A new use of "duh?"

[Wilson Gray]

No shit? "Well, no shit your product isn't selling" is grammatical for you
in an environment devoid of context? Different strokes, I guess. In its
original site, which I'm not interested in going to the effort to track
down, again, the environment was something like:

"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Well, no duh your product isn't selling like
hotcakes."

Try this one, also found in the wild, with a little more context, from
XGenStudios Forums:

"Well, no duh you're gonna party like it's your birthday when it is your
birthday."

I have a hard time getting "no shit" to fit here, too.

Of course, if we all had the same internal grammar, today's English might be
be a lot more like Chaucer's.

And I don't have a problem with "Well _no wonder_ your product isn't selling
[you idiot -- your product sucks]."

The passage of time probably explains everything. No shit (Sherlock) / no
shit (Shinola) dates to the late '40's - early '50's in speech. That it
should have precisely the same meaning a half-century later is not to be
expected.

-Wilson

-Wilson
*


*On 3/5/06, Jeff Prucher <jprucher at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jeff Prucher <jprucher at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: A new use of "duh?"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --- Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
>
> > > I come down on the side of "bizarre and unusual." I've never seen it
> or
> > > heard it before. Anyway, what caught my attention was the use of "duh"
> as
> > > though it was a noun and a synonym of "wonder":
> > >
> > > "Well, no wonder / no duh your product isn't selling ..."
> > >
> > >  The meaning is clear, but this construction is new to me. I guess
> that I
> > > need to get out more. ;-)
> >
> > I grew up hearing "no duh" (NJ, '70s-'80s), but it was never used this
> > way. It was always the equivalent of "no shit (Sherlock)"-- I vaguely
> > remember "no derrr" being used for similar effect. So using it as the
> > equivalent of "no wonder..." sounds pretty odd to me too. But I see
> > how this sense could be extrapolated from the traditional playground
> > usage.
>
> I grew up with "no duh" also, (80s, Michigan), and this usage doesn't seem
> unusual to me at all, and I'm sure that I have used it in this manner,
> although
> it's probably the first time I've seen it in writing.  (My wife, also a
> Michigander, says she's heard it, too.)  I would define this use of "no
> duh" as
> "no shit" as well, though -- as in "Well _no shit_ your product isn't
> selling
> [you idiot -- your product sucks]."  "No wonder" implies (to me anyway)
> that
> something that was not obvious has been made clear, whereas "no duh"
> implies
> that whatever it is, it should be obvious to anyone who isn't a moron.
>
> Jeff Prucher
>
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