Gods in the Word

Margaret Magnus is a programmer and linguist, and one of the most prominent researchers in the branch of linguistics known as sound symbolism. This book is a non-technical introduction to an expanded understanding of how the form of a word -- its sound -- affects its meaning. Each vowel and each consonant in a language has a meaning which is very broad, yet distinct from that of every other vowel and consonant. There are two levels of sound-meaning -- the iconic, and the phonesthetic. The phonesthetic dimension of a consonant's meaning is archetypal in nature. And each consonant and vowel infuses every word that contains it with this meaning. This book introduces the reader to the nature of the phenomenon, and outlines some experiments that the reader can perform with a pencil and sheet of paper, by means of which they can verify for themselves that the phenomenon is real.