<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8. Thesaurus for pep in the OEC</figcaption></figure>

5.3. Jizz and jism

97 Jizz and jism show similarities with the previous two: according to the OED, jizz is thought to be a variant of jism, which is of unknown etymology. Both have an initial sense of “energy strength” and a secondary sense denoting “semen, sperm”. In the COHA both of these forms are rare although jism (31 tokens) outnumbers jizz (13 tokens). The diachronic usage patterns in both cases show that jism is attested over a longer period from 1930 as in (24) until 2010 as in (25), whereas jizz is attested from the early 2000s and especially since the 2010s. All of the uses correspond to the sense “semen” and are associated with colloquial and highly dysphemistic (i.e. crude, potentially offensive language) usage.

(24) White stuff called **jism** comes out, and that makes the baby inside of Mama. (1936, *World I never made*, James T Farrell)

(25) Harold nodded gravely to Alastair, who he knew would be first in line to spackle that freshly broken heart with **jism**, and left the little Chelsea apartment forever. (2019, *Mighty Are the Meek and the Myriad*, Cassandra Khaw)

(26) They were doing it in one long shot, and we needed to find a way to get a substance on my hand. So Joel, our props guy, was kneeling below the bed and I'd have to sneak my hand out of the shot so he could squirt all this fake **jizz** on my hand. (2016, *Hollywood Reporter*)
<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8. Thesaurus for pep in the OEC</figcaption></figure>

5.3. Jizz and jism

97

Jizz and jism show similarities with the previous two: according to the OED, jizz is thought to be a variant of jism, which is of unknown etymology. Both have an initial sense of “energy strength” and a secondary sense denoting “semen, sperm”. In the COHA both of these forms are rare although jism (31 tokens) outnumbers jizz (13 tokens). The diachronic usage patterns in both cases show that jism is attested over a longer period from 1930 as in (24) until 2010 as in (25), whereas jizz is attested from the early 2000s and especially since the 2010s. All of the uses correspond to the sense “semen” and are associated with colloquial and highly dysphemistic (i.e. crude, potentially offensive language) usage.

(24) White stuff called **jism** comes out, and that makes the baby inside of Mama. (1936, *World I never made*, James T Farrell)

(25) Harold nodded gravely to Alastair, who he knew would be first in line to spackle that freshly broken heart with **jism**, and left the little Chelsea apartment forever. (2019, *Mighty Are the Meek and the Myriad*, Cassandra Khaw)

(26) They were doing it in one long shot, and we needed to find a way to get a substance on my hand. So Joel, our props guy, was kneeling below the bed and I'd have to sneak my hand out of the shot so he could squirt all this fake **jizz** on my hand. (2016, *Hollywood Reporter*)
5.4. Zhuzh

98

Zhuzh is not attested in the COHA. Zhuzh (also spelled tjuzs) made its appearance in the list of words of the year in 2003 by The American Dialect Society, alongside words like manscaping, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), flexitarian (someone who eats meat occasionally), and torture lite (torture short of bodily harm). The OED, on the other hand, lists zhuzh both as a noun and a verb, with attestations around 1968, with the sense of stylish dress. Its origins are not entirely clear, which is often the case with words labelled as imitative or echoic. Merriam-Webster comments on the resemblance with words like whoosh or zoom, indicating a dynamic movement, or perhaps more appropriately, a ruffling of hair or fabric. The unique spelling of zhuzh might suggest it is a loanword. Its pronunciation /ʒʊʒ/ reflects the challenge of graphically representing the voiced fricative /ʒ/ at the beginning and end, which is less common compared to its voiceless counterpart /ʃ/ found in words like shush, for example. The integration of zhuzh into the lexicon is likely facilitated by the similarities with shush or buzz, which both use another neutral vowel /ʌ/. The evolution of zhuzh differs from shush or buzz, in that the latter two have stabilised and become conventional, while the former has remained at the stage of innovation and has not (currently) spread widely to everyday vocabulary.

(27) A zhooshy quean is a grand quean, to **zhoosh** up is to get ready. (P. Burton, *Lang. of their own: Polari, West End Homosexual Slang* (typescript) (O.E.D. Archive) p. ii)

According to the sources from the OED in (27), the use of the lexeme was originally limited to a specific slang employed within the homosexual community. However, it is now spreading as evidenced in Google Books Ngrams shown in Figure 9. It appears to be spreading in oral form on social networks in the fashion and beauty community, as is evident from the number beauty and lifestyle Youtube videos mentioning zhuzh, and the number of #zhuzh posts found on Instagram. The graphic variation (zhoosh, zhuzh, tzhuj, and tjuzs are suggested spellings in Merriam-Webster) makes it challenging to trace its evolution in the COHA and elsewhere. A search in the COHA does not yield any occurrences of zhuzh, zhoosh, tzhuj or tjuzs. A search for zh*zh or zh*sh confirms no alternative spellings were found based on these assumed patterns. Tz* was found, but none of the occurrences were found to be pertinent. In the OEC, there are two occurrences from 2003, discussing the innovative and strange nature of the term zhuzh, alongside words like manscaping, a blend of man and landscaping, referring to male hair grooming as in (28):

(28) The Fabbs took the U. S. by storm this summer, making like style superheroes to rescue straight men from lives of self-made squalor and introducing the rest of us to fun new terms like “manscaping” and “zhuzh” a sound somewhere between Zsa-Zsa and luge. (2003, *Winnipeg Sun*)

99

Whereas zhuzh appears only twice in the OEC, the spelling zhoosh has 12 occurrences which, however, correspond to no more than three sources. The first source in (29) is an excerpt from a linguistic blog article by Mickael Quinion⁸ entitled “World Wide Words” which discusses Polari⁹ slang (from the verb “parler” in French meaning to speak):
5.4. Zhuzh

98

Zhuzh is not attested in the COHA. Zhuzh (also spelled tjuzs) made its appearance in the list of words of the year in 2003 by The American Dialect Society, alongside words like manscaping, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), flexitarian (someone who eats meat occasionally), and torture lite (torture short of bodily harm). The OED, on the other hand, lists zhuzh both as a noun and a verb, with attestations around 1968, with the sense of stylish dress. Its origins are not entirely clear, which is often the case with words labelled as imitative or echoic. Merriam-Webster comments on the resemblance with words like whoosh or zoom, indicating a dynamic movement, or perhaps more appropriately, a ruffling of hair or fabric. The unique spelling of zhuzh might suggest it is a loanword. Its pronunciation /ʒʊʒ/ reflects the challenge of graphically representing the voiced fricative /ʒ/ at the beginning and end, which is less common compared to its voiceless counterpart /ʃ/ found in words like shush, for example. The integration of zhuzh into the lexicon is likely facilitated by the similarities with shush or buzz, which both use another neutral vowel /ʌ/. The evolution of zhuzh differs from shush or buzz, in that the latter two have stabilised and become conventional, while the former has remained at the stage of innovation and has not (currently) spread widely to everyday vocabulary.

(27) A zhooshy quean is a grand quean, to **zhoosh** up is to get ready. (P. Burton, *Lang. of their own: Polari, West End Homosexual Slang* (typescript) (O.E.D. Archive) p. ii)

According to the sources from the OED in (27), the use of the lexeme was originally limited to a specific slang employed within the homosexual community. However, it is now spreading as evidenced in Google Books Ngrams shown in Figure 9. It appears to be spreading in oral form on social networks in the fashion and beauty community, as is evident from the number beauty and lifestyle Youtube videos mentioning zhuzh, and the number of #zhuzh posts found on Instagram. The graphic variation (zhoosh, zhuzh, tzhuj, and tjuzs are suggested spellings in Merriam-Webster) makes it challenging to trace its evolution in the COHA and elsewhere. A search in the COHA does not yield any occurrences of zhuzh, zhoosh, tzhuj or tjuzs. A search for zh*zh or zh*sh confirms no alternative spellings were found based on these assumed patterns. Tz* was found, but none of the occurrences were found to be pertinent. In the OEC, there are two occurrences from 2003, discussing the innovative and strange nature of the term zhuzh, alongside words like manscaping, a blend of man and landscaping, referring to male hair grooming as in (28):

(28) The Fabbs took the U. S. by storm this summer, making like style superheroes to rescue straight men from lives of self-made squalor and introducing the rest of us to fun new terms like “manscaping” and “zhuzh” a sound somewhere between Zsa-Zsa and luge. (2003, *Winnipeg Sun*)

99

Whereas zhuzh appears only twice in the OEC, the spelling zhoosh has 12 occurrences which, however, correspond to no more than three sources. The first source in (29) is an excerpt from a linguistic blog article by Mickael Quinion⁸ entitled “World Wide Words” which discusses Polari⁹ slang (from the verb “parler” in French meaning to speak):
(29) Perhaps you might like to be able to count to ten in Polari: una, duey, trey, quater, chinker, sey, setter, otto, nobber, dacha. Now you can have a go at translating this: As feely homies, we would **zhoosh** our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar. (2002, *World Wide Words*, Michael Quinion).

100 A second source in (30) is a transcript of the televised exchange during the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa between CNN correspondent Josh Levs and CNN producer Nadia Bilchik:

(30) BILCHIK: Zhoosh. Zhoosh is. LEVS: Oh, well, wait, say it again? Zhoosh. BILCHIK: **zhoosh**, like you look sharp, you look smart, you look amazing, like it's a very zhoosh outfit. (2010, CNN transcripts)¹⁰

The conversation illustrates the unconventional nature and the opacity of the term *zhoosh* for outsiders. It is a segment where Nadia Bilchik explains to her colleague some words of South African slang during the World Cup, including *zhoosh*, used in the sense “stylish”. The third source in (31) is taken from a website dedicated to celebrity gossip and stars, describing one of the characters participating in the reality TV show *Big Brother 6*:

(31) Kemal, 19 Male belly dancer. He's a bit from Turkey and a bit from Liverpool. He's all about **"zhoosh"**. Islamic, but doubts his faith. He wears stilettos and calls his headscarf a bitch. (May 2005, *Hecklerspray*)

101 A Google Books search confirms that *zhuzh* is being used more frequently since the early 2000s, as shown in Figure 9 since the first occurrence of *zhuzh* around 1940.

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9. Google one grams for *zhuzh*</figcaption></figure>

102 Figure 10 shows the uses of *pizazz* or *pizzazz* compared to *zhuzh* in Google Books.
(29) Perhaps you might like to be able to count to ten in Polari: una, duey, trey, quater, chinker, sey, setter, otto, nobber, dacha. Now you can have a go at translating this: As feely homies, we would **zhoosh** our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar. (2002, *World Wide Words*, Michael Quinion).

100 A second source in (30) is a transcript of the televised exchange during the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa between CNN correspondent Josh Levs and CNN producer Nadia Bilchik:

(30) **BILCHIK:** Zhoosh. Zhoosh is. **LEVS:** Oh, well, wait, say it again? Zhoosh. **BILCHIK:** **zhoosh,** like you look sharp, you look smart, you look amazing, like it's a very zhoosh outfit. (2010, CNN transcripts)¹⁰

The conversation illustrates the unconventional nature and the opacity of the term *zhoosh* for outsiders. It is a segment where Nadia Bilchik explains to her colleague some words of South African slang during the World Cup, including *zhoosh*, used in the sense “stylish”. The third source in (31) is taken from a website dedicated to celebrity gossip and stars, describing one of the characters participating in the reality TV show *Big Brother 6*:

(31) Kemal, 19 Male belly dancer. He's a bit from Turkey and a bit from Liverpool. He's all about **"zhoosh"**. Islamic, but doubts his faith. He wears stilettos and calls his headscarf a bitch. (May 2005, *Hecklerspray*)

101 A Google Books search confirms that *zhuzh* is being used more frequently since the early 2000s, as shown in Figure 9 since the first occurrence of *zhuzh* around 1940.

