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Ha! Duh! Ugh!
By Mark Peters

When people talk parts of speech, they often praise the solidity of nouns, the power of verbs, and the colorfulness of adjectives. Adverbs are often blamed for muddying up writing, while articles and prepositions get credit for being the glue of language. Interjections — especially the imitative ones such as whoo, ooh, ulp, eek, and shh — don’t get enough attention as a distinct and vibrant part of speech. Despite their guttural, animalistic sound, these words have a long history, and they serve crucial communicative features in speech and writing.

Interjections comprise a huge category of words. Some have a practical purpose, like the magician’s abracadabra or the quarterback’s hut, which, as Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer has discussed in “Visual Thesaurus,’’ was likely spawned from the military’s “Atten-hut!’’ There’s a fine line between one-word interjections such as “Whoa!’’ and exclamations that are made up of several words, like the geeky “By the hammer of Thor!’’ or the folksy “Dog my cats!’’ But other terms — such as mmm, bleah, and pshaw — appear much less word-like. The imitative interjections mimic our coughs, moans, whines, wheezes, and burps.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition for ugh embodies the double nature of such interjections. The first meaning, found in print since at least 1765, is “A representation of an inarticulate sound of the nature of a hollow cough; a sound or utterance of this nature.’’ So older uses of ugh indicated a cough with no extra meaning intended. But words rarely stay still, and in the 1800s, ugh moved beyond neutral description of a body function to a second meaning that’s common today: “An interjection expressive of disgust.’’ That’s the sense used in a recent headline at The Mary Sue: “Ugh, Really? Johnny Depp Will Co-Star in Fantastic Beasts Sequel, Cameo in First Movie.’’ The fact that ugh has two distinct definitions shows that interjections are just as susceptible to nuance as more obviously nuanced words.

Interjections primarily express emotion — often in a way that doesn’t seem very sophisticated. But Anne Curzan, an English professor at the University of Michigan and regular contributor to the Lingua Franca blog, said in an e-mail that we often overlook how interjections can be used to express empathy. We tend to think only of how interjections can convey our own feelings, but Curzan explains that they “can also express empathy for someone else’s emotional response. In other words, I could say ‘ugh’ in response to something you tell me that I sense you are disgusted with or frustrated by. Or I might say ‘oof!’ when I see someone else hurt themselves.’’

Just about every word has spelling variations, and lexicographers and linguists agree that our spelling system is an imperfect means of capturing human speech. But imitative interjections pose a unique challenge for spellers. Kory Stamper, a Merriam-Webster editor and author of “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries,’’ forthcoming in March, said of imitative interjections. “Their spelling conventions are amazing because they are attempting to put letters to sounds that use phonological features that are outside of the normal system of our language.’’ Stamper cited the words tsk and tut-tut, which mimic the dental click — a sound made with the tongue pressed against the back of the teeth. There’s no way to precisely spell that sound, but tsk and tut-tut are our best attempts, which can then be used in place of the sound.

The dental click poses a challenge similar to animal noises, which are also represented by interjections. Dog barking is commonly represented by woof, arf, and yip, but there are many canine interjections that have fallen by the wayside, such as yaffle, girn, ouff, and blart. Dog noises, like all animal noises, are also represented differently in the world’s languages. Somehow the English bow-wow, Turkish hev-hev, and Spanish guau-guau all represent the same sound. As lexicographer Orin Hargraves mentioned, for many interjections “their spelling is not fixed.’’ Even a word as common as achoo has been spelled many ways over the years, as ahchew, atishoo, ait-choo, and — when describing a long, violent sneeze — ahCHOOOOO.

Sometimes an exclamation sounds imitative or nonsensical but has a deeper history than you’d think. For example, “Yikes!’’ This silly word that expresses astonishment evolved from yipes, which in turn sprang from cripes. Cripes is one of many English words that’s a euphemistic version of Christ. So Christ is the lexical great-grandfather of yikes. In fact, euphemizing is a prolific producer of interjections. Stamper points out that many interjections from the 17th and 18th centuries are “beautifully intricate and weird.’’ For example, “God’s bodkins!’’ produced “Odsbodkins!’’ while “Gadzooks!’’ is likely the child of “God’s hooks!’’

One area where interjections really are different from other words is grammar. Interjections stand apart from the rules that hold sentences together, including this one. You can stick them at the end of sentences, hmm-mm. Oh, you can also put them at the beginning of sentences. Or an interjection be its own sentence. Whoo-hoo! The complicated push and pull of subjects and verbs and clauses doesn’t touch these emotional ejaculations, as they are often called.

Since speech comes before writing, it’s likely that just about every word was spoken well before it appeared in print. This is even truer for interjections. Ugh may first appear in print in the 1700s, but it’s very likely much older. Meh, which resembles a sigh, was spread by “The Simpsons’’ and the Internet, but its Yiddish roots plausibly go back to the 1920s. Clearly, we’ve been coughing and sighing since approximately “Who knows?’’ B.C. Some version of ugh and meh might be just as old.

Some wise words from Isaac Goldberg’s 1938 book “The Wonder of Words’’ apply well here: “In the dawn of language, the bow-wows and the pooh-poohs and even the ding-dongs must have served man well.’’ Mmm-hmmm, they still do.

Mark Peters is the author of the “Bull[expletive]: A Lexicon’’ from Three Rivers Press. Follow him on Twitter @wordlust.