What’s the onomatopoeia for a computer?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Thing about onomatopoeias is, they get conventionalised and stick around, even if the referent no longer makes that sound.

I mean this sound?

This sound, the doot doot doot bloop bleep flurgh frump virrrr of a dial up modem? Hasn’t been heard in functional use for what, twenty years? And yet it is still used here and there, as emblematic of the internets.

I submit to you, learned Quorans, that there is an onomatopoeia for computers lurking around, but it dates from the 60s and 70s.

And that the onomatopoeia is bleep or bloop bleep.

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