A reader (Warren) has asked if Homer Simpson’s famous utterance ‘doh!’ is a real word.
‘And’ he asks, ‘can it be used in Scrabble?’
I sense a family dispute in the background behind this question, so, in the interests of domestic harmony we should try to settle it.
The short answer is—yes, ‘doh!’ is a real word, and is found in the most authoritative book on the English language: the Oxford English Dictionary.
The experts at the Oxford say it didn’t start with Homer Simpson, and they have tracked its usage back to at least 1945 (when it was part of the dialogue on a BBC comedy radio program It’s That Man Again).
The bit I find interesting is that when this short word first appeared in The Simpsons it was not in the script!
All the script said was ‘annoyed grunt’ and it was Dan Castellaneta, the actor providing voice of Homer Simpson, who decided to make this grunt into ‘Doh!’
So, did he just invent it out of his head, or did it come from somewhere?
Obviously (given that it precedes The Simpsons by about 40 years) it came from somewhere else.
Here is Dan Castellaneta’s own explanation: ‘The Doh came from character actor James Finlayson’s “Do-o-o-o” in Laurel & Hardy pictures. You can tell it was intended as a euphemism for “Damn”. I just speeded it up.’
(He said that in an interview with Daily Variety in April 1998.)
James Finlayson was a Scottish actor who appeared in many of the Laurel and Hardy short comedies in the 1930s.
And if you want even more background, I can tell you that the Oxford says it is ‘an imitative or expressive formation’ and that it is used for ‘expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned.’
I’ve heard it in conversation where someone does something stupid and in response someone else in the group taps the side of their head (indicating that brains were not employed) while saying ‘doh!’
As for the other bit of Warren’s question: yes, the organisers of international Scrabble competitions have accepted this word, and it is now in the Official Scrabble Dictionary.
They have also accepted the alternative spelling— ‘duh.’
Which raises an interesting point—I suspect the slightly different spellings (and pronunciations) have slightly different meanings: (1) ‘doh!’ means ‘I’ve done something stupid’, while (2) ‘duh’ means someone else has done something stupid.
Do you agree?
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