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9. Google one grams for *zhuzh*</figcaption></figure>

102 Figure 10 shows the uses of *pizazz* or *pizzazz* compared to *zhuzh* in Google Books.
<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>Figure 10. Google n grams for *pizazz*, *pizzazz* and *zhuzh*</figcaption></figure>

103 Although *zhuzh* is developing, its propagation remains well below that of *pizzazz* or *pizazz*.

5.5. *Zip, zap, zoom, zing*

104 Although all four words are given as phonosymbolic in the OED, the terms *zip*, *zap*, *zoom* are not consistently associated with the EEV sense. They have a higher degree of polysemy and the EEV sense is not the most common. For instance, the Thesaurus of *zip* shows that *zip* is either frequently associated with sound and velocity (*whiz*, *hurtle*, and *zoom*) or when filtered to the category noun *zip* is associated with clothing (*zipper*, *strap*, and *flap*). One of the reasons for this is that all four terms are specified in the OED entries as being either *colloquial* or *slang*. Occurrence (32) illustrates the tendency towards an accumulation of expressive words, and specifically a binary rhythm of pairs of similar sounding words (as pointed out by Gries [2011]):

(32) Newspaper offices in a cluster, store windows flooded with light, filled with advertising devices of the most amusing originality, cars, taxis, crowds, it has all the earmarks of the main street of any big American city, with the addition, at intervals, of the pretty “islands” so typical of the boulevards of Paris and with, last of all, a **zip and a zest**, a **pep and a punch**, a **go and a ginger** that is distinctively Californian. (1916, *The Californiacs*, Inez Gillmore)

105 The coordinated nominal *zip and zest* occurs twice elsewhere in the COHA in (33) and (34), consistently in a context of rhyming structures and repetition of initial consonants (*zip and zest*, *waltz and schmaltz*):

(33) Abe Lyman, 59, onetime bandleader at Hollywood's famed Cocoanut Grove, organizer of the Californians, a group known for **zip and zest** in the '20s, waltz and schmaltz in the '30s. (1957, *Time Magazine*)

(34) Those two alone should provide enough color and controversy to give the campaign **a zip and zest** New Yorkers haven't seen for years. (1976, *New Yorker*)

106 *Zoom* in the EEV sense is also found in close proximity with the same terms. It is also worth noting that these sources in (33) to (35) are magazines or newspapers, conveying a punchy journalistic style:

(35) Their readers who demand **pep and punch and zip and zoom**, and art can go hang. (1926, *Harpers*)
<figure><img src="image_14.png" /><figcaption>Figure 10. Google n grams for *pizazz*, *pizzazz* and *zhuzh*</figcaption></figure>

103 Although *zhuzh* is developing, its propagation remains well below that of *pizzazz* or *pizazz*.

## 5.5. Zip, zap, zoom, zing

104 Although all four words are given as phonosymbolic in the OED, the terms *zip*, *zap*, *zoom* are not consistently associated with the EEV sense. They have a higher degree of polysemy and the EEV sense is not the most common. For instance, the Thesaurus of *zip* shows that *zip* is either frequently associated with sound and velocity (*whiz*, *hurtle*, and *zoom*) or when filtered to the category noun *zip* is associated with clothing (*zipper*, *strap*, and *flap*). One of the reasons for this is that all four terms are specified in the OED entries as being either *colloquial* or *slang*. Occurrence (32) illustrates the tendency towards an accumulation of expressive words, and specifically a binary rhythm of pairs of similar sounding words (as pointed out by Gries [2011]):

(32) Newspaper offices in a cluster, store windows flooded with light, filled with advertising devices of the most amusing originality, cars, taxis, crowds, it has all the earmarks of the main street of any big American city, with the addition, at intervals, of the pretty “islands” so typical of the boulevards of Paris and with, last of all, a **zip and a zest**, a **pep and a punch**, a **go and a ginger** that is distinctively Californian. (1916, *The Californiacs*, Inez Gillmore)

105 The coordinated nominal *zip and zest* occurs twice elsewhere in the COHA in (33) and (34), consistently in a context of rhyming structures and repetition of initial consonants (*zip and zest*, *waltz and schmaltz*):

(33) Abe Lyman, 59, onetime bandleader at Hollywood's famed Cocoanut Grove, organizer of the Californians, a group known for **zip and zest** in the '20s, waltz and schmaltz in the '30s. (1957, *Time Magazine*)

(34) Those two alone should provide enough color and controversy to give the campaign **a zip and zest** New Yorkers haven't seen for years. (1976, *New Yorker*)

106 *Zoom* in the EEV sense is also found in close proximity with the same terms. It is also worth noting that these sources in (33) to (35) are magazines or newspapers, conveying a punchy journalistic style:

(35) Their readers who demand **pep and punch and zip and zoom**, and art can go hang. (1926, *Harpers*)
107 The collocates for *zoom-n* (5x, 10x, *zoom*, Nikon, *Minolta*) indicate that *zoom* is mainly associated with the sense “camera zoom”, the only exception being the collocate *zing* which appears with an MI score of 12 towards the end of the list.

<table><caption>Table 10. Collocates of *zoom n* in the COHA</caption><thead><tr><th>ALL +</th><th>ALL</th><th>%</th><th>MI</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>SPACEBOY</td><td>21</td><td>47.62</td><td>16.63</td></tr><tr><td>5X</td><td>19</td><td>15.79</td><td>15.04</td></tr><tr><td>10X</td><td>39</td><td>15.38</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>6X</td><td>16</td><td>12.5</td><td>14.7</td></tr><tr><td>3X</td><td>41</td><td>12.2</td><td>14.67</td></tr><tr><td>ZOOM</td><td>693</td><td>10.25</td><td>14.42</td></tr><tr><td>30X</td><td>10</td><td>10</td><td>14.38</td></tr><tr><td>EQUIPMENT</td><td>12</td><td>8.33</td><td>14.12</td></tr><tr><td>KAFIRIS</td><td>12</td><td>8.33</td><td>14.12</td></tr><tr><td>9X</td><td>26</td><td>7.69</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>60MM</td><td>13</td><td>7.69</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>RIDGECREST</td><td>13</td><td>7.69</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>ELECTROLIER</td><td>14</td><td>7.14</td><td>13.9</td></tr><tr><td>KERTESZ</td><td>14</td><td>7.14</td><td>13.9</td></tr><tr><td>MUGSHOT</td><td>15</td><td>6.67</td><td>13.8</td></tr><tr><td>4X</td><td>39</td><td>5.13</td><td>13.42</td></tr><tr><td>8X</td><td>21</td><td>4.76</td><td>13.31</td></tr><tr><td>$449</td><td>22</td><td>4.55</td><td>13.25</td></tr><tr><td>200X</td><td>23</td><td>4.35</td><td>13.18</td></tr><tr><td>COOLPIX</td><td>24</td><td>4.17</td><td>13.12</td></tr><tr><td>25MM</td><td>24</td><td>4.17</td><td>13.12</td></tr><tr><td>2X</td><td>53</td><td>3.77</td><td>12.98</td></tr><tr><td>MINOLTA</td><td>27</td><td>3.7</td><td>12.95</td></tr><tr><td>UNMOTIVATED</td><td>57</td><td>3.51</td><td>12.87</td></tr><tr><td>LAMMERS</td><td>30</td><td>3.33</td><td>12.8</td></tr><tr><td>PULOWSKI</td><td>31</td><td>3.23</td><td>12.75</td></tr><tr><td>SLO-MO</td><td>33</td><td>3.03</td><td>12.66</td></tr><tr><td>AFTERBURNERS</td><td>34</td><td>2.94</td><td>12.62</td></tr><tr><td>3-IN.</td><td>37</td><td>2.7</td><td>12.5</td></tr><tr><td>NIKON</td><td>156</td><td>2.56</td><td>12.42</td></tr></tbody></table>
107 The collocates for *zoom-n* (5x, 10x, *zoom*, Nikon, *Minolta*) indicate that *zoom* is mainly associated with the sense “camera zoom”, the only exception being the collocate *zing* which appears with an MI score of 12 towards the end of the list.

<table><caption>Table 10. Collocates of *zoom n* in the COHA</caption><thead><tr><th>ALL +</th><th>ALL</th><th>%</th><th>MI</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>SPACEBOY</td><td>21</td><td>47.62</td><td>16.63</td></tr><tr><td>5X</td><td>19</td><td>15.79</td><td>15.04</td></tr><tr><td>10X</td><td>39</td><td>15.38</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>6X</td><td>16</td><td>12.5</td><td>14.7</td></tr><tr><td>3X</td><td>41</td><td>12.2</td><td>14.67</td></tr><tr><td>ZOOM</td><td>693</td><td>10.25</td><td>14.42</td></tr><tr><td>30X</td><td>10</td><td>10</td><td>14.38</td></tr><tr><td>EQUIPMENT</td><td>12</td><td>8.33</td><td>14.12</td></tr><tr><td>KAFIRIS</td><td>12</td><td>8.33</td><td>14.12</td></tr><tr><td>9X</td><td>26</td><td>7.69</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>60MM</td><td>13</td><td>7.69</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>RIDGECREST</td><td>13</td><td>7.69</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>ELECTROLIER</td><td>14</td><td>7.14</td><td>13.9</td></tr><tr><td>KERTESZ</td><td>14</td><td>7.14</td><td>13.9</td></tr><tr><td>MUGSHOT</td><td>15</td><td>6.67</td><td>13.8</td></tr><tr><td>4X</td><td>39</td><td>5.13</td><td>13.42</td></tr><tr><td>8X</td><td>21</td><td>4.76</td><td>13.31</td></tr><tr><td>$449</td><td>22</td><td>4.55</td><td>13.25</td></tr><tr><td>200X</td><td>23</td><td>4.35</td><td>13.18</td></tr><tr><td>COOLPIX</td><td>24</td><td>4.17</td><td>13.12</td></tr><tr><td>25MM</td><td>24</td><td>4.17</td><td>13.12</td></tr><tr><td>2X</td><td>53</td><td>3.77</td><td>12.98</td></tr><tr><td>MINOLTA</td><td>27</td><td>3.7</td><td>12.95</td></tr><tr><td>UNMOTIVATED</td><td>57</td><td>3.51</td><td>12.87</td></tr><tr><td>LAMMERS</td><td>30</td><td>3.33</td><td>12.8</td></tr><tr><td>PULOWSKI</td><td>31</td><td>3.23</td><td>12.75</td></tr><tr><td>SLO-MO</td><td>33</td><td>3.03</td><td>12.66</td></tr><tr><td>AFTERBURNERS</td><td>34</td><td>2.94</td><td>12.62</td></tr><tr><td>3-IN.</td><td>37</td><td>2.7</td><td>12.5</td></tr><tr><td>NIKON</td><td>156</td><td>2.56</td><td>12.42</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>PINTEREST</td><td>40</td><td>2.5</td><td>12.38</td></tr><tr><td>35MM</td><td>84</td><td>2.38</td><td>12.31</td></tr><tr><td>ZING</td><td>189</td><td>2.12</td><td>12.14</td></tr><tr><td>DETERGENT</td><td>412</td><td>1.7</td><td>11.83</td></tr><tr><td>LENS</td><td>2967</td><td>1.35</td><td>11.49</td></tr><tr><td>CLOSE-UPS</td><td>184</td><td>1.09</td><td>11.18</td></tr><tr><td>OPTICAL</td><td>1686</td><td>1.07</td><td>11.16</td></tr><tr><td>ALL +</td><td>ALL</td><td>%</td><td>MI</td></tr><tr><td>SPACEBOY</td><td>21</td><td>47.62</td><td>16.63</td></tr><tr><td>5X</td><td>19</td><td>15.79</td><td>15.04</td></tr></table>

Zoom is listed among the significant collocates of *zing* in Table 10. However, all 4 occurrences are in fact from the same extract from *Time Magazine* referring to a song title as in (36):

(36) His lush, middlebrow tunes ranged from rousing ballads (StoutHearted Men) to glowing sentiment (When I Grow Too Old to Dream) to this year's jukebox favorite *Zing Zing, Zoom Zoom*, but the standard favorites were the coyly romantic. (1951, *Time Magazine*)

108 A Sketch Difference search in the OEC for *zing* and *zap* shows that *zest* is often found in the same context as both target words, although *zest* was not part of the original dataset and not present in HTOED.

