"blergh" (and "argh")

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Both "ARRGGGGGHHHH!!!!" and "BLEEAH!!" - perhaps with minor spelling
> variations - featured prominently (at least to my mind) in Schulz's
> "Peanuts" strips of the late '50s and early '60s.
>
> "BLEEAH!!" expressed distaste.  Charlie Brown frequently said
> "ARRGGGGGHHHH!!" when life or Lucy had dealt him another blow.
>
> CB's "ARRGGGGGHHHH!!" was semantically distinct from that of Robert Newton
> as Long John Silver, originator, it seems, of the pirate "Argh!"  (If
> Wallace Beery used it in his earlier version of _Treasure Island_ , which I
> doubt, it made no impression on me.)
>
> Newton's was apparently a West Country variant of "Ah!"

More on Newton and his possible models for arrr-fulness here:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002482.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003597.html


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org