Some words seem to sound like their meaning — a phenomenon called sound symbolism or onomatopoeia. Words for 'small' tend to use high-front vowels (like 'tiny,' 'petit,' 'klein') while words for 'large' often use low-back vowels (like 'grand,' 'gross,' 'huge') across many unrelated languages. Researchers call this the Bouba/Kiki effect — when shown a spiky and a rounded shape, people across cultures overwhelmingly associate 'Kiki' with the spiky one.