Separated by a Common Language

One thing this blog is teaching me is to not be so sure of myself when thinking that nobody knows how to spell interjections. The amount of accepted variation is headspinning.

Aaargh!

I spend my first 12 years or so in rural north Queensland, Australia, and didn't encounter 'Yuk!' (definitely no c) until my older brother brought it back from the sophisticated south. Until then our interjection to express disgust was 'Urk!' which I haven't seen in writing anywhere, at least not with this meaning

That takes me back. I interpreted Baby Face Finlayson's "yuk yuk" as a chuckle of malevolent glee (think Dastardly's Muttley). I don't recall seeing it elsewhere and was not familiar with the American usage. To my mind, Baby-Face's usage requires repetition; a single "yuk" would not suffice.

Another comic-book exclamation I recall was "erk!", a succinct combination of "drat!" and "uh-oh!".

This BrE native speaker had never come across 'yu[c]k' meaning anything other than disgust until reading this post. There is 'yack' , which means to talk endlessly or to rabbit on (does that work transatlantically?), but that's another matter.

American here: I hardly ever hear "yuk" (laughter) any more. I think it a bit old fashioned. I do hear and say "yuck!" for something disgusting all the time, and if I heard someone say the word without context I would assume "disgusting". As for "ugh" I don't think I've ever seen/heard it used meaning exasperation. I've only heard it used to mean something disgusting or disliked. "I've got to clean the toilet. Ugh." I've also heard and used the back-of-throat fricative one. (I'm in the midwest - Michigan)

"Bleurgh" is the (more or less) accepted spelling of the sound of vomiting. That's how it's usually written in subtitles, anyway.

"Yuk" as laughter I think can also be "yock". It strikes me as coming straight from the '30s-40s-50s Borscht Belt comedians, along with "boffo", "socko", etc.

I'd always assumed that the noun "yuk" (for laughter) was derived from the interjection, in a similar fashion to the modern "LOL" --> "to have some lolz".

Maybe it's the other way around though - I seem to remember the Beano had a habit of printing onomatopoeic words, so characters would appear to be saying "chortle!"

I'm from Minnesota. To me, "yuck!" means something is gross and "yuk" is to laugh like, "You guys were really yukking it up!" In Minnesota we also say, "Ish!" when something is gross.

New Englander, here. To me, yuck/yuk is exactly as you say -- disgust and laughter. I do think yuk is very old-fashioned, though. It's very Marx brothers and Three Stooges.

In addition to the ones you mentioned, we also use "blech" to indicate disgust, often with a fricative "ch," and sometimes "ugh," pronounced the same as in the UK, though we are more likely to spell it "ick," I think.

The first time I (BrE) saw "Ew" written down was in an American young adult novel, and I simply assumed that this was how Americans spelt "Ugh", as to my mind they are pronounced very similarly.

I then wondered whether "Yuck" also came about as a variety of "Ugh", perhaps by someone - or more probably several someones - reading it as it is spelt! We Brits, in particular, do seem to delight in mangling words like that!

Slightly off-topic: the "Ugh!" that your stereotypical Indian uses as a greeting actually does reflect the pan-Algonquian greeting [ux] as written down by a 16th-century anglophone, though the spelling pronunciation [ʌg] is nowadays more typical.

I too live in Britain and have never heard "yuck/yuk" as meaning laughter; only ever as something disgusting. Within the UK, I'd suggest that "yuck" is (much) more common than "yuk", though how you'd go about testing that is beyond me.

With regards to "ick" and "eww", I think that those terms have started to become just as common in BrE. My guess would be down to the influence of American TV aimed at a young audience.

"Ugh", for me, seems to be differentiated from "urgh", although clearly neither of those two spellings are standardised. "Urgh" meaning disgusting, "Ugh" for exasperation: do a YouTube such for Harry Enfield sketches where he plays a character called Kevin.

Re: "yack" as chatter -- as an American, I'd expect to see it spelled "yak" (c.f. the Coasters' "Yakkity Yak"), and would think of "yack" as a synonym for vomit (the verb more than the noun).

I agree that "yuk" [laughter] is old-fashioned to my ear, but I've always associated it with what I think of as the Goofy laugh (the Disney character), which I've seen spelled out as "Hyuck hyuck hyuck."

I'm surprised by the people who don't differentiate parts of speech along with the different meanings. For me, yuck/yuk as a interjection, only means one is expressing disgust, and as a noun, in only means a laugh (or yuk = laughs). Which makes them easy to tell apart.

I agree with mif-- I think "yuk" is old-fashioned. I can only remember hearing it watching Stooges reruns when I was little in the early 90s. It's definitely not part of my Chicagoan dialect.

@Mrs Redboots:

"Ew" is pronounced "EEE-oo". Not similar to any way I've ever heard "ugh" spoken.

Anyone know what "leer" is? I've never heard of that one.

I think (this is my guess) that "leer" is a transcription error with lower-case L being mistakenly used for lower-case I, and the sound intended being something like "ee-yerr-uh!" with a low-high-low intonation – which is a real southern BrE schoolchild's expression of disgust, to me at least.

'Yuck' to me (BrE) is an expresison of disgust, and strangely I remember being confused by the 'yuk yuk' of that beano character as a kid.

Great post, as usual. I'm just as familiar with "yack" for disgust, and associated adjective "yacky" as in, "Oh, that's a bit yacky". I haven't ever heard the yuk for laughter thing, though I'd forgotten about the Beano usage, and that is ringing a bell. (British Resident Alien in America).

Now to me, to "yack" is to talk a lot, mostly inconsequentially ("What was she yacking about?"). Also spelt "yak", like the animal...

Yes, me too, come to think of it. "They were really yacking on" etc.

