The interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) uses the ideophone tolotolo in Song of Songs 3:6 to describe billowing curls of smoke. Tolotolo is generally used for a swirling and spiraling upward motion and evokes curling incense smoke and visual and olfactory richness. (Source: Ernst Wendland)

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. (Source: Philip Noss)