Japanese has a large inventory of
sound symbolic or
mimetic words, known in linguistics as
ideophones. Sound symbolic words are found in written as well as spoken Japanese. Known popularly as
onomatopoeia, these words are not just imitative of sounds but cover a much wider range of meanings; indeed, many sound-symbolic words in Japanese are for things that don't make any noise originally, most clearly demonstrated by しいんと
shiinto, meaning "silently".