This post has made me (AmE. Midwest) realize that the list of interjections I use for disgust is quite long and includes: yuck, ick, yick, blech, uck, bleh, ack, and ew.

The meaning is often emphasized with frictive in throat.

"Yuk" means to laugh, but it sounds old fashioned and is associated with old time Jewish comedians from the 40's and 50's.

"Ugh" is disgust or exhaustion.

Dare I bring up the verb "squick"? It is also a noun; the adjective is "squicky".

You'll have to tell us which dialect you're talking about, Anon.

'Yuk Yuk!' strikes me as something you'd see in Viz, though I'm reluctant to google it at work.

On Dennis the Menace, American comedy website www.cracked.com recently included them on a list of "The most mind-blowing co-incidences".

They conclude the entry by stating that the British series has been the better, but the reasoning they give is questionable at best:

"Something tells us this kid actually does piss on stuff in his comics"

"Why they didn't just coincidentally make a film about the UK's Dennis at the same time is anyone's guess, but we're willing to bet that it was because such a film would not get a PG rating."

So... that's happened.

"Squick(y)" is internet-speak. It's thought to come from a combination of "squeamish" and "ick(y)", and describes a mental/emotional squirm rather than physical disgust.

The opposite is "squee", the sort of emotion that evokes a girly squeal of delight.

Both can be found in TV Tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Squick
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Squee

hmmm, I seem to be alone in spelling it yeuk or yeuch (I do pronounce it with a much softer sound, the fricative ch, rather than the hard k sound). I'm originally from Essex, UK, but with my dialect heavily influenced by a father from Norfolk and a mother who grew up in Hampshire, but with parents from London.

Upper Midwest ish 'expression of disgust' is a borrowing from Norwegian isj of the same pronunciation and meaning.

Apparently the neon-green disgusted-face sticker used to mark poisons is properly spelled "Mr. Yuk," although he is American (created in Pittsburgh).

Hello,

I (U.S. South with AAVE influences) agree with most of what the other Americans have said. Yuck for disgust and yuk for laughter. I remember yuk from old Bugs Bunny cartoon, though I would never use it myself. (I'm in my early twenties).

I'd use UGH for disgust or exasperation with a lot of back-of-the-throat, fricative sounds that I might let linger depending on my level of frustration, no really for disgust though. I'd never pronounce the g unless I'm trying to sound facetious or mock cavemen.

Lastly, when I was growing up, I remember hearing the term "yuck mouth", which can describe someone with very bad teeth (or no teeth) and halitosis as well as some who is excessively vulgar.

American here, from the Midwest (central portion of the US). The only thing yuck/yuk means to me is "disgusting". I have never in nearly 40 years of life heard anyone use "yuk" to refer to laughter. I've heard "yukking it up" rarely, and deem it an outdated term.

>> The slang, onomatopoetic term for laughter is yuk <<

For me, a BrE speaker, an onomatopoeic term has to be one that reflects a real sound -- and I have to admit to some difficulty in hearing the sound "yuk" as any kind of laughter! (Although perhaps it has some relationship to "chuckle".) Do Americans really go "yuk" when they laugh?

It's a loose bit of onomatopoeia (as many are), which could be seen to imitate the kind of laugh in which there's some closure at the back of the mouth as one gulps air. I know that there's some famous person(s) with that kind of laugh (in performance, at least), but I can't for the life of me think of who it is. Or maybe it's a cartoon character? Maybe someone can help...

"Ew" is certainly catching on among little girls in England, who think it makes them sound sweet.

I've stumbled into this conversation quite late, but came upon this blog while searching for a definition.

I no longer watch award shows of any kind, but even if I did I would have passed on the Globes simply because Ricky Gervais was host (no offense to fans).

This conversation is interesting to me. I'm an American, and have always known (and used) 'yuck' as a term of disgust.

That said, I have heard the term 'yuk it up', which means "to clown around", so I guess technically for some Americans the word has two definitions.

Where does the British "Yeuch fit in here?

Slightly offended by "a Beano boy" - for the last 30-40 years, at least, one of the main joys of The Beano is that it's a children's comic or magazine that's marketed to and read by both boys and girls alike! It features a pretty equal mix of both male and female characters as well - Minnie The Minx, Toots, Ivy The Terrible, and Dennis's sister Bea are just as iconic and timeless as characters like Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger, Bananaman, and the slightly racially uncomfortable Little Plum.
(Yours, a 20 year old woman who still occasionally buys the Beano and , because Menace Squad is for life.) ;)

Coming very late to this (I've only just discovered Lynne's blog) but I've always wondered whether the word 'yuck'to express disgust actually comes from the Welsh 'ach-y-fi' sometimes spelt 'ych-y-fi' and which does mean 'disgusting'. It's also worth noting that it doesn't always need to be a disgusting physical item. I remember my Nanna commenting on someone's lack of manners as 'ach-y-fi' once.

I am in the UK and submitted a reworked fairy tale to a US publisher. I wrote, "Goldilocks was out for her morning constitutional". The publisher commented, "We don't want to see that" (but published it anyway). Puzzled, I looked online. Whereas in the UK a "constitutional" is a walk undertaken for the benefit of one's health, in the US it seems to be something to do with bodily functions. I am in the process of submitting another story to a (different) US publisher, so I am checking the US equivalents of "yuck" and "snog" before doing so.

I'm from Yorkshire, England. Every Friday when I was a kid, in thelate 60's, early 70's, my brothers and I would buy comics, such as the Dandy, Beano, Whizzer and Chips. I think Baby Face Finlayson and possibly other characters, would say "Yuk! Yuk!" as a mischevious chuckle or laugh. "Yuck!" was used as an exclamation of disgust. I used Yuk! Yuk! in a txt to my daughter recently, to imply laughter, but sadly, she didn't undrstand, being of the 'lol generation'.