## 5.6. Oomph

109 The 117 occurrences of *oomph* in the COHA demonstrate that the word is used as an interjection as well as a noun. A search for the significant collocates in -5 to +5 position ranked according to MI score provided the data in Table 11.

<table><caption>Table 11. Collocates of *oomph* in the COHA</caption><thead><tr><td>Collocates -5 to + 5</td><td></td><td>MI score</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>ECONOLINE</td><td>1</td><td>15.25</td></tr><tr><td>OOMPH</td><td>8</td><td>15.08</td></tr><tr><td>SMIDGE</td><td>2</td><td>14.71</td></tr><tr><td>1938-39</td><td>1</td><td>14.15</td></tr><tr><td>SATZ</td><td>1</td><td>13.78</td></tr><tr><td>PIZZAZZ</td><td>1</td><td>13.49</td></tr><tr><td>WAFFLING</td><td>1</td><td>13.2</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>PINTEREST</td><td>40</td><td>2.5</td><td>12.38</td></tr><tr><td>35MM</td><td>84</td><td>2.38</td><td>12.31</td></tr><tr><td>ZING</td><td>189</td><td>2.12</td><td>12.14</td></tr><tr><td>DETERGENT</td><td>412</td><td>1.7</td><td>11.83</td></tr><tr><td>LENS</td><td>2967</td><td>1.35</td><td>11.49</td></tr><tr><td>CLOSE-UPS</td><td>184</td><td>1.09</td><td>11.18</td></tr><tr><td>OPTICAL</td><td>1686</td><td>1.07</td><td>11.16</td></tr><tr><td>ALL +</td><td>ALL</td><td>%</td><td>MI</td></tr><tr><td>SPACEBOY</td><td>21</td><td>47.62</td><td>16.63</td></tr><tr><td>5X</td><td>19</td><td>15.79</td><td>15.04</td></tr></table>

Zoom is listed among the significant collocates of *zing* in Table 10. However, all 4 occurrences are in fact from the same extract from *Time Magazine* referring to a song title as in (36):

(36) His lush, middlebrow tunes ranged from rousing ballads (StoutHearted Men) to glowing sentiment (When I Grow Too Old to Dream) to this year's jukebox favorite *Zing Zing, Zoom Zoom*, but the standard favorites were the coyly romantic. (1951, *Time Magazine*)

108 A Sketch Difference search in the OEC for *zing* and *zap* shows that *zest* is often found in the same context as both target words, although *zest* was not part of the original dataset and not present in HTOED.

## 5.6. Oomph

109 The 117 occurrences of *oomph* in the COHA demonstrate that the word is used as an interjection as well as a noun. A search for the significant collocates in -5 to +5 position ranked according to MI score provided the data in Table 11.

<table><caption>Table 11. Collocates of *oomph* in the COHA</caption><thead><tr><td>Collocates -5 to + 5</td><td></td><td>MI score</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>ECONOLINE</td><td>1</td><td>15.25</td></tr><tr><td>OOMPH</td><td>8</td><td>15.08</td></tr><tr><td>SMIDGE</td><td>2</td><td>14.71</td></tr><tr><td>1938-39</td><td>1</td><td>14.15</td></tr><tr><td>SATZ</td><td>1</td><td>13.78</td></tr><tr><td>PIZZAZZ</td><td>1</td><td>13.49</td></tr><tr><td>WAFFLING</td><td>1</td><td>13.2</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>OUTERWEAR</td><td>1</td><td>13.07</td></tr><tr><td>SUNROOF</td><td>1</td><td>13.05</td></tr><tr><td>GARDEN-VARIETY</td><td>1</td><td>12.63</td></tr><tr><td>SUPERCOMPUTER</td><td>1</td><td>11.92</td></tr><tr><td>PROPELS</td><td>1</td><td>11.65</td></tr><tr><td>MEYNER</td><td>1</td><td>11.23</td></tr><tr><td>CINEMACTRESS</td><td>1</td><td>11.13</td></tr><tr><td>THREE-QUARTER</td><td>1</td><td>10.83</td></tr><tr><td>TWEAK</td><td>1</td><td>10.79</td></tr><tr><td>ENDER</td><td>1</td><td>10.75</td></tr><tr><td>FAIRY-TALE</td><td>1</td><td>10.46</td></tr><tr><td>INJECTING</td><td>1</td><td>10.43</td></tr><tr><td>TUMMY</td><td>1</td><td>10.21</td></tr><tr><td>COMPRESS</td><td>1</td><td>10.17</td></tr><tr><td>HOSSES</td><td>1</td><td>10.17</td></tr><tr><td>BUTTERY</td><td>1</td><td>10.17</td></tr><tr><td>SORORITY</td><td>1</td><td>10.1</td></tr><tr><td>SQUASHED</td><td>1</td><td>10.06</td></tr><tr><td>RENEWABLE</td><td>1</td><td>10.05</td></tr><tr><td>CORES</td><td>1</td><td>10.02</td></tr><tr><td>SHORTCUT</td><td>1</td><td>9.97</td></tr><tr><td>FLEX</td><td>1</td><td>9.96</td></tr><tr><td>SWIFTER</td><td>1</td><td>9.9</td></tr><tr><td>SWIMMERS</td><td>1</td><td>9.62</td></tr><tr><td>INTERCOM</td><td>1</td><td>9.28</td></tr><tr><td>BACKSEAT</td><td>1</td><td>9.2</td></tr><tr><td>MAESTRO</td><td>1</td><td>9.1</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td>OUTERWEAR</td><td>1</td><td>13.07</td></tr><tr><td>SUNROOF</td><td>1</td><td>13.05</td></tr><tr><td>GARDEN-VARIETY</td><td>1</td><td>12.63</td></tr><tr><td>SUPERCOMPUTER</td><td>1</td><td>11.92</td></tr><tr><td>PROPELS</td><td>1</td><td>11.65</td></tr><tr><td>MEYNER</td><td>1</td><td>11.23</td></tr><tr><td>CINEMACTRESS</td><td>1</td><td>11.13</td></tr><tr><td>THREE-QUARTER</td><td>1</td><td>10.83</td></tr><tr><td>TWEAK</td><td>1</td><td>10.79</td></tr><tr><td>ENDER</td><td>1</td><td>10.75</td></tr><tr><td>FAIRY-TALE</td><td>1</td><td>10.46</td></tr><tr><td>INJECTING</td><td>1</td><td>10.43</td></tr><tr><td>TUMMY</td><td>1</td><td>10.21</td></tr><tr><td>COMPRESS</td><td>1</td><td>10.17</td></tr><tr><td>HOSSES</td><td>1</td><td>10.17</td></tr><tr><td>BUTTERY</td><td>1</td><td>10.17</td></tr><tr><td>SORORITY</td><td>1</td><td>10.1</td></tr><tr><td>SQUASHED</td><td>1</td><td>10.06</td></tr><tr><td>RENEWABLE</td><td>1</td><td>10.05</td></tr><tr><td>CORES</td><td>1</td><td>10.02</td></tr><tr><td>SHORTCUT</td><td>1</td><td>9.97</td></tr><tr><td>FLEX</td><td>1</td><td>9.96</td></tr><tr><td>SWIFTER</td><td>1</td><td>9.9</td></tr><tr><td>SWIMMERS</td><td>1</td><td>9.62</td></tr><tr><td>INTERCOM</td><td>1</td><td>9.28</td></tr><tr><td>BACKSEAT</td><td>1</td><td>9.2</td></tr><tr><td>MAESTRO</td><td>1</td><td>9.1</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td>TAD</td><td>1</td><td>8.9</td></tr><tr><td>REWARDING</td><td>1</td><td>8.74</td></tr><tr><td>OPERAS</td><td>1</td><td>8.74</td></tr><tr><td>INJECTION</td><td>1</td><td>8.73</td></tr><tr><td>COMPUTING</td><td>1</td><td>8.72</td></tr><tr><td>AUDIO</td><td>1</td><td>8.6</td></tr><tr><td>DELIVERS</td><td>1</td><td>8.52</td></tr><tr><td>BATHTUB</td><td>1</td><td>8.5</td></tr><tr><td>JANITOR</td><td>1</td><td>8.46</td></tr><tr><td>STUFFING</td><td>1</td><td>8.41</td></tr><tr><td>TIGHTEN</td><td>1</td><td>8.4</td></tr><tr><td>THUD</td><td>1</td><td>8.28</td></tr><tr><td>LOOSEN</td><td>1</td><td>8.24</td></tr><tr><td>JOCKEY</td><td>1</td><td>8.23</td></tr><tr><td>BOASTS</td><td>1</td><td>8.18</td></tr><tr><td>BOULDERS</td><td>1</td><td>8.15</td></tr><tr><td>BOUNCE</td><td>1</td><td>8.14</td></tr><tr><td>EXTRA</td><td>11</td><td>8.13</td></tr><tr><td>SUB</td><td>1</td><td>8.09</td></tr><tr><td>RHYME</td><td>1</td><td>8.07</td></tr><tr><td>TAPS</td><td>1</td><td>7.99</td></tr><tr><td>INSTRUMENTAL</td><td>1</td><td>7.98</td></tr></table>

110 The significant collocates fall into **two main groups**: the **quantifiers** such as *smidge*, *amount*, *plenty*, and *tad* as in (37); the **verbs** entering into patterns with *oomph*. These significant verb collexemes are *add*, *need*, *turn*, *deliver*, *provide*, and *got* as in (38), (39) and (40) where *oomph* can be interpreted as <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>. Another type of structure occurs in (41) where *hear a rewarding “oomph”* introduces the triggering of a more literal sense “sound of”. In this instance, *oomph* refers to the utterance of the sound *oomph*, thereby triggering its phonological motivation. There is also an explicit reformulation of *oomph* with the synonym *pizzazz* (38) and the phrase *up-and-at-’em* (39):
<table><tr><td>TAD</td><td>1</td><td>8.9</td></tr><tr><td>REWARDING</td><td>1</td><td>8.74</td></tr><tr><td>OPERAS</td><td>1</td><td>8.74</td></tr><tr><td>INJECTION</td><td>1</td><td>8.73</td></tr><tr><td>COMPUTING</td><td>1</td><td>8.72</td></tr><tr><td>AUDIO</td><td>1</td><td>8.6</td></tr><tr><td>DELIVERS</td><td>1</td><td>8.52</td></tr><tr><td>BATHTUB</td><td>1</td><td>8.5</td></tr><tr><td>JANITOR</td><td>1</td><td>8.46</td></tr><tr><td>STUFFING</td><td>1</td><td>8.41</td></tr><tr><td>TIGHTEN</td><td>1</td><td>8.4</td></tr><tr><td>THUD</td><td>1</td><td>8.28</td></tr><tr><td>LOOSEN</td><td>1</td><td>8.24</td></tr><tr><td>JOCKEY</td><td>1</td><td>8.23</td></tr><tr><td>BOASTS</td><td>1</td><td>8.18</td></tr><tr><td>BOULDERS</td><td>1</td><td>8.15</td></tr><tr><td>BOUNCE</td><td>1</td><td>8.14</td></tr><tr><td>EXTRA</td><td>11</td><td>8.13</td></tr><tr><td>SUB</td><td>1</td><td>8.09</td></tr><tr><td>RHYME</td><td>1</td><td>8.07</td></tr><tr><td>TAPS</td><td>1</td><td>7.99</td></tr><tr><td>INSTRUMENTAL</td><td>1</td><td>7.98</td></tr></table>

