The interconfessional Chichewa translation (publ. 1999) uses the ideophone pekupeku in Song of Songs 4:1 to describe the ripples and tumbles of the hair (“Your hair ripples and tumbles like a flock of goats”). Pekupeku is generally used for a swaying, bouncing, and flapping motion and here evokes the flowing and lively movement of hair down the slopes. (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)