# Bouba-Kiki Effect **Domain:** Cognitive Science / Linguistics **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The **bouba-kiki effect** is the widespread tendency to match the invented word "bouba" to a rounded, blobby shape and "kiki" to a spiky, angular one. Wolfgang Köhler first reported the pattern in 1929 using the words "maluma" and "takete." In 2001 V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard tested "bouba" and "kiki" and found large majorities making the same match, and later studies have reproduced the effect across many languages and cultures. The effect is among the clearest evidence that sound and meaning connect through shared sensory qualities. ## Relationships - **Field:** [[wiki/Phonosemantics|Phonosemantics]]. - **Practice:** [[wiki/Phonetic Etymology|Phonetic Etymology]]. - **Corpus project:** [[projects/Ten Years Building a Symbolic Language Engine|Ten Years Building a Symbolic Language Engine]], Bryant McGill's symbolic language engine, built from 1994 into the mid-2000s, with its phonological engine, sound indexes, and lexical knowledge graph. ## Sources - Wolfgang Köhler, *Gestalt Psychology* (1929). - V. S. Ramachandran and E. M. Hubbard, "Synaesthesia — A Window into Perception, Thought and Language," *Journal of Consciousness Studies* 8, no. 12 (2001). ## See Also [[wiki/Phonosemantics|Phonosemantics]] · [[wiki/Phonetics|Phonetics]]