110 The significant collocates fall into **two main groups**: the **quantifiers** such as *smidge*, *amount*, *plenty*, and *tad* as in (37); the **verbs** entering into patterns with *oomph*. These significant verb collexemes are *add*, *need*, *turn*, *deliver*, *provide*, and *got* as in (38), (39) and (40) where *oomph* can be interpreted as <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>. Another type of structure occurs in (41) where *hear a rewarding “oomph”* introduces the triggering of a more literal sense “sound of”. In this instance, *oomph* refers to the utterance of the sound *oomph*, thereby triggering its phonological motivation. There is also an explicit reformulation of *oomph* with the synonym *pizzazz* (38) and the phrase *up-and-at-’em* (39):
(37) Today's turbo-charged home PCs make games and DVDs come alive, while less powerful machines deliver good value and **plenty of oomph** for garden-variety productivity tasks. (2002, PCs with Personality)

(38) It still seems so empty. There's still something missing. It's this bench. There's no wino. Tonight I'll go to the Officers Club and rent you one. No, no, no, we need **oomph**, pizzazz. It's gotta look more parkish. Like maybe a statue. (1981, MASH TV)

(39) I'd always given your intelligence a top rating, but you got no **oomph**, no up-and-at-'em. What he means is your ears don't stick out. Really, sir, I don't understand. Romantically, Brewster, you're a lug. (1938, Give Me a Sailor)

(40) Meanwhile last week some other U.S. operas delivered the **oomph**. (1940, Time Magazine)

(41) I'm easygoing and slow to anger, but this was getting annoying. So I put an elbow where it would do the most good and heard a rewarding **"oomph"** from the jockey on my back. (1975, Goodey's Last Stand)

111 In (42) **oomph** is used as an oral interjection in a dialogue of a play:

(42) Please let go, Dolly. You've got to let go sometime! Love is more than mere possession. Love is giving rather than taking. (Her arms go around his neck, and she begins to bend him forward.) Freeing rather than enslaving. Love is - **oomph** - please loosen your grip, Dolly. If you're afraid to let go it means you don't trust me. (1977, Hold Me, Jules Feiffer)

112 **Oomph** is used as a premodifier in (43), where the meaning of **oomph** is described and reformulated explicitly:

(43) Los Angeles' swank Town House staged, at Warners' instigation, a dinner for 26 males who decided she had more **"oomph"** than any girl in town. "Oomph," said Dudley Field Malone," is a very beautiful thing that convention demands be clothed." Said Screenwriter Graham Baker: "Oomph is something in a girl which begets propositions not proposals, gets her chased instead of chaste." As the **Oomph** Girl, Cinemactress Sheridan was more photographed, talked about, gossip-columned than any recognized Hollywood star. (1939, The New Pictures, Time Magazine)

113 In (44) the process of replacement of the term *morale* by *oomph* is also evident. The term is further explicitly developed via other **phraseological sequences**, *sparkle in your eye*, *spring in your step*, *zip in your soul*. The deliberate use of these terms is also underlined by the nature of the discourse, described as a *jingle*, a *slogan*, whose purpose is to convey excitement for what is being touted (i.e. thiamin). The accumulation of expressive terms leads to literal overemphasis, a form of argumentative power rather than light suggestion:

(44) Before the Second World War, America was swept by a craze for thiamin -- the so-called "morale vitamin"; Dr. Russell Wilder declared that a policy of thiamin deprivation of subject peoples was "Hitler"' secret weapon." Vice President Henry Wallace endorsed the jingle "What puts the sparkle in your eye, the spring in your step, the zip in your soul? The **oomph** vitamin." "Vitamins will win the war" was a slogan of the U.S. Food Agency. (2002, Near a thousand tables: a history of food)

114 From these occurrences and the general behaviour profiles and sources, the uses appear to coincide with a desire for increased communicative efficiency, mostly from
(37) Today's turbo-charged home PCs make games and DVDs come alive, while less powerful machines deliver good value and **plenty of oomph** for garden-variety productivity tasks. (2002, PCs with Personality)

(38) It still seems so empty. There's still something missing. It's this bench. There's no wino. Tonight I'll go to the Officers Club and rent you one. No, no, no, we need **oomph**, pizzazz. It's gotta look more parkish. Like maybe a statue. (1981, MASH TV)

(39) I'd always given your intelligence a top rating, but you got no **oomph**, no up-and-at-'em. What he means is your ears don't stick out. Really, sir, I don't understand. Romantically, Brewster, you're a lug. (1938, Give Me a Sailor)

(40) Meanwhile last week some other U.S. operas delivered the **oomph**. (1940, Time Magazine)

(41) I'm easygoing and slow to anger, but this was getting annoying. So I put an elbow where it would do the most good and heard a rewarding "oomph" from the jockey on my back. (1975, Goodey's Last Stand)

111 In (42) **oomph** is used as an oral interjection in a dialogue of a play:

(42) Please let go, Dolly. You've got to let go sometime! Love is more than mere possession. Love is giving rather than taking. (Her arms go around his neck, and she begins to bend him forward.) Freeing rather than enslaving. Love is - **oomph** - please loosen your grip, Dolly. If you're afraid to let go it means you don't trust me. (1977, Hold Me, Jules Feiffer)

112 **Oomph** is used as a premodifier in (43), where the meaning of **oomph** is described and reformulated explicitly:

(43) Los Angeles' swank Town House staged, at Warners' instigation, a dinner for 26 males who decided she had more “oomph” than any girl in town. “Oomph,” said Dudley Field Malone,” is a very beautiful thing that convention demands be clothed.” Said Screenwriter Graham Baker: “Oomph is something in a girl which begets propositions not proposals, gets her chased instead of chaste.” As the **Oomph** Girl, Cinemactress Sheridan was more photographed, talked about, gossip-columned than any recognized Hollywood star. (1939, The New Pictures, Time Magazine)

113 In (44) the process of replacement of the term *morale* by *oomph* is also evident. The term is further explicitly developed via other **phraseological sequences**, *sparkle in your eye*, *spring in your step*, *zip in your soul*. The deliberate use of these terms is also underlined by the nature of the discourse, described as a *jingle*, a *slogan*, whose purpose is to convey excitement for what is being touted (i.e. thiamin). The accumulation of expressive terms leads to literal overemphasis, a form of argumentative power rather than light suggestion:

(44) Before the Second World War, America was swept by a craze for thiamin -- the so-called "morale vitamin"; Dr. Russell Wilder declared that a policy of thiamin deprivation of subject peoples was "Hitler"' secret weapon." Vice President Henry Wallace endorsed the jingle "What puts the sparkle in your eye, the spring in your step, the zip in your soul? The **oomph** vitamin." "Vitamins will win the war" was a slogan of the U.S. Food Agency. (2002, Near a thousand tables: a history of food)

114 From these occurrences and the general behaviour profiles and sources, the uses appear to coincide with a desire for increased communicative efficiency, mostly from
magazine sources trying to capture the attention of their readers with trendy words and concepts which are explained and reformulated. The Thesaurus for the noun *oomph* in the OEC confirms *pizzazz* as one of the closest candidates sharing the most distributional contexts with the target word *oomph*.

<figure><img src="image_14.png" /><figcaption>Figure 10. Thesaurus of *oomph* in the OEC</figcaption></figure>

5.7. **Snap and dash**

115

Finally *snap* and *dash* are among the most frequent nouns in the COHA corpus. Given the issue of their polysemy, we will use the Thesaurus function to determine the semantic behaviour of the nouns in the OEC. Their frequency as nouns in the OEC is very similar with approximately 10,000 tokens each. However, their similarity is otherwise very limited as is shown in Figures 11 and 12.
magazine sources trying to capture the attention of their readers with trendy words and concepts which are explained and reformulated. The Thesaurus for the noun *oomph* in the OEC confirms *pizzazz* as one of the closest candidates sharing the most distributional contexts with the target word *oomph*.

<figure><img src="image_15.png" /><figcaption>Figure 10. Thesaurus of *oomph* in the OEC</figcaption></figure>

5.7. **Snap and dash**

115

Finally *snap* and *dash* are among the most frequent nouns in the COHA corpus. Given the issue of their polysemy, we will use the Thesaurus function to determine the semantic behaviour of the nouns in the OEC. Their frequency as nouns in the OEC is very similar with approximately 10,000 tokens each. However, their similarity is otherwise very limited as is shown in Figures 11 and 12.
<figure><img src="image_15.png" /><figcaption>Figure 11. Thesaurus of *snap* in the OEC</figcaption></figure>

116 The collexeme analysis confirms that *snap* is used most significantly in the sense “sound” rather than in the sense “vigour”. Idiomatic noun phrases such as *cold snap*, or *holiday snap* appear in the most significant co-occurrence patterns. Much like *zoom*, *snap* is often associated with photography, and has become a prominent subject matter of discussion in modern times.

117 *Dash* on the other hand has a very different Thesaurus makeup in the OEC. The usage of *dash* appears focused on culinary concerns as it evident from the candidates with similar collocational behaviour *dollop*, *blend*, *splash*, *flavour*, and *touch* to name a few.
<figure><img src="image_16.png" /><figcaption>Figure 11. Thesaurus of *snap* in the OEC</figcaption></figure>

116 The collexeme analysis confirms that *snap* is used most significantly in the sense “sound” rather than in the sense “vigour”. Idiomatic noun phrases such as *cold snap*, or *holiday snap* appear in the most significant co-occurrence patterns. Much like *zoom*, *snap* is often associated with photography, and has become a prominent subject matter of discussion in modern times.

117 *Dash* on the other hand has a very different Thesaurus makeup in the OEC. The usage of *dash* appears focused on culinary concerns as it evident from the candidates with similar collocational behaviour *dollop*, *blend*, *splash*, *flavour*, and *touch* to name a few.
<figure><img src="image_16.png" /><figcaption>Figure 12. Thesaurus of dash in OEC</figcaption></figure>

118 The most common uses of *snap* and *dash* in the OEC confirm that the EEV sense is not the core meaning. From the Thesaurus, it is evident that their usage as synonyms is difficult to attest.

5.8. Summary

119 The questions we set out to answer are the following questions:

Do imitative words become less iconic following the de ICONISATION process? Do non-
imitatives behave differently? What other motivational process are at stake? And
finally, what is the degree of similarity between the words selected? We compared the
behavioural profiles of non-imitatives *pizzazz*, *jazz* and *pep*, with imitative nouns. The
profiles tended to show a clustering between similar sounding words. Most of the uses
in context co-occurred with other expressions in context, either phraseological units or
other phonosemantic words. The commonalities are that expressive strategies tend to
co-occur and combine in a given context; some of these strategies are those quoted by
Southern [2020], namely pejoration, affection, intensity, and immediacy. This means
that the motivation behind the use of a word form cannot be limited to its
phonosemantic profile, but depends on pragmatic intent and text type. We observed
that most occurrences tended to be argumentative, affiliative or humorous.

Do imitative words become less iconic following the de ICONISATION process? Do non-
imitatives behave differently? Since all the words in the subset are lexicalised, they all
undergo some form of conventionalisation and entrenchment which is apparent in
their collocational profiles. This is consistent with the iconicity treadmill, and de-
iconisation of lexicalised words. This process does not undermine remotivation
processes whereby new analogies can be triggered in context. Whether imitative and
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>Figure 12. Thesaurus of dash in OEC</figcaption></figure>

118 The most common uses of *snap* and *dash* in the OEC confirm that the EEV sense is not the core meaning. From the Thesaurus, it is evident that their usage as synonyms is difficult to attest.

