The NY Times reviewed this weekend a book by Roy Blount Jr: Alphabet Juice. I quote from the review:
Disdaining those scholars who think the relation between words and their meanings is arbitrary, he argues that “all language, at some level is body language.” …. Blount zeroes in on the expressive words that “somehow sensuously evoke the essence of the word: ‘queasy’ or ‘rickety’ or ‘zest’ or ‘sluggish’ or ‘vim.'”
I could not help but note that
[Blount writes] “‘Swoon’ emerged from the old English swogan, to suffocate, because the mind and the mouth conspired to replace ‘og’ with ‘oo’ in order to register a different motion-feeling.”
Otohime 
I couldn’t help but note that … “Blount.”
Which reminds me… do you notice how Obama sometimes talks as if there’s a lot of extra air in his mouth? Imagine Obama saying “Blount” and you’ll see what I mean. I mean the above literally, not metaphorically. It’s true metaphorically, too, but that’s another matter.