It sounds like some exotic species name, but onomatopoeia refers to a figure of speech where words appear to express the sound of the thing they refer to or represent. BANG! CRACK! SNAP! You know the words … croak, quack, rustle, splash … I could go on. The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (Pam Peters, Cambridge University Press, 2004) goes on to say that these words have no relatives among English words or even in other languages, where the same sounds are represented by different words. It’s all a lot of fun, and many of us know of the comics where a superhero gets into a fight to the expressions of POW! BIFF! and so on. Authors can often use onomatopoeia to bring the sounds of their worlds to the reader.

Have a crack at it yourself.