## 5.8. Summary

119 The questions we set out to answer are the following questions:

Do imitative words become less iconic following the de ICONISATION process? Do non-imitatives behave differently? What other motivational process are at stake? And finally, what is the degree of similarity between the words selected? We compared the behavioural profiles of non-imitatives *pizzazz*, *jazz* and *pep*, with imitative nouns. The profiles tended to show a clustering between similar sounding words. Most of the uses in context co-occurred with other expressions in context, either phraseological units or other phonosemantic words. The commonalities are that expressive strategies tend to co-occur and combine in a given context; some of these strategies are those quoted by Southern [2020], namely pejoration, affection, intensity, and immediacy. This means that the motivation behind the use of a word form cannot be limited to its phonosemantic profile, but depends on pragmatic intent and text type. We observed that most occurrences tended to be argumentative, affiliative or humorous.

Do imitative words become less iconic following the de-ICONISATION process? Do non-imitatives behave differently? Since all the words in the subset are lexicalised, they all undergo some form of conventionalisation and entrenchment which is apparent in their collocational profiles. This is consistent with the iconicity treadmill, and de-ICONISATION of lexicalised words. This process does not undermine remotivation processes whereby new analogies can be triggered in context. Whether imitative and
non imitative undergo the same degree of deICONISATION depends on their resistance
to conventionalisation, namely their phonological or spelling variation of lexemes. The
degree of conventionalisation may be inversely correlated with the spelling anomalies,
as for instance *pizzazz*, *zhuzh*, *oomph*.

What other motivational process are at stake? The frequency of usage, the acoustic and
articulatory properties of the words and their similarity to other sets of words affect
the demotivation cycle. Communicative strategies influence the remotivation process,
as well as analogical paradigmatic tensions within the lexicon (*jazz*, *jism/jizz*, *pizzazz/*
*pezazz* form a set).

And finally, we asked what the degree of similarity between the words selected is.

120

The Thesaurus showed that the subset of nouns expressing <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>
have their own specific usage niches, entering in metaphorical associations,
phraseological associations, and analogical associations. In addition, one of the major
confounding factors is that the usage of the nouns in the EEV sense is not always
present in the corpora.

6. Conclusions: similarity and dissimilarity within a set of iconic nouns

121

This paper posed the question of the pathways of development of a set of
phonosemantic nouns. We started with a set of nouns referring to <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY
VITALITY> that exhibit phonosemantic motivation. We used the HTOED, and key words in
the OED definitions to generate a set of 16 nouns to investigate these patterns of
semantic change. We identified several pathways of emergence of ENTHUSIASM in our
dataset: 1) the metaphorical / metonymical pathway SPEED IS VITALITY OR ENTHUSIASM and
SOUND IS ENERGY (which affects most of the iconic words in the set); 2) the pathway ENERGY
IS FASHION AND ATTITUDE (*pizzazz* and *zhuzh*); and 3) the emergence of analogical blending
and clipping (*pep*, and *jazz*).

122

A lexicographic study of emergence followed by a distributional semantic analysis in
the COHA and the OEC tested the similarity of the frequencies and the contexts of
usage. The dataset of nouns proved to have varying profiles, both lexicographic and
distributional behaviours differ. One of the main concerns is that all of the nouns in the
dataset belong to the non-standard layer of the lexicon and therefore do not occur with
great frequency in any of the corpora, some being extremely rare (like *zhuzh*). The
onomasiological incidence of each word for the category of <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>
is difficult to measure, especially for imitative nouns like *zip*, *zoom* which have other
more conventional uses in the corpora, namely the sense “speed”, and for highly
polysemous frequent words such as *snap* and *dash*.

123

Despite its limitations, due to the difficulty in filtering out the EEV sense, the corpus
study did however confirm the tendency towards the clustering of sound imitative
effects, such as repetition of rhymes or initial consonants in collocational
combinations. The bias towards similar sounding words seems to be associated with the
communicative effect intended in context. Most occurrences demonstrate the intent
for vivid slogan-like expressions with argumentative, affiliative or humorous functions.
Our case study illustrates the importance of motivation as a multifactorial
consideration, and also points to the need for further research into the emergence and
non imitative undergo the same degree of de ICONISATION depends on their resistance
to conventionalisation, namely their phonological or spelling variation of lexemes. The
degree of conventionalisation may be inversely correlated with the spelling anomalies,
as for instance *pizzazz*, *zhuzh*, *oomph*.

What other motivational process are at stake? The frequency of usage, the acoustic and
articulatory properties of the words and their similarity to other sets of words affect
the demotivation cycle. Communicative strategies influence the remotivation process,
as well as analogical paradigmatic tensions within the lexicon (*jazz*, *jism/jizz*, *pizzazz/*
*pezazz* form a set).

And finally, we asked what the degree of similarity between the words selected is.

120 The Thesaurus showed that the subset of nouns expressing <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>
have their own specific usage niches, entering in metaphorical associations,
phraseological associations, and analogical associations. In addition, one of the major
confounding factors is that the usage of the nouns in the EEV sense is not always
present in the corpora.

6. Conclusions: similarity and dissimilarity within a set of iconic nouns

121 This paper posed the question of the pathways of development of a set of phonosemantic nouns. We started with a set of nouns referring to <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY> that exhibit phonosemantic motivation. We used the HTOED, and key words in the OED definitions to generate a set of 16 nouns to investigate these patterns of semantic change. We identified several pathways of emergence of ENTHUSIASM in our dataset: 1) the metaphorical / metonymical pathway SPEED IS VITALITY OR ENTHUSIASM and SOUND IS ENERGY (which affects most of the iconic words in the set); 2) the pathway ENERGY IS FASHION AND ATTITUDE (*pizzazz* and *zhuzh*); and 3) the emergence of analogical blending and clipping (*pep*, and *jazz*).

122 A lexicographic study of emergence followed by a distributional semantic analysis in the COHA and the OEC tested the similarity of the frequencies and the contexts of usage. The dataset of nouns proved to have varying profiles, both lexicographic and distributional behaviours differ. One of the main concerns is that all of the nouns in the dataset belong to the non-standard layer of the lexicon and therefore do not occur with great frequency in any of the corpora, some being extremely rare (like *zhuzh*). The onomasiological incidence of each word for the category of <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY> is difficult to measure, especially for imitative nouns like *zip*, *zoom* which have other more conventional uses in the corpora, namely the sense “speed”, and for highly polysemous frequent words such as *snap* and *dash*.

123 Despite its limitations, due to the difficulty in filtering out the EEV sense, the corpus study did however confirm the tendency towards the clustering of sound imitative effects, such as repetition of rhymes or initial consonants in collocational combinations. The bias towards similar sounding words seems to be associated with the communicative effect intended in context. Most occurrences demonstrate the intent for vivid slogan-like expressions with argumentative, affiliative or humorous functions. Our case study illustrates the importance of motivation as a multifactorial consideration, and also points to the need for further research into the emergence and
semantic development of sound imitative words in relation to conceptual space, and
distractic and diatopic contexts. The level of expressiveness, or iconicity, may be
affected by lexicalisation and conventionalisation, however a motivational scenario can
be triggered in context by the neighbouring associations. This points to the need to
develop the analysis of iconicity with a fine-grained approach with respect to
conceptual fields. In order to test Dingemanse et al. [2016: 118]'s conclusion that "the
potential for iconic associations differs across semantic domains", this study could be
pursued by comparing the proportion and development of iconic words across various
conceptual domains to establish a degree of comparison. Selected fields could include
other emotion concepts and more literal concepts such as <SPEED OF MOTION> for
instance, or even <MOTION> in general.

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semantic development of sound imitative words in relation to conceptual space, and
distractic and diatopic contexts. The level of expressiveness, or iconicity, may be
affected by lexicalisation and conventionalisation, however a motivational scenario can
be triggered in context by the neighbouring associations. This points to the need to
develop the analysis of iconicity with a fine-grained approach with respect to
conceptual fields. In order to test Dingemanse et al. [2016: 118]'s conclusion that "the
potential for iconic associations differs across semantic domains", this study could be
pursued by comparing the proportion and development of iconic words across various
conceptual domains to establish a degree of comparison. Selected fields could include
other emotion concepts and more literal concepts such as <SPEED OF MOTION> for
instance, or even <MOTION> in general.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allan, Kathryn. 2012. Using OED as Evidence. In Kathryn Allan & Justinya Robinson (eds.), *Current Methods in Historical Semantics*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. 17-40.

Ahlner, Felix & Jordan Zlatev. 2010. Cross-modal Iconicity: A Cognitive Semiotic Approach to Sound Symbolism. *Sign Systems Studies* 38(1). 298-348.

Aryani, Arash, Markus Conrad, David Schmidtke & Arthur Jacobs. 2018. Why ‘piss’ is Ruder than ‘pee’? The Role of Sound in Affective Meaning Making. *Plos One* 13(6). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0198430

Bauer, Laurie. 2019. Complex Lexical Units in English. In Barbara Schlücker (ed.), *Complex Lexical Units: Compounds and Multi-word Expressions*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. 45-68.

Bauer, Matthias. 1999. Iconicity and Divine Likeness. George Herbert's 'Coloss. 3.3'. In Max Nänny & Olga Fischer (eds.), *Form Miming Meaning*. 215-234.

Benczes, Reka. 2019. *Rhyme over Reason: Phonological Motivation in English*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1988. Reiconization. *World Englishes* 7(3). 237-242.

Bybee, Joan L. 2013. Usage-based Theory and Exemplar Representations of Constructions. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), *The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar*. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1-14.

Booij, Geert & Jenny Audring. 2018. Partial Motivation, Multiple Motivation: The Role of Output Schemas in Morphology. In Geert Booij (ed.), *The Construction of Words: Advances in Construction Morphology*. Dordrecht: Springer. 59-80.

Booij, Geert. 2016. Construction morphology. In Andrew Hippisley & Gregory Stump (Eds.), *The Cambridge handbook of morphology*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 424-448.

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De Cuypere, Ludovic. 2008. *Limiting the Iconic: From the Metatheoretical Foundations to the Creative Possibilities of Iconicity in Language*. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Dingemanse, Mark, Will Schuerman, Eva Reinisch, Sylvia Tufvesson & Holger Mitterer. 2016. What Sound Symbolism Can and Cannot Do: Testing the Iconicity of Ideophones from Five Languages. *Language* 92(2). e117-e133.

Dingemanse, Mark & Kim Akita. 2016. An Inverse Relation Between Expressiveness and Grammatical Integration: On the Morphosyntactic Typology of Ideophones, with Special Reference to Japanese. *Journal of Linguistics*. 1–32.

Fernández-Domínguez, Jesús. 2017. Methodological and Procedural Issues in the Quantification of Morphological Competition. In Juan Santana-Lario & Salvador Valera-Hernández (Eds.), *Competing Patterns in English Affixation*. Bern: Peter Lang. 67–117.

Fernández-Domínguez, Jesús. 2019. Onomasiological Approach. In Mark Aronoff (ed.), *Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics*. 1–28.

Fischer, Olga. 2013. On the Role Played by Analogy and the Synchronic Grammar System in Processes of Language Change. *Studies in Language* 37(3). 515–533.

Flaksman, Maria. 2017. Iconic Treadmill Hypothesis: The Reasons Behind Continuous Onomatopoeic Coinage. In Angelika Zirker, Matthias Bauer, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), *Dimensions of Iconicity, Iconicity in Language and Literature*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 15–38.

