The shape of the word bubble resembles the shape of an actual bubble, according to research participants. (Unsplash) Think about a word that looks like its meaning. For instance, the word bed kind of looks like a bed, with the vertical lines resembling the posts at either end. Loop looks very loopy. Some words are more subtly evocative — like blizzard, whose zigzagging letters might evoke something chaotic. The term for this is “iconicity” and it has typically been studied in the sounds of word