Query: Origin of "oops"

[Laurence Horn]

Well, that seems pretty convincing, or at least plausible.  Speaking
of "oops", does anyone have anything on the first cites of "uh-oh",
the "interjection expressing alarm, foreboding, or dismay", as the
AHD puts it?  There's no OED entry for ":uh-oh" at all, which is
pretty remarkable considering its frequency--as a rough index, for
example, there are 749,000 google hits.

Larry


At 9:40 AM -0500 3/15/05, Baker, John wrote:
>         Merriam-Webster takes oops or whoops only back to 1933, so
>it doesn't seem to be as old as all that.  There are online takes on
>oops-a-daisy at
>http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000224 and
>http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ups1.htm.
>
>John Baker
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
>Of Cohen, Gerald Leonard
>Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 9:33 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Query: Origin of "oops"
>
>
>One of my Etymology students today asked me about the origin of "oops."
>Supposedly this is a natural exclamation, but are we sure of this?
>Are there any articles on the origin of interjections such as
>"oops"? And what in the world is going on with "oops-a-daisy"?
>
>Gerald Cohen