What do you call extended words like ‘Nooooo’?

Question

Is there a word or phrase for this? When you take a word and extend the sound of a letter - usually a vowel - to intensify it. Sometimes you might say Helloooo and stretch out the ‘o’ sound. What is this called?

Decapitated Soul · Accepted Answer

It's called (monosyllabic) word elongation or word lengthening.

From The Atlantic Magazine:

Evvvvverywherrrre, from instant messages to texts to tweets and even e‑mails, I see examples of what language watchers call word lengthening. The habit began among teens and 20-somethings, but it is no longer limited to them. Adults are adding o’s to their no’s, s’s to their yes’es, and i’s to their hi’s, to say nothing of a glut of exclamation points. In response to some recent news, my 60-something mom wrote, “LOVE IT AND YOU TOO!!!!” What is going on?

References:

The Atlantic magazine
Urban Dictionary
ACL web
Wired

LPH · Answer

It can be referred to simply as "adding letters to words" or more conveniently as "word lengthening".
Reference: Huffpost

Isabel Archer · Answer

Could this be a special form of onomatopoeia, which is the term for a word that sounds like the sound of the object it describes?

I think that might be stretching the definition (no pun intended), but perhaps there's an argument that "Nooooo" sounds very much like a long denial.

What do you call extended words like ‘Nooooo’?

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