Abstract
The use of onomatopoeic terms for describing food properties was studied. Fify-three onomatopoeic terms were selected to describe food properties by round-table discussion and questionnaires from 192 terms that had been collected from literature and free-answer questionnaires. A panel of 830 persons was asked whether the selected terms correctly expressed the properties of foods. Of the 648 returned questionnaires, 595 were considered valid and thus used for further analysis. More than 40 % of the panel (with a confidence level of 95 %) answered “yes” for almost all of the terms. A further analysis showed that the use of such terms as “mattari” and “boso-boso” differed according to the sex, age and/or degree of interest in food of the panelists.
