Sometimes you don’t need an intricate phrase to express shock, dismay, or joy. Sometimes an emphatic interjection is all that’s required. An interjection is a word or phrase that expresses something in a sudden or exclamatory way, especially an emotion.
Often, interjections are paired with facial expressions or hand gestures to really drive the point home about the feeling we have. Think about the interjection yuck, for example. Try saying it without scrunching up your nose and frowning a little bit!
We are going to take a look at some of the most interesting interjections and how they show up in pop culture, from video games to dating life and beyond.
oof
Oof is one of the most versatile interjections—and you may have noticed, suddenly everywhere! It is used to express pain and dismay or to show sympathy with someone else’s pain. A classic facial expression that oof is paired with is a puffing up of the cheeks followed by a slow release of air. You can even throw a head shake in for good measure to really make your pain or sympathy clear.
But its sudden popularity may have you wondering where it comes from. The oof sound has taken on a life of its own online and in texting, and that’s thanks to the world of video games. If a character falls down or dies, they might emit a soft oof. While it’s been used in video games since at least the year 2000, it really came into its own with the game Roblox. Until 2022, when a Roblox character died or respawned, it would say oof. This inspired countless memes, videos, and commentary about the expression oof. It even gave birth to a new verb: to oof. This versatile verb can either be used to describe killing another player (as in a video game) or messing up something oneself—like “I oofed that guy in Minecraft!” or “I oofed my math test because I didn’t study,” for example.
Tommy Tallarico, the original creator of the popular oof sound, once said, “It’s amazing to think that such a small sound… ended up being one of the most iconic pop culture audio clips of the 21st century.”
oops
Oops is an interjection that expresses mild dismay, chagrin, or surprise. It is particularly associated with making a mistake, clumsy act, or social blunder. In pop culture, oops probably had its heyday in the early 2000s with the release of Britney Spears’s iconic hit album Oops!… I Did It Again, which debuted at the top of the charts in 20 countries around the world.
So, you messed up. You oofed, you goofed, or you made an oopsie. Here at 10 ways to say “I’m sorry.”
uff da
Uff da [ uhf duh ] expresses a feeling of being overwhelmed or dismayed. It comes from the related Scandinavian languages of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. It is commonly used in the upper Midwest. You may have heard the interjection uff da in the classic Coen brothers film Fargo (1996), which is set in North Dakota. In fact, actor Kirsten Dunst described it to the Hollywood Reporter as “one of [her] favorite phrases” in Upper Midwestern English.
oy
The interjection oy is another one that comes to English from a foreign language. Oy, or the related interjections oy veh and oy veh iz mir, are American terms from Yiddish that express dismay, sadness, pain, or grief. It basically translates to “Oh, woe is me!” The popular variant oy gevalt is particularly used to express disapproval.
yoi
The interjection yoi is a Pittsburghese expression popularized by the iconic Pittsburgh Steelers color commentator Myron Cope. Believed to come from Yiddish, yoi is an expression of joy and delight, as when your team scores a touchdown. If one yoi isn’t enough to express your happiness, you can always go a bit bigger and say double yoi or even triple yoi, like Cope himself was fond of doing.
aye yi yi
Maybe oof, uff da, or oy aren’t enough to express your pain, sadness, shock, or dismay. In those cases, there’s another expression probably adapted from a foreign language you can use: aye yi yi. Likely from Mexican Spanish, this expression shows up in music like classic mariachi songs, Roseanne Cash’s “The Way We Make A Broken Heart,” and, more recently, the rapper Kap G’s song 2017 song “Ay Yi Yi.”
ew
The interjection ew is used to express disgust or aversion. While it’s been around since the 1960s, ew really had its moment in the sun with the character of Cher from the 1995 comedy Clueless, where she used it to convey how unimpressed she was with the immature boys at her school. This Valley Girl expression filtered into wider pop culture from there and is now a commonly used emphatic interjection.
ugh
Ugh, pronounced [ ookh ], [ uhkh ], or [ uhg ], is an interjection that expresses disgust, aversion, horror, or other related emotions. This is one of the oldest interjections on our list here—it is attested to as early as the 1670s! Like ew, ugh also gained popularity because of the way the character Cher uses it in the movie Clueless in an iconic scene where she pushes a boy away while saying, “Ugh, as if!”
yuck
Another interjection used to turn up your nose at something gross is yuck. It also dates to the 1960s. The variant yuk is used in the name of the Poison Control mascot, Mr. Yuk, who warns you not to eat harmful substances. Developed by pediatrician Dr. Richard Moriarty, it was first used by the Pittsburgh Poison Control Center in 1971 as a replacement for the traditional skull and crossbones warning. Eventually, the green frowny face sticking its tongue out in disgust was adopted throughout the United States.
ick
The interjection ick is closely related to yuck in that it also expresses disgust or repugnance, as if something tastes gross. In contemporary slang, ick has been turned into a noun (the ick) to describe the gut feeling of being turned off or disgusted by a (former) romantic interest. According to an article in Cosmopolitan magazine, one of the earliest uses of ick in this way comes from the 1990s television show Ally McBeal, whose titular character was a girlboss with some of the worst dating luck on the planet.
yikes
The interjection yikes expresses surprise or alarm. It’s thought to come from the earlier, now largely obsolete, interjection yoicks, which was a call used in fox hunting in England to spur on the hunting dogs. Around the late 2010s, yikes came to be modified with the adjective “big,” as in big yikes. While the origin of this change is unclear, it’s possible that it is associated with the expression big mad, another Gen Z slang term used to describe someone who is really angry.
hmmm
The sound hmmm (or hmm) is used as an interjection and exclamation that can mean many things, but it’s most typically used to express consideration or puzzlement. In other words, it’s the sound you make when you’re trying to work something out. Online, hmmm has become shorthand to express doubt or confusion. One of the largest communities on Reddit is r/hmmm, where people post confusing or strange images, like pictures of a shirt with a pair of jeans printed on it or of a urinal shaped like a shark’s mouth.
lulz
The interjection lulz, or luls, is one that has its origins in online language and has migrated into meatspace (what most of us call “the real world”). Lulz comes from the internet acronym LOL, meaning “laugh out loud.” When used as an interjection in speech or in writing, lulz expresses humor or delight, often with an ironic or sarcastic edge. Lulz is sometimes used as a noun meaning roughly “fun,” as in “I did it for the lulz.”
meh
The interjection meh is used frequently in texts and online to express a feeling of apathy, indifference, depression, or blandness. While its origin is uncertain, it may come from Yiddish mnyeh, an interjection used in that language to express dismissal. It was popularized by The Simpsons in the 1990s and later evolved into an adjective meaning “mediocre” or “of middling quality,” particularly in online contexts, as in “I thought the chicken soup was a bit meh.”
meep
Meep is a slangy interjection that expresses cute surprise or cutesy awkwardness. The sound is closely associated with two classic pop culture icons: Warner Bros. cartoon character Road Runner and Beaker, the lab assistant in the Muppets. Starting in the 2000s, and particularly on social media, meep came to be used as a shorthand to express awkwardness or adorable smallness. This is all well and good, but sometimes it goes too far. In 2009, a high school in Massachusetts banned the word meep because students were using it to annoy teachers and other staff.
Interjections liven up language and help us express our feelings in subtle ways. Alas, we have only touched on some of these interjections in English—and wow, there are so many more! (See what we did there?)