Flaksman, Maria. 2020. Pathways of De-iconization: How Borrowing, Semantic Evolution, and Sound Change Obscure Iconicity. In Pamela Perniss, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), *Operationalizing Iconicity*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 75–104.

Fonagy, Ivan. 1993. *Physei/Thesei, l'Aspect Évolutif d'un Débat Millénaire*. *Faits de Langues* 1. Motivation et Iconicité. 29–45.

Fried, Mirjam. 2009. Construction grammar as a tool for diachronic analysis. *Constructions and Frames* 1(2). 262–291.

Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelars & Peter Bakema. 1994. *The Structure of Lexical Variation Meaning, Naming, and Context*. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
dans des Interviews Politiques. TIPA, *Travaux Interdisciplinaires sur la Parole et le Langage* 29. http://journals.openedition.org/tipa/830.

Croft, William. 2000. *Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach*. Harlow: Longman/Pearson.

Ćwiek, Aleksandra, Susanne Fuchs, Christoph Draxler, Eva Liina Asu, Dan Dediu, Katri Hiovain, Shigeto Kawahara, Sofia Koutalidis, Manfred Krifka, Lippus Pärtel, Gary Lupyan, Grace E. Oh, Jing Paul, Caterina Petrone, Rachid Ridouane, Sabine Reiter, Nathalie Schümchen, Ádám Szalontai, Özlem Ünal-Logacev, Jochen Zeller, Marcus Perlman & Bodo Winter. 2021. The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society* B 377: 20200390. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0390

Dalzell, Tom & Terry Victor (eds.). 2007. *A Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language*. Routledge.

De Cuypere, Ludovic. 2008. *Limiting the Iconic: From the Metatheoretical Foundations to the Creative Possibilities of Iconicity in Language*. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Dingemanse, Mark. 2012. Advances in the Cross-Linguistic Study of Ideophones. *Language and Linguistics Compass* 6(10). 654–672.

Dingemanse, Mark, Will Schuerman, Eva Reinisch, Sylvia Tufvesson & Holger Mitterer. 2016. What Sound Symbolism Can and Cannot Do: Testing the Iconicity of Ideophones from Five Languages. *Language* 92(2). e117-e133.

Dingemanse, Mark & Kim Akita. 2016. An Inverse Relation Between Expressiveness and Grammatical Integration: On the Morphosyntactic Typology of Ideophones, with Special Reference to Japanese. *Journal of Linguistics*. 1–32.

Fernández-Domínguez, Jesús. 2017. Methodological and Procedural Issues in the Quantification of Morphological Competition. In Juan Santana-Lario & Salvador Valera-Hernández (Eds.), *Competing Patterns in English Affixation*. Bern: Peter Lang. 67–117.

Fernández-Domínguez, Jesús. 2019. Onomasiological Approach. In Mark Aronoff (ed.), *Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics*. 1–28.

Fischer, Olga. 2013. On the Role Played by Analogy and the Synchronic Grammar System in Processes of Language Change. *Studies in Language* 37(3). 515–533.

Flaksman, Maria. 2017. Iconic Treadmill Hypothesis: The Reasons Behind Continuous Onomatopoeic Coinage. In Angelika Zirker, Matthias Bauer, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), *Dimensions of Iconicity, Iconicity in Language and Literature*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 15–38.

Flaksman, Maria. 2020. Pathways of De-iconization: How Borrowing, Semantic Evolution, and Sound Change Obscure Iconicity. In Pamela Perniss, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), *Operationalizing Iconicity*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 75–104.

Fonagy, Ivan. 1993. *Physei/Thesei, l'Aspect Évolutif d'un Débat Millénaire*. *Faits de Langues* 1. Motivation et Iconicité. 29–45.

Fried, Mirjam. 2009. Construction grammar as a tool for diachronic analysis. *Constructions and Frames* 1(2). 262–291.

Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelars & Peter Bakema. 1994. *The Structure of Lexical Variation Meaning, Naming, and Context*. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Geeraerts, Dirk. 2016. Entrenchment as Onomasiological Salience. In Hans-Jörg Schmid (ed.), *Entrenchment and the Psychology of Language Learning: How We Reorganize and Adapt Linguistic Knowledge*. Berlin: De Gruyter. 153–174.

Goldberg, Adele E. 2019. *Explain Me This: Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions*. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gries, Stefan Th. 2011. Phonological Similarity in Multi-word Units. *Cognitive Linguistics* 22(3). 491–510.

Hilpert, Martin & Florent Perek. 2017. A Distributional Semantic Approach to the Periodization of Change in the Productivity of Constructions. *International Journal of Corpus Linguistics* 22(4). 490–520.

Hinton, Leanne, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala. 2006 [1994]. *Sound Symbolism*. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hoffmann, Thomas. 2017. The Renaissance of Constructions: From Constructions to Construction Grammars. In Barbara Dancygier (ed.), *The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 284–309.

Hüning, Matthias. 2009. Semantic niches and analogy in word formation: Evidence from contrastive linguistics. *Languages in Contrast* 9(2). 183–201.

Hüning, Matthias. 2018. Foreign word formation in construction morphology: Verbs in -ieren in German. In Geert Booij (ed.), *The construction of words: advances in construction morphology*. Cham: Springer. 341–372.

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Hugou, Vincent. 2013. *Productivité et Émergence du Sens. L'Exemple de la Construction (All) X-ed Out dans un Corpus de Blogs et de Forums de Discussion*. Thèse de Doctorat, Université Paris 3.

Kay, Christian. 2015. Words and Thesauri. In John R. Taylor (ed.), *The Oxford Handbook of the Word*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kay, Christian & Kathryn Allan. 2016. Change in the English Lexicon. In Merjä Kyto (ed.), *The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 220–236.

Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý & Vít Suchomel. 2014. The Sketch Engine: ten years on. *Lexicography* 1. 7–36.

Langacker, Ronald W., 2018. Morphology in Cognitive Grammar. In Jenny Audring & Francesca Masini (eds.), *The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory*. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 346–364.

Leland, Blake. 1988. The Iconicity of Rhetorical Figures: 'Schemes' as Devices for Textual Cohesion. *Language and Style* 21(2). 162–190.

Liberman, Anatoly. 2010. Iconicity and Etymology. In Jac Conradie, Ronel Johl, Marthinus Beukes, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), *Signergy, Iconicity in Language and Literature* 9. John Benjamins. 243–258.

Ljungberg, Christina. 2001. Iconic Dimensions in Margaret Atwood's Poetry and Prose. In Olga Fischer & Max Nänny (eds.), *The Motivated Sign*. 351–366.
Geeraerts, Dirk. 2016. Entrenchment as Onomasiological Salience. In Hans-Jörg Schmid (ed.), *Entrenchment and the Psychology of Language Learning: How We Reorganize and Adapt Linguistic Knowledge*. Berlin: De Gruyter. 153–174.

Goldberg, Adele E. 2019. *Explain Me This: Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions*. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gries, Stefan Th. 2011. Phonological Similarity in Multi-word Units. *Cognitive Linguistics* 22(3). 491–510.

Hilpert, Martin & Florent Perek. 2017. A Distributional Semantic Approach to the Periodization of Change in the Productivity of Constructions. *International Journal of Corpus Linguistics* 22(4). 490–520.

Hinton, Leanne, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala. 2006 [1994]. *Sound Symbolism*. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hoffmann, Thomas. 2017. The Renaissance of Constructions: From Constructions to Construction Grammars. In Barbara Dancygier (ed.), *The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 284–309.

Hüning, Matthias. 2009. Semantic niches and analogy in word formation: Evidence from contrastive linguistics. *Languages in Contrast* 9(2). 183–201.

Hüning, Matthias. 2018. Foreign word formation in construction morphology: Verbs in -ieren in German. In Geert Booij (ed.), *The construction of words: advances in construction morphology*. Cham: Springer. 341–372.

"01.15.20.01/14 (n.) Vigour/Energy: Vigour/Liveliness." *The Historical Thesaurus of English, 2nd ed.* (version 5.0), University of Glasgow, 2024. Web. 1 February 2024. https://ht.ac.uk/category/?id=84515.

Hugou, Vincent. 2013. *Productivité et Émergence du Sens. L'Exemple de la Construction (All) X-ed Out dans un Corpus de Blogs et de Forums de Discussion*. Thèse de Doctorat, Université Paris 3.

Kay, Christian. 2015. Words and Thesauri. In John R. Taylor (ed.), *The Oxford Handbook of the Word*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kay, Christian & Kathryn Allan. 2016. Change in the English Lexicon. In Merjä Kyto (ed.), *The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 220–236.

Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý & Vít Suchomel. 2014. The Sketch Engine: ten years on. *Lexicography* 1. 7–36.

Langacker, Ronald W., 2018. Morphology in Cognitive Grammar. In Jenny Audring & Francesca Masini (eds.), *The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory*. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 346–364.

Leland, Blake. 1988. The Iconicity of Rhetorical Figures: 'Schemes' as Devices for Textual Cohesion. *Language and Style* 21(2). 162–190.

Liberman, Anatoly. 2010. Iconicity and Etymology. In Jac Conradie, Ronel Johl, Marthinus Beukes, Olga Fischer & Christina Ljungberg (eds.), *Signergy, Iconicity in Language and Literature* 9. John Benjamins. 243–258.

Ljungberg, Christina. 2001. Iconic Dimensions in Margaret Atwood's Poetry and Prose. In Olga Fischer & Max Nänny (eds.), *The Motivated Sign*. 351–366.
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Mattiello, Elisa. 2013. *Extragrammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicative and Related Phenomena*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Mattiello, Elisa. 2017. *Analogy in Word Formation: A Study of English Neologisms and Occasionalisms*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Miller, Gary D. 2014. *English Lexicogenesis*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Monneret, Philippe. 2019. *Le Symbolisme Phonétique et la Fonction Iconique. Signifiances/Signifying*. 1-19.

Ohala, John J. 1994. The Frequency Code Underlies the Sound Symbolic Use of Voice Pitch. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), *Sound Symbolism*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 325-347.

Panther, Klaus-Uwe & Günther Radden. 2011. *Motivation in grammar and the lexicon*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Partington, Allan. 2014. Mind the Gaps: The Role of Corpus Linguistics in Researching Absences. *International Journal of Corpus Linguistics* 19(1). 118-146.

Partridge, Eric. 1933. *Slang Today and Yesterday*. George Routledge & Sons: London.

Perek, Florent. 2016. Using Distributional Semantics to Study Syntactic Productivity in Diachrony: A Case Study. *Linguistics* 54. 149-88.

Perniss, Pamela & Gabriella Vigliocco. 2014. The bridge of iconicity: from a world of experience to the experience of language. *Phil. Trans. R. Soc.* B 369: 20130300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb. 2013.0300

Radden, Günther & Klaus-Uwe Panther. 2004. *Studies in linguistic motivation*. De Gruyter Mouton.

Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. & Edward M. Hubbard. 2001. Synaesthesia – a window into perception, thought and language. *Journal of Consciousness Studies* 8. 3-34.

Rhodes, Richard. 1994. Aural Images. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), *Sound Symbolism*. New York: Cambridge University Press. 276-292.

Sablayrolles, Jean-François. 2021. La Vie des Mots n'est pas un Long Fleuve Tranquille. *Linx* 82. http://journals.openedition.org/linx/8020

Saussure, Ferdinand (de). 1995 [1916]. *Cours de Linguistique Générale*, éd. Critique de Tullio de Mauro. PUF: Paris.

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2020. *The Dynamics of the Linguistic System: Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Southern, Mark. 2000. "Formulaic Binomials, Morphosymbolism, and Behagel's Law: The Grammatical Status of Expressive Iconicity". *American Journal of Germanic Linguistics & Literatures* 12. 251-279.

