 Onomatopeia is a Greek word consisting of Onoma, which stands for name, and Peia, which means I make. In semantics, this term refers to lexemes that phonetically imitate, resemble or describe the source of the sound to which they refer. Whereas the relationship between the vast majority of lexemes and their reference is an arbitrary one, like the one between present-day English fly or German Flieger and the actual insect, where we need an indirect relationship which is established via the concept in the mind. Onomatopeia establishes a direct relationship between the sounds of a lexeme and its referent, as in the example of Mu, which stands for cow in several languages. Common occurrences of Onomatopeia include animal noises such as chirp for birds, meow for the noise produced by a cat, or mu and oink, which stand for cow and pig, respectively. But note that these may be different across languages since they must conform to the linguistic system they are part of, for example the sound inventories. Here is an example. The sound of a clock may be tiktok in present-day English, dida in Chinese, or tiktok in Russian, and tiktok in German. Common English language examples of Onomatopeia include lexemes like hiccup, zoom, bang and splash. Furthermore, machines and their sounds are also often described with Onomatopoetic items as in honk or beep beep for the horn of an automobile and vroom or brum for the engine.