Headline, July 25 2025/ ''' HOW-UH? '''

''' HOW-UH? '''

'' HOW-UH ? '' IS THE MOST OFTEN USED WORD for The World Students Society - most lovingly and respectfully called !WOW!. '' How did the students of the world achieve this greatest of accomplishments? How - Uh? ''

SOMETIMES CHANGE COMES NOT in the form of a new word but in the form of an '' uh. '' That little gasp of irritation is doing some serious work.

You've probably heard people in real life - generally under 40, usually women - adding '' uh! '' to words and sentences that way, as a kind of verbal exclamation point.

A reader, Dean Featherston, sent me this great bit of videos, in which police officers are summoned to remove a young woman from a restaurant bathroom. 

'' Do not come back on this property. You've trespassed,'' one of the officers says. '' How-uh ? '' she replies with perfect sullen irritation.

I became aware of this in 2015, when overheard someone ask a college student how her summer had been. '' Good-uh ! '' she replied. I wondered why she had exclaimed in that particular way.

But once I noticed that intonation, I realized I was hearing it everywhere - from people in real life and on the radio and actors in film, television and theater. It turns out it has been around for a while.

I've heard from readers that '' No-uh ! '' has been common among kids for decades, and I wouldn't be surprised if even longer. Perhaps young Grover Cleveland replied, '' No-uh ! '' when someone tried to give him castor oil for a tummy ache.

Was George Washington, asked if he had chopped down that apocryphal hcherry tree, tempted to say, '' No-uh ! '' ? We may never know. But by the 2010s, that quasi-suffix had expanded its reach well beyond '' No.'' It really caught on, and here we are.

AS IT IS often the case, women led the way. Scholars of the academic speciality known as variationists  sociolinguistics have found that across cultures, women are more likely to let the language morph and evolve along its own flow.

Men use slang, sure, but overall, they are less given to experimenting. It was women who, way back when, started using the word '' has '' instead of '' hath. ''

After a while, men got with the times. In the same way, these days I hear men under about 30 using '' -uh!'' more than I used to.

This emotionally resonant sound is now such a common way of speaking that it can be used even without exclamation, in a neutral voice to respond in an only mildly dramatic way, as if in scare quotes.

'' Is that really what we're going to do? '' my younger daughter asked my tween. The answer was a placid '' Yessa.'' No need to raise a voice.

She had subtly but successfully communicated her displeasure at being asked.

I'm mentioning all this not just because ''-uh '' is a curiosity in its own right but also because it says a lot about a question that readers frequently ask me :

How do new words or expressions get adopted?

The truth is that in a great majority of cases, there is really no answer. People are creative about the words they choose and how they use them, and that creativity just keeps the language evolving.

It's no more a matter of reasons than the creativity that drove the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat or Yoko Ono.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research of Language, Irritation and Evolution, continues. The World Students Society thanks John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at  Columbia University.

With most respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See You all  prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world :

wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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