咚 (dōng): boom (of a drum)

Meanings

1 boom (of a drum)
2 thud; knock (on a door)

Characters

咚

dōng

boom; thud (onomatopoeia)

Examples

门外传来咚咚的敲门声。

Ménwài chuánlái dōngdōng de qiāoménshēng.

A knock-knock sound came from outside the door.

鼓声咚咚地响。

Gǔshēng dōngdōng de xiǎng.

The drums went boom-boom.

Tips

usage

Usually reduplicated as 咚咚 for repeated sounds. Similar onomatopoeia: 砰 (pēng, bang), 嘭 (pēng, thump), 叮咚 (dīngdōng, ding-dong).

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical in its onomatopoeia role — flags the whole character as a sound made or imitated by speech. Same convention as 嘭, 噔, 砰: when 口 sits beside a phonetic, you are almost always looking at a written sound effect.

phonetic

冬 dōng

winter

Right 冬 supplies the sound dōng exactly — picked for the bass thump it spells, nothing to do with the season. The deep dōng of a drum, a heavy footstep, or something falling: 冬 was the closest existing syllable, so the mouth radical was bolted on to make it onomatopoeic.