The practice of using words or phrases to imitate natural sounds is called onomatopoeia. Words such as “buzz,” “hiss,” “meow,” “clang,” and “splash” echo, resemble, or suggest the sounds they describe.
The term comes from the Ancient Greek onomatopoiía, meaning “name-making”: ónoma means “name,” and poiéō means “making.” Onomatopoeia can describe both individual words and the process by which sound-based expressions enter a language. It appears in everyday speech, poetry, comic books, advertising, and children’s literature.
A common mix-up is confusing onomatopoeia with personification. Personification gives human qualities to nonhuman things, while onomatopoeia focuses on sound imitation. Metaphor makes an implied comparison, and hyperbole deliberately exaggerates, so none of those is the canonical answer here.
The same sound may be represented differently across languages because each language has its own sound system. For example, the sound of a clock is commonly written “tick-tock” in English, “tic-tac” in Spanish and Italian, and “dī dā” in Mandarin. This shows that onomatopoeia resembles a natural sound without reproducing it identically.