A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
psithurism
Psithurism is the sound of wind in trees: the rustle, hiss, and rush of moving leaves. It is a rare word, and it has never quite entered general use, but it names something with no other single English word for it, and the sound it names is different for every species — the dry rattle of a beech in winter, the hiss of a pine, the clatter of an aspen in almost no wind at all.
Etymology
The word is Greek, from a term meaning whispering or muttering, and the Greek is itself imitative, built to sound like what it describes. It entered English in the nineteenth century, largely through poetry, and has stayed on the edge of the language ever since, appearing in word collections more often than in sentences.