. Cross-linguistic examples Uses of onomatopoeia In the case of a frog croaking, the spelling may vary because different frog species around the world make different sounds: Ancient Greek brekekekex koax koax (only in Aristophanes' comic play The Frogs) for probably marsh frogs; English ribbit for species of frog found in North America; English verb "" for the common frog. Related to this is the use of tibbir for the toad. Some other very common English-language examples include hiccup, zoom, ba… (More on Onomatopoeia)