1880年; 參見 echo（n.）+ -ic。這是一本來自 OED 的單詞。
Onomatopoeia, in addition to its awkwardness, has neither associative nor etymological application to words imitating sounds. It means word-making or word-coining and is strictly as applicable to Comte's altruisme as to cuckoo. Echoism suggests the echoing of a sound heard, and has the useful derivatives echoist, echoize, and echoic instead of onomatopoetic, which is not only unmanageable, but when applied to words like cuckoo, crack, erroneous; it is the voice of the cuckoo, the sharp sound of breaking, which are onomatopoetic or word-creating, not the echoic words which they create. [James A.H. Murray, Philological Society president's annual address, 1880]
Onomatopoeia 除了笨拙之外，既沒有聯想性，也沒有詞源學上的應用，它的意思是 word-making 或 word-coining，既適用於孔德的 altruisme，也適用於 cuckoo。 Echoism 暗示了聽到的聲音的 echoing，並且有有用的派生詞 echoist， echoize 和 echoic，而不是 onomatopoetic，後者不僅難以處理，而且當應用於像 cuckoo， crack 這樣的詞時是錯誤的； 它是杜鵑的聲音，尖銳的斷裂聲，它們是擬聲詞或 word-creating，而不是它們創造的 echoic 詞語。[詹姆斯·A·H·默裏（James A.H. Murray），語言學協會主席的年度演講，1880年]
