PU

[Beverly Flanigan]

"Pfui" sounds like English "phooey," which has quite a different
meaning.  But it must be related to "phew"--anyone have a historical
dictionary handy?
"P.O.ed" must come from an earlier generation's (mine and yours!)
reluctance to use the full two-word form, which I now hear even in
interview shows but still can't say. . . .


At 03:22 PM 10/27/99 -0400, you wrote:
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>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