Smith, Chris A. 2014. The phonesthetics of blends: A lexicographic study of cognitive blends in the OED. *Exploration in English language and linguistics* 2(1). De Gruyter. 12-45.
Marchand, Hans. 1960. *The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word Formation: A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach*. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

Mattiello, Elisa. 2008. *An Introduction to English Slang: A Description of its Morphology, Semantics, and Sociology*. Milan: Polimetrica.

Mattiello, Elisa. 2013. *Extragrammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Reduplicative and Related Phenomena*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Mattiello, Elisa. 2017. *Analogy in Word Formation: A Study of English Neologisms and Occasionalisms*. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Miller, Gary D. 2014. *English Lexicogenesis*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Monneret, Philippe. 2019. *Le Symbolisme Phonétique et la Fonction Iconique. Signifiances/Signifying*. 1-19.

Ohala, John J. 1994. The Frequency Code Underlies the Sound Symbolic Use of Voice Pitch. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), *Sound Symbolism*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 325-347.

Panther, Klaus-Uwe & Günther Radden. 2011. *Motivation in grammar and the lexicon*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Partington, Allan. 2014. Mind the Gaps: The Role of Corpus Linguistics in Researching Absences. *International Journal of Corpus Linguistics* 19(1). 118-146.

Partridge, Eric. 1933. *Slang Today and Yesterday*. George Routledge & Sons: London.

Perek, Florent. 2016. Using Distributional Semantics to Study Syntactic Productivity in Diachrony: A Case Study. *Linguistics* 54. 149-88.

Perniss, Pamela & Gabriella Vigliocco. 2014. The bridge of iconicity: from a world of experience to the experience of language. *Phil. Trans. R. Soc.* B 369: 20130300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb. 2013.0300

Radden, Günther & Klaus-Uwe Panther. 2004. *Studies in linguistic motivation*. De Gruyter Mouton.

Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. & Edward M. Hubbard. 2001. Synaesthesia – a window into perception, thought and language. *Journal of Consciousness Studies* 8. 3-34.

Rhodes, Richard. 1994. Aural Images. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), *Sound Symbolism*. New York: Cambridge University Press. 276-292.

Sablayrolles, Jean-François. 2021. La Vie des Mots n'est pas un Long Fleuve Tranquille. *Linx* 82. http://journals.openedition.org/linx/8020

Saussure, Ferdinand (de). 1995 [1916]. *Cours de Linguistique Générale*, éd. Critique de Tullio de Mauro. PUF: Paris.

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2020. *The Dynamics of the Linguistic System: Usage, Conventionalization, and Entrenchment*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Southern, Mark. 2000. "Formulaic Binomials, Morphosymbolism, and Behagel's Law: The Grammatical Status of Expressive Iconicity". *American Journal of Germanic Linguistics & Literatures* 12. 251-279.

Smith, Chris A. 2014. The phonesthetics of blends: A lexicographic study of cognitive blends in the OED. *Exploration in English language and linguistics* 2(1). De Gruyter. 12-45.
Smith, Chris A. 2019. Approche cognitive diachronique de l'émergence du honesthème fl- : réanalyse phonosymbolique et transmodalité dans le Oxford English Dictionary. *Signifiances/Signifying* 3(1). 36-62.

Smith, Chris A. 2020. A Case Study of -some and -able Derivatives in the OED3: Examining the Diachronic Output and Productivity of Two Competing Adjectival Suffixes. *Lexis* 16. http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/4793

Smith, Chris A. 2022. *Combinatoire motivationnelle dans le continuum lexico-grammatical de l'anglais*. Monographie d'Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, Université Lyon 3 Jean Moulin. https://hal.science/tel-04453812

Smith, Chris A. (forthcoming). Assessing lexicographic obsolescence and historical frequency indicators in word entries in the OED: a corpus study of historical -some adjectival derivatives. In Ana-Elvira Ojanguren & Javier Martin Arista (eds.), *Structuring lexical data and digitising dictionaries*. *Grammatical theory, language processing and databases in Historical Linguistics, Papers from the 11<sup>th</sup> International Conference on Historical Lexicology and Lexicography (ICHLL11)*. Leiden: Brill.

Stange, Ulrike. 2016. *Emotive Interjections in British English: A Corpus-based Study on Variation in Acquisition, Function, and Usage*. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Tichý, Ondřej. 2018. Lexical Obsolescence and Loss in English: 1700–2000. In Joanna Kopaczyk & Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.), *Applications of Pattern-driven Methods in Corpus Linguistics*. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 81-103.

Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2014. Toward a Constructional Framework for Research on Language Change, *Cognitive Linguistic Studies* 1(1). 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.1.1.01tra

Tsur, Reuven. 2006. Size Sound Symbolism Revisited, *Journal of Pragmatics* 38. 905-924.

Tsur, Reuven. 2012. *Playing by Ear and the Tip of the Tongue*. Precategorial information in poetry*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Tsur, Reuven & Chen Gafni. 2019. Phonetic Symbolism: Double Edgedness and Code-switching. *Literary Universals Project*. https://literaryuniversals.uconn.edu/2019/07/20/phonetic-symbolism-double-edgedness-and-aspectswitching/

Tournier, Jean. 1985. *Introduction Descriptive à la Lexicogénétique de l'Anglais Contemporain*. Paris/ Genève: Champion & Slatkine.

Umbreit, Birgit. 2010. Does love come from to love or to love from love? Why lexical motivation has to be regarded as bidirectional. In Onysko Alexander & Michel Sascha (eds.), *Cognitive perspectives on word formation*. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter. 301-334.

Umbreit, Birgit. 2011. Motivational Networks: An Empirically Supported Cognitive Phenomenon. In Klaus-Uwe Panther & Günter Radden (eds.), *Motivation in Grammar and the Lexicon*. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 269-286.

Waugh, Linda R. 1994. Degrees of Iconicity in the Lexicon, *Journal of Pragmatics* 22. 55-70.

Wray, Alison. 2002. *Formulaic Language and the Lexicon*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wray, Alison. 2017. Formulaic Sequences as a Regulatory Mechanism for Cognitive Perturbations During the Achievement of Social Goals. *Topics in Cognitive Science*. 1-19.

## Corpora and tools

*The Oxford English Dictionary*, OED3, https://www.oed.com/.
Smith, Chris A. 2019. Approche cognitive diachronique de l'émergence du honesthème fl- : réanalyse phonosymbolique et transmodalité dans le Oxford English Dictionary. *Signifiances/Signifying* 3(1). 36-62.

Smith, Chris A. 2020. A Case Study of -some and -able Derivatives in the OED3: Examining the Diachronic Output and Productivity of Two Competing Adjectival Suffixes. *Lexis* 16. http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/4793

Smith, Chris A. 2022. *Combinatoire motivationnelle dans le continuum lexico-grammatical de l'anglais*. Monographie d'Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, Université Lyon 3 Jean Moulin. https://hal.science/tel-04453812

Smith, Chris A. (forthcoming). Assessing lexicographic obsolescence and historical frequency indicators in word entries in the OED: a corpus study of historical -some adjectival derivatives. In Ana-Elvira Ojanguren & Javier Martin Arista (eds.), *Structuring lexical data and digitising dictionaries*. *Grammatical theory, language processing and databases in Historical Linguistics, Papers from the 11<sup>th</sup> International Conference on Historical Lexicology and Lexicography (ICHLL11)*. Leiden: Brill.

Stange, Ulrike. 2016. *Emotive Interjections in British English: A Corpus-based Study on Variation in Acquisition, Function, and Usage*. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Tichý, Ondřej. 2018. Lexical Obsolescence and Loss in English: 1700–2000. In Joanna Kopaczyk & Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.), *Applications of Pattern-driven Methods in Corpus Linguistics*. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 81-103.

Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2014. Toward a Constructional Framework for Research on Language Change, *Cognitive Linguistic Studies* 1(1). 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.1.1.01tra

Tsur, Reuven. 2006. Size Sound Symbolism Revisited, *Journal of Pragmatics* 38. 905-924.

Tsur, Reuven. 2012. *Playing by Ear and the Tip of the Tongue*. Precategorial information in poetry*. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Tsur, Reuven & Chen Gafni. 2019. Phonetic Symbolism: Double Edgedness and Code-switching. *Literary Universals Project*. https://literaryuniversals.uconn.edu/2019/07/20/phonetic-symbolism-double-edgedness-and-aspectswitching/

Tournier, Jean. 1985. *Introduction Descriptive à la Lexicogénétique de l'Anglais Contemporain*. Paris/ Genève: Champion & Slatkine.

Umbreit, Birgit. 2010. Does love come from to love or to love from love? Why lexical motivation has to be regarded as bidirectional. In Onysko Alexander & Michel Sascha (eds.), *Cognitive perspectives on word formation*. Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter. 301-334.

Umbreit, Birgit. 2011. Motivational Networks: An Empirically Supported Cognitive Phenomenon. In Klaus-Uwe Panther & Günter Radden (eds.), *Motivation in Grammar and the Lexicon*. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 269-286.

Waugh, Linda R. 1994. Degrees of Iconicity in the Lexicon, *Journal of Pragmatics* 22. 55-70.

Wray, Alison. 2002. *Formulaic Language and the Lexicon*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wray, Alison. 2017. Formulaic Sequences as a Regulatory Mechanism for Cognitive Perturbations During the Achievement of Social Goals. *Topics in Cognitive Science*. 1-19.

## Corpora and tools

*The Oxford English Dictionary*, OED3, https://www.oed.com/.
The Historical Thesaurus of English (2nd edition, version 5.0). 2024. University of Glasgow.
https://ht.ac.uk.

*The Oxford English Corpus* OEC, via Sketch Engine. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

*The English Historical Book Collection*, via Sketch Engine. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

Davies Mark. (2010) *The Corpus of Historical American English* (COHA). https://www.english-corpora.org/coha/.

Sketch Engine, http://www.sketchengine.eu. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

## NOTES

1. See Bauer [2019: 55] for a description of multi-word expressions in English and so-called binomials.

2. The notation /i/, /a/, /o/ is Miller's [2014: 224].

3. Note: this spelling error appears in the source text.

4. "01.15.20.01 (n.) Vigour/energy". *The Historical Thesaurus of English*. 2nd ed. (version 5.0), University of Glasgow, 2024. Web. 1 February 2024. https://ht.ac.uk/category/?id=84478.

5. "01.15.20.01|14 (n.) Vigour/energy: vigour/liveliness". *The Historical Thesaurus of English*. 2nd ed. (version 5.0), University of Glasgow, 2024. Web. 1 February 2024. https://ht.ac.uk/category/?id=84515.

6. Many thanks to one of the editors for their discussion on the word class of lexemes filling the X slot in this construction, which does not automatically lead to X being interpreted as a verb.

7. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0910/12/cnr.05.html

8. http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/polari.htm

9. According to Michael Quinion, this eclectic slang is likely derived from the theatre and circus communities, and propagated by sailors. The vocabulary is borrowed from various sources such as Italian, Cockney, Romani, Shelta (Irish tinker slang), Yiddish, and other varieties of non-standard English. According to Quinion, its dissemination then occurred within the homosexual community, possibly through the theatre, and some forms entered semi-standard language, such as *karsey*, meaning ‘a lavatory’; *mankey*, meaning ‘poor, bad, or tasteless’; *ponce*, meaning ‘a pimp’; and *scarper*, meaning ‘to run away.’ This theory is supported by the popularization of *zhuzh* through the Netflix show *Queer Eye*. (https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/you-say-tsuz-i-say-tszuj-20041106-gdk253.html).

10. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2010-06-20/segment/01

## ABSTRACTS

This paper aims to describe and compare phonosemantic motivation in the English lexicon within a group of nouns expressing enthusiasm. From an emergent cognitive usage-based perspective (Bybee [2013], Traugott [2014] and Schmid [2020]), the lexicon is motivated by multiple motivational ties that are both syntagmatic and paradigmatic (see Booij & Audring [2018]), building a network of interconnected expressions of varying degrees of morphosyntactic
The Historical Thesaurus of English (2nd edition, version 5.0). 2024. University of Glasgow.
https://ht.ac.uk.

*The Oxford English Corpus* OEC, via Sketch Engine. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

*The English Historical Book Collection*, via Sketch Engine. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

Davies Mark. (2010) *The Corpus of Historical American English* (COHA). https://www.english-corpora.org/coha/.

Sketch Engine, http://www.sketchengine.eu. https://www.sketchengine.eu/

## NOTES

1. See Bauer [2019: 55] for a description of multi-word expressions in English and so-called binomials.

2. The notation /i/, /a/, /o/ is Miller's [2014: 224].

3. Note: this spelling error appears in the source text.

4. "01.15.20.01 (n.) Vigour/energy". *The Historical Thesaurus of English*. 2nd ed. (version 5.0), University of Glasgow, 2024. Web. 1 February 2024. https://ht.ac.uk/category/?id=84478.

5. "01.15.20.01|14 (n.) Vigour/energy: vigour/liveliness". *The Historical Thesaurus of English*. 2nd ed. (version 5.0), University of Glasgow, 2024. Web. 1 February 2024. https://ht.ac.uk/category/?id=84515.

6. Many thanks to one of the editors for their discussion on the word class of lexemes filling the X slot in this construction, which does not automatically lead to X being interpreted as a verb.

7. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0910/12/cnr.05.html

8. http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/polari.htm

9. According to Michael Quinion, this eclectic slang is likely derived from the theatre and circus communities, and propagated by sailors. The vocabulary is borrowed from various sources such as Italian, Cockney, Romani, Shelta (Irish tinker slang), Yiddish, and other varieties of non-standard English. According to Quinion, its dissemination then occurred within the homosexual community, possibly through the theatre, and some forms entered semi-standard language, such as *karsey*, meaning ‘a lavatory’; *mankey*, meaning ‘poor, bad, or tasteless’; *ponce*, meaning ‘a pimp’; and *scarper*, meaning ‘to run away.’ This theory is supported by the popularization of *zhuzh* through the Netflix show *Queer Eye*. (https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/you-say-tsuz-i-say-tszuj-20041106-gdk253.html).

10. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2010-06-20/segment/01

## ABSTRACTS

This paper aims to describe and compare phonosemantic motivation in the English lexicon within a group of nouns expressing enthusiasm. From an emergent cognitive usage-based perspective (Bybee [2013], Traugott [2014] and Schmid [2020]), the lexicon is motivated by multiple motivational ties that are both syntagmatic and paradigmatic (see Booij & Audring [2018]), building a network of interconnected expressions of varying degrees of morphosyntactic
complexity in the lexicon. The resulting structure is part of the larger *CONSTRUCTICON* of a language (Hoffmann [2017]), constantly evolving under the pressures of usage and changing networks of motivational ties. The phonological aspect of lexical items is an essential component in the makeup and the storage of words (Bybee [2013]). Diachronic lexical iconicity studies such as Flaksman [2017], [2020] suggest there is an iconic treadmill in place leading to loss of iconicity associated with regular sound change and semantic change. In order to test the iconicity within a set of words expressing enthusiasm this study carries out a lexicographic analysis followed by a diachronic corpus study of sixteen phonologically motivated expressions using the COHA and the OEC. Our study will focus on a dataset of nouns with iconic roots expressing <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>, including *rah-rah*, *gung-ho*, *zhuzh* and *pizzazz*. The lexicographic analysis using the OED determines dates of emergence, etymological origins and semantic development of the expressions (also see Smith [2020]), and the COHA and the OEC corpora provide a distributional semantic analysis of the target words (Hilpert & Perek [2017]). The results show that there is some shared semantic space (i.e. similar collocational behaviour) amongst expressive nouns denoting <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>, but frequencies and productivities vary. In addition, these nouns have strong diastratic (colloquial, slang) and diatopic properties (American English). This study illustrates that iconicity is tied to the global issue of competition and regulation within the lexicogrammatical continuum – the balance between innovation, creativity and expressivity on the one hand, and economy, stability and convention on the other hand (Goldberg [2019]).

Cet article vise à décrire et à comparer la motivation phonosémantique au sein du groupe des noms iconiques exprimant l'enthousiasme dans le lexique anglais. Dans une perspective émergente cognitive fondée sur l'usage (Bybee [2013], Traugott [2014], et Schmid [2020]), le lexique est motivé par de multiples liens motivationnels à la fois syntagmatiques et paradigmatiques (voir Booj & Audring [2018]), constituant ainsi un réseau d'expressions interconnectées ayant des degrés variés de complexité morphosyntaxique dans le lexique. Cette structure résultante fait partie de l'architecture constructionnelle ou *CONSTRUCTICON* lexicogrammatical d'une langue (Hoffmann [2017]), lequel évolue constamment sous les pressions de l'usage et des réseaux évolutifs de liens motivationnels. L'aspect phonologique des éléments lexicaux représente un composant essentiel du système lexical et de son stockage (Bybee [2013]). Des études diachroniques sur l'iconicité lexicale telles que Flaksman [2017] et [2020] suggèrent qu'il existe un système de désiconisation associé aux changements phonologiques et sémantiques réguliers dans la langue. Afin de tester les degrés d'iconicité au sein de l'ensemble des mots iconiques exprimant l'enthousiasme, cette étude propose de mener une analyse lexicographique associée à une étude de corpus diachronique de seize expressions motivées sur le plan phonosémantique. Notre étude se concentre sur les noms exprimant le concept d'<ENTHOUASIASME ÉNERGIE VITALITÉ> (EEV) qui possèdent des racines iconiques, tels que *rah-rah*, *gung-ho*, *zhuzh* et *pizzazz*. Les profils lexicographiques (voir Smith [2020]) sont constitués à partir des données de l'OED (dates d'émergence, origines étymologiques et développement sémantique des expressions), puis une analyse sémantique distributionnelle (voir Hilpert & Perek [2017]) est menée à partir des corpus COHA et OEC. Les trajectoires d'émergence du sens EEV, les comportements collocationnels en contexte, et l'étude de la fréquence et de la productivité, montrent que les seize noms iconiques exprimant le concept d'EEV se partagent l'espace sémantique de façon différenciée. De plus, ces noms se caractérisent par des propriétés diastratiques (usage familier, argotique) et diatopiques (anglais américain) spécifiques. Cette étude confirme que l'iconicité lexicale relève fondamentalement de l'équilibre entre deux principes de concurrence et de régulation dans le continuum lexicogrammatical : d'une part, les principes contribuant à l'expressivité, l'innovation et la créativité et, d'autre part, les principes contribuant à la stabilité, l'économie, et la convention (Goldberg [2019]).
complexity in the lexicon. The resulting structure is part of the larger *CONSTRUCTICON* of a language (Hoffmann [2017]), constantly evolving under the pressures of usage and changing networks of motivational ties. The phonological aspect of lexical items is an essential component in the makeup and the storage of words (Bybee [2013]). Diachronic lexical iconicity studies such as Flaksman [2017], [2020] suggest there is an iconic treadmill in place leading to loss of iconicity associated with regular sound change and semantic change. In order to test the iconicity within a set of words expressing enthusiasm this study carries out a lexicographic analysis followed by a diachronic corpus study of sixteen phonologically motivated expressions using the COHA and the OEC. Our study will focus on a dataset of nouns with iconic roots expressing <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>, including *rah-rah*, *gung-ho*, *zhuzh* and *pizzazz*. The lexicographic analysis using the OED determines dates of emergence, etymological origins and semantic development of the expressions (also see Smith [2020]), and the COHA and the OEC corpora provide a distributional semantic analysis of the target words (Hilpert & Perek [2017]). The results show that there is some shared semantic space (i.e. similar collocational behaviour) amongst expressive nouns denoting <ENTHUSIASM ENERGY VITALITY>, but frequencies and productivities vary. In addition, these nouns have strong diastratic (colloquial, slang) and diatopic properties (American English). This study illustrates that iconicity is tied to the global issue of competition and regulation within the lexicogrammatical continuum – the balance between innovation, creativity and expressivity on the one hand, and economy, stability and convention on the other hand (Goldberg [2019]).

Cet article vise à décrire et à comparer la motivation phonosémantique au sein du groupe des noms iconiques exprimant l'enthousiasme dans le lexique anglais. Dans une perspective émergente cognitive fondée sur l'usage (Bybee [2013], Traugott [2014], et Schmid [2020]), le lexique est motivé par de multiples liens motivationnels à la fois syntagmatiques et paradigmatiques (voir Booj & Audring [2018]), constituant ainsi un réseau d'expressions interconnectées ayant des degrés variés de complexité morphosyntaxique dans le lexique. Cette structure résultante fait partie de l'architecture constructionnelle ou *CONSTRUCTICON* lexicogrammatical d'une langue (Hoffmann [2017]), lequel évolue constamment sous les pressions de l'usage et des réseaux évolutifs de liens motivationnels. L'aspect phonologique des éléments lexicaux représente un composant essentiel du système lexical et de son stockage (Bybee [2013]). Des études diachroniques sur l'iconicité lexicale telles que Flaksman [2017] et [2020] suggèrent qu'il existe un système de désiconisation associé aux changements phonologiques et sémantiques réguliers dans la langue. Afin de tester les degrés d'iconicité au sein de l'ensemble des mots iconiques exprimant l'enthousiasme, cette étude propose de mener une analyse lexicographique associée à une étude de corpus diachronique de seize expressions motivées sur le plan phonosémantique. Notre étude se concentre sur les noms exprimant le concept d'<ENTHOUASIASME ÉNERGIE VITALITÉ> (EEV) qui possèdent des racines iconiques, tels que *rah-rah*, *gung-ho*, *zhuzh* et *pizzazz*. Les profils lexicographiques (voir Smith [2020]) sont constitués à partir des données de l'OED (dates d'émergence, origines étymologiques et développement sémantique des expressions), puis une analyse sémantique distributionnelle (voir Hilpert & Perek [2017]) est menée à partir des corpus COHA et OEC. Les trajectoires d'émergence du sens EEV, les comportements collocationnels en contexte, et l'étude de la fréquence et de la productivité, montrent que les seize noms iconiques exprimant le concept d'EEV se partagent l'espace sémantique de façon différenciée. De plus, ces noms se caractérisent par des propriétés diastratiques (usage familier, argotique) et diatopiques (anglais américain) spécifiques. Cette étude confirme que l'iconicité lexicale relève fondamentalement de l'équilibre entre deux principes de concurrence et de régulation dans le continuum lexicogrammatical : d'une part, les principes contribuant à l'expressivité, l'innovation et la créativité et, d'autre part, les principes contribuant à la stabilité, l'économie, et la convention (Goldberg [2019]).
# INDEX

**Mots-clés:** désiconisation, motivation phonosémantique, onomasiologie, analyse distributionnelle, COHA

**Keywords:** iconicity treadmill, motivation, onomasiology, collexeme analysis, COHA

# AUTHOR

CHRIS A. SMITH

Université Caen Normandie - CRISCO

chris.smith@unicaen.fr
# INDEX

**Mots-clés:** désiconisation, motivation phonosémantique, onomasiologie, analyse distributionnelle, COHA

**Keywords:** iconicity treadmill, motivation, onomasiology, collexeme analysis, COHA

# AUTHOR

CHRIS A. SMITH

Université Caen Normandie - CRISCO

chris.smith@unicaen.fr