela, 'a swarm of bees, a buzzing crowd of people;' bubuluza, 'to make a blustering noise, like frothing beer or boiling fat.' These examples, from among those given under one initial letter in one dictionary of one barbaric language, may give an idea of the amount of the evidence from the languages of the lower races bearing on the present problem.
For the present purpose of giving a brief series of examples of the sort of words in which imitative sound seems fairly traceable, the strongest and most manageable evidence is of course found among such words as directly describe sounds or what produces them, such as cries of and names for animals, the terms for action accompanied by sound, and the materials and objects so acted upon. In further investigation it becomes more and more requisite to isolate the sound-type or root from the modifications and additions to which it has been subjected for grammatical and phonetical adaptation. It will serve to give an idea of the extent and intricacy of this problem, to glance at a group of words in one European language, and notice the etymological network which spreads round the German word klapf, in Grimm's dictionary, klappen, klippen, klopfen, kläffen, klimpern, klampern, klateren, kloteren, klitteren, klatzen, klacken, and more, to be matched with allied forms in other languages. Setting aside the consideration of grammatical inflexion, it belongs to the present subject to notice that man's imitative faculty in language is by no means limited to making direct copies of sound and shaping them into words. It seizes upon ready-made terms of whatever origin, alters and adapts them to make their sound fitting to their sense, and pours into the dictionaries a flood of adapted words of which the most difficult to analyse are those which are neither altogether etymological nor altogether imitative, but partly both. How words, while preserving,
