1880年；参见 echo（名词） + -ic。这是来自《牛津英语词典》的一个词。
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（拟声词）不仅使用起来笨拙，而且在词义上与模仿声音的词没有关联或词源上的联系。它的意思是 word-making（造词）或 word-coining（造词），同样适用于孔德的 altruisme（利他主义）和 cuckoo（布谷鸟）。 Echoism（回声主义）则暗示了听到声音后的回响，并且有实用的派生词 echoist（回声主义者）、 echoize（回声化）和 echoic（回声的），而不是 onomatopoetic（拟声的）。后者不仅难以使用，而且在应用于像 cuckoo（布谷鸟）、 crack（裂响）这样的词时是错误的；这些词是布谷鸟的声音，是破裂的尖锐声，这些才是拟声词或 word-creating（造词的），而不是它们所创造的回声词。[詹姆斯·A·H·穆雷，《语言学会会长年会演讲》，1880年]
