PU

[Stephanie Hysmith]

Message-ID: <EXECMAIL.991027152234.A at Stephanie.oak.cats.ohiou.edu >
Priority: NORMAL
X-Mailer: Execmail for Win32 Version 5.0.1 Build (55)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="us-ascii"

In northern Virginia we said "pew" for small annoying odors, but
anything really nasty got the slow, loud "P.U." just to make sure
everyone knew we weren't personally responsible for it. It seemed
awfully close to my Austrian mother's "pfui" which is also used for bad
tastes. I wonder if P.U. was the model for P.O.d which I used in the
late 50s.

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:39:27 -0400 Beverly Flanigan
<flanigan at OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU> wrote:

> Come to think of it, "pew" was the more common form in my childhood, with
> "P.U." a slower exaggerated form.  Now "pew" looks more like "phew", so I
> looked up the latter in my (old) dictionary, and it cites "fu, fyoo" as
> "conventionalized pronun."  This might suggest an earlier oral form closer
> to our childhood pronun., which was then spelled artificially, with
> subsequent spelling pronunciation.  No source word is given, but the
> definition is all-encompassing: "an exclamation expressing disgust,
> surprise, relief, etc."  I generally think of "phew" as only an expression
> of relief (sort of whistled); adding disgust gets it closer to our "pew/P.U."
>
-------------------
Stephanie Hysmith
sh120888 at ohio.edu