Bouba and Kiki

About

Bouba and Kiki refers to an example often used to explore a linguistic concept called sound symbolism in which people associate certain sounds with specific meanings. In this instance, certain sounds are intuitively linked to certain shapes. According to discoveries dating back to the 1920s, various cultures and languages around the world associate the sound "bouba" with a rounded shape and the sound "kiki" with a spiky shape. Memes about the concept and axiom were popularized on sites like X / Twitter and Tumblr in the early 2020s.

Origin

In 1924, Georgian psychologist Dimitri Uznadze conducted the first recorded experiment showing how people associate specific sounds with certain shapes. This study was later expanded on by V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard, who were the first to use the words "kiki" and "bouba" to show that American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India both routinely associate "kiki" with sharp pointy shapes and "bouba" with more rounded shapes.^[1]

An article about the "bouba-kiki" effect was shared on Reddit's /r/linguistics^[2] sub on March 21st, 2013, where it gathered over 100 upvotes in 11 years (seen below).

Spread

On December 14th, 2020, X^[3] user @0x49fa98 compared different types of shoes as "kiki and "bouba" in a "Choose Your Fighter" meme, gathering over 100 likes in four years. An August 19th, 2021, post by X user @Thinkwert^[4] that compared two fashion outfits labeled with the words then gathered over 800 likes in three years (seen below, right).

On November 26th, 2016, Tumblr user gumuhit posted an image that came to be interpreted as Bouba and Kiki in 2021, as seen in an April 21st, 2021, Reddit^[5] repost by Redditor /u/WordArt2007 (seen below, left). On April 18th, 2021, Redditor /u/ 2cupsofdepresso^[6] posted a meme using the Booba emote and meme to /r/196, gathering over 19,000 upvotes in three years (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References