Allow Me to Interject

Some parts of speech get lots of attention from language researchers. Nouns and verbs certainly do, and this seems appropriate, given that they refer to the objects and the actions that make up our world. Adjectives and adverbs are important because they add color and nuance to speech and writing. And prepositions and conjunctions serve as the connective tissue that binds our words and phrases together into complete thoughts.

Why don't interjections get more respect?

Source: Freepik

But what about interjections? Well, they’re the oddballs in the linguistic family, and have been traditionally treated as such. But they serve an absolutely essential role in allowing us to express our emotions. It could be argued that interjections constitute the most psychologically interesting class of words that we use.

A word for every feeling

The English language is made up of hundreds of thousands of nouns and tens of thousands of verbs, but there are only about three hundred commonly used interjections. They are employed to express approval (super, hurray, yay), disgust (ew, ick, yuck), surprise (oh my, wow, no way), disappointment (phooey, crap, rats), innuendo (hubba-hubba, vavoom), embarrassment, (aw, oops), pain (ouch, ow), and many other emotions and mental states. Some interjections are euphemistic; gosh, darn, and fudge are fairly transparent stand-ins for more blasphemous or obscene terms that are themselves interjections.

Unlike terms from other parts of speech, interjections are meaningful even when used alone; everyone understands what shh or psst or bravo means. But many interjections are chameleons. Depending on the context in which it is uttered, the same interjection can mean very different things. Ooh, for example, is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as signaling “pain, surprise, wonder, or disapproval.” And jeez can be used to signify “surprise, excitement, dismay, or exasperation.”

In addition, the way that an interjection is spoken can affect its meaning. A short, declarative dude! can be a signal of surprise or irritation, whereas a longer, drawn-out duuude is more likely to be a marker of approbation.

Many interjections are used in all dialects of English, whereas others are more regional. Someone from Australia might express surprise with crikey, whereas a British speaker might be inclined to express frustration with bollocks.

Although many interjections are quite general in meaning, some are incredibly specific. Fore is used as a warning on the golf course, and check serves the same purpose on the chess board. Gardyloo was once used to alert pedestrians that a chamber pot was about to be emptied into the street. (Thankfully, this practice has fallen victim to modern sanitation.)

New interjections do come into the language, but at a much slower rate than nouns or verbs. The OED has attested only two such terms entering English in the past quarter century: totes (in 2006) and amazeballs (in 2008). The Merriam-Webster dictionary recognized woot (“used to express joy, approval, or excited