Eww! Has it crossed the pond yet?

Question

I hear eww (sometimes spelt as ew) fairly regularly on American sitcoms, usually uttered by a scatterbrained beautiful blonde girl when she sees or hears something disgusting. I don't recall it ever being said when I was a child living in London, and the word gross was virtually unknown. In the 1970s, the utterances yuck or ugh were commonly blurted out. Moreover, on my frequent visits to the UK I don't seem to hear eww ever being used but I tend to mix with people closer to my age.

The dictionary, Online Etymology offers no guidance, and Oxford Dictionaries limits itself by saying

ew

/ˈɪəuː/, /ˈiːuː/

EXCLAMATION

^INFORMAL
Used to express disgust or distaste: ew, I’d hate to think what has been trampled into that carpet
eww, how can you eat that?

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Origin

1970s: imitative.

Has ew/eww crossed the Atlantic and become common parlance in old Blighty i.e. the UK? If it has, when did it more or less occur? And are the expressions ugh and yuck still popular with the young in both the US and the UK? If not, which exclamation of disgust is gaining territory?

If anyone is still confused about which sound I'm referring to, click on the YouTube link to hear a perfect example. The young American child (who coincidently happens to be blonde) is called Georgie and she is tasting a variety of foods while blindfolded, the resulting "eww!" is spontaneous and unaffected and happens at 56 seconds.

^{EWW! THAT'S GROSS!}

Answer 1

It has definitely crossed over to the UK. My 15 year old (a couple of years ago) daughter used it as expression of choice when faced with a gross situation. Sadly I have even used it myself but I like to think in a post-modern ironic sense ;)

Like many Americanisms that cross the pond I imagine it is likely to have transferred through TV programmes, such as Friends.

Answer 2

I’m a 62 year old (U.S. Male); the term ew or eww, as described, is equivalent to yuck in a more tactile sense. You may react to a slimy frog being offered to you, to hold; with the opportunity to say no, with Yuck!, as a response. But if a crass person just says here, hold this, without description, or knowledge of what it is, and you hold out your hand as a trusting person, the term ew or eww is likely to be used, when you actually feel the slimy creature placed in your hand.

This is an excellent question about word usage in context.

This response is strictly my opinion.

Answer 3

At school in England around the turn of the millenium, "eww" was certainly in usage. I think (as mentioned in the comments) the huge popularity of US television shows may have had something to do with the frequent use of word.

Other words that commonly replaced "eww" as expressions of disgust were "sick", "gross" and "vile".

Another of the most frequently uttered words at school was "minging" (along with "minger" and "mings"). The word could be used both on its own as a reaction to experiencing something unpleasant ("minging!"), or as part of a sentence ("that looks/smells/tastes/feels minging"). This may well have been a northern thing as I don't remember friends and relatives in the south being familiar with it (at least at that time).

Edit: I need to add the ever-popular vomit noise "blurgh" to my list.

Answer 4

The problem with this question is we're dealing with an orthographic representation of an "imitative/onomatopoeic" interjection. It's worth noting OED's two different pronunciations...

Brit. /ˈiː(j)uː/
U.S. /ˈi(j)u/

OED list the alternative spellings euuw, euuww, euuwww, euw, euww, euwww, eww, ewww, and point out "forms with u occurring three or more times or w occurring four or more times are also occasionally attested". All this for a "word" that apparently didn't even exist until 1975.

OP is clearly more interested in the history of the sound itself than whether or how it's written, but I do think it's worth noting that OED also says compare ugh, ough, ooh, oh. I have to say that none of those forms seem to suggest the sound I personally usually make to indicate disgust (it's pretty much just an "extended neutral vowel", which I'd normally transcribe as eugh).

I first noticed the "American high school girl" pronunciation (which is how I still feel about it) back in the late 90s, around the time I started using Internet chat forums. But it's quite likely that in all the fifteen years since then I personally have never made that sound myself (except facetiously, poking fun at people who do make it). On the other hand, I bet I've written it thousands of times in forum posts and "txt" messages - simply because it's quick, easily recognised, and "close enough".

Both my children (in their early 20s) definitely use the /ˈiː(j)uː/ pronunciation from time to time, and one of them has just told me she thinks of it as "normal English" (not particularly "American"). But they grew up watching The Simpsons, so what do they know? They both sometimes answer the phone with "Y'ello?", which so far as I'm concerned is a Homer Simpson affectation.

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My point here is that it's very difficult to know exactly how other people pronounce words just by looking at what they write. They might be like me, just using the easiest or most common spelling because "accuracy" is unimportant or impossible to achieve. Or they may start off using the "affected" form facetiously to poke fun, but eventually get so used to it they use it "for real".

Or people may consciously attempt to imitate the sound they think is suggested by a particular orthography. On that specific point, when I started writing this section I had it in mind to point out that no-one ever pronounces hiccough the way you'd expect from how it's written. In support of which I was going to post this audio link.

I swear to God I had to turn the volume up and listen real close to convince myself that "Emma" there really is saying hickuff, because my "language processing" mental circuitry automatically switches it to hickup before anything reaches my conscious awareness. In matters of language, we tend to hear what we expect to hear (whether the source is actual sounds, or letters).

Answer 5

This has definitely crossed! I would still associate it with a:

scatterbrained beautiful blonde girl when she sees or hears something disgusting

often a reaction towards blood or something they object to - spiders and snakes (esp. when eating) often get an "eew".

I live in East Anglia, in a more affluent area, and because of that I don't hear as much of these Americanisation of our language - for example minging isn't often used in my earshot.

But yes, it has come across - long enough ago that I (15 years old) didn't realise it was an Americanisation - I don't remember life without it (same with google!).

Answer 6

These imitative sounds serve to express emotion and are a product of the facial expression that expresses the emotion. Traditionally psychologists worked with six basic emotions including fear and surprise. Theres a pic of these at http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-00sc-introduction-to-psychology-fall-2011/emotion-motivation/discussion-emotion/.

My point is that the 'ugh' sound (or blurgh or gross) is quite different to the politer 'eww' in which the lips are kept closer together. So I asked myself, if our American was using 'eww', what corresponding sound was being used by a Brit trying to be polite back in the 70s?

To find out, I revisited one of the iconic moments of British TV and the team of young men and women who taught a generation of UK children to speak, think and feel. The TV series is called Blue Peter and in this 1969 episode the presenters bring a juvenile elephant into the studio.

Despite being bathed in bodily fluids and trodden on, you will note that there is no 'urgh' or 'yuck' or 'aghh', but rather a couple of polite 'oh's. No 'eww' in sight in 1969!!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Cj2TtFd_E

Enjoy !

Answer 7

In 1995/6 I was co-running an online MUD (a text-based adventure game), and was introduced to "ewww" by the multitude of American university students (largely West Coast) who played on our server. I liked it immediately and have been using it ever since.

Slightly tangentially, I was also introduced to "kewl" as a deliberately phonetic mis-spelling of "cool" via the same source, and its traditional mis-typing: "kwel".

So, in my experience, the word spread to my side of the pond via the internet.

I am 47, and a British English speaker.