May I interject?

Part of knowing and speaking a language is knowing the meaning of the little sounds we make as part of conversation. Linguists call these interjections. We have lots of interjections in English, including whoops, oops, yikes, eek, ouch, argh, and ugh.

Argh and ugh are two interjections that sound similar, but can mean very different things.

Both argh and ugh go back about 200 years in English.

Ugh

Ugh originally was a sound used to represent coughing, often in the phrase “Ugh, ugh, ugh.” From there it came to represent a sound of disgust. So perhaps you’ve encountered something gross, or you’re in a situation that you don’t like: You can express your distaste by saying, “Ugh.”

In the video above, some people describe their use of ugh to express irritation, fatigue, and disappointment.

Argh

Argh for many of us is more an expression of frustration. I was thinking about this the other day because I was sending an email to a friend who was coming to Ann Arbor when I was going to be out of town. I wanted to express my frustration and let her know how sorry I was that I wasn’t going to be here. I started with ugh, and then I consciously changed it to argh to make my feelings more clear. Argh, as one of the students in the video points out, is “a little angrier.”

I want to make sure to differentiate argh, a-r-g-h, from the pirate sound arrrrr, which, if you look at the websites that teach you how to speak like a pirate (and yes, those websites really do exist), is typically spelled a-r-r-r-r-r to capture the classic pirate sound.

Oof

The word oof captures the sound we make when we expel our breath. It first shows up in English in 1777, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. That noise we make with our breath can express alarm, relief, pain, or even empathy at somebody else’s pain. Imagine you watch someone bellyflop off a  diving board, which you know hurts. Your response could very well be, “Oof,” because you know how it feels to hit the water like that.

Word up

One of the things about interjections is that it makes a real difference which one you pick. If you make a mistake you need to say “Oops!” or “Whoops!” not “Phew!” But if you discover you did not make a mistake, then you could say, “Phew!” This also works when someone tells you they did not make a mistake. You can empathetically say, “Phew!”*

These interjections can provide an effective way to express our own emotions, as well as a way to express our understanding of other people’s emotions.

*If you are wondering about my use of singular generic they in this sentence, please see my explanation here.

This video appears courtesy of LSA Today. Curzan’s observations on language also can be heard on the Michigan Radio program “That’s What They Say.”