Alliteration repeats sounds while onomatopoeia describes them. Alliteration is used more in poetry, while onomatopoeia is used in everyday speech. Both can be used together and are prevalent in Germanic languages like English. Alliteration declined after French poetry influenced English, but has since been revived in free poetry. Alliteration and onomatopoeia are often used in comics, with alliterative names for characters and words to describe sounds becoming popularized.
The difference between alliteration and onomatopoeia is that the former is a repetition of sounds and the other is the description of sounds. Alliteration and onomatopoeia perform different functions within a language. Alliteration is a literary device used more often in poetry while onomatopoeia is descriptive and used in everyday speech. The two are not mutually exclusive and many cases of onomatopoeia are alliterative, like the “tick tock” of a clock.
Alliteration involves the intentional repetition of a sound or letter. This can take the form of a whole syllable or a single consonant. A sequence of words starting with the same letter is as alliterative as a pair of words with the same opening syllable. Such repetition can occur in any number of languages, but is especially prevalent in Germanic languages such as English and especially Anglo-Saxon.
The term onomatopoeia is applied to words that describe an actual sound such as plop. Such sounds are often used to describe animal noises or machine sounds. Every language has onomatopoeic sounds for these things, but they rarely agree on what that sound is. Even in English, some dogs say ‘woof woof’ while others say ‘bow wow’ and some say ‘ruff ruff’.
Old English poetry used alliteration as the predominant structure. Each line of verse has been divided into two half-lines. The first half-line would have two alliterative words and the second half-line would have an alliterative word with the first half-line and a final word that doesn’t alliterate. In Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Saxon poetry, alliteration and onomatopoeia were completely separate phenomena.
As English developed after 1066 and was heavily influenced by French poetry, the use of alliteration declined. More recent exponents of the craft include WH Auden, who wrote ‘The Age of Anxiety’ and JRR Tolkien, who wrote ‘The Lay of the Children of Hurin’. Twentieth-century free poetry began using alliteration and onomatopoeia, incorporating sounds as a means of description, and adding bizarre rhythms to poems.
Real life and especially fictional names often end up being alliterative. These include celebrities and politicians such as Steven Spielberg, Ryan Reynolds and Ronald Regan. They are mostly found in comics, including the creations of Stan Lee, such as Peter Parker, better known as Spiderman. Sometimes alliteration can be more subtle, visual rather than audible, like British actor Sean Bean.
Comics have played an important role in the development of alliteration and onomatopoeia. Just as Stan Lee used alliterative names for many of his characters, comic book writers and artists like Roy Crane used words to describe sounds. This has led to the popularization of onomatopoeias such as “bam”, “pow” and “dook dook”. Such sounds later made their way into television shows like “Batman” and movies like “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”.
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