Think about a word that looks like its meaning. For instance, the word bed kind of looks like a bed, with the vertical lines resembling the posts at either end. Loop looks very loopy.

Some words are more subtly evocative — like blizzard, whose zigzagging letters might evoke something chaotic.

The term for this is “iconicity” and it has typically been studied in the sounds of words. For example, the word meow resembles the sound of a cat. The word teeny sounds like something small.

My recent study explored iconicity in the visual appearance of words in English for the first time. I found that people processed words faster and more accurately when the words physically resembled their meanings.

Learning a language is hard, but even native speakers get confused by pronunciation, connotations, definitions and etymology. The lexicon is constantly evolving, especially in the social media era, where new memes, catchphrases, slang, jargon and idioms are introduced at a rapid clip. The Conversation Canada’s series Slanguage dives into how language shapes the way we see the world and what it reveals about culture, power and belonging. Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of linguistics.

English letters began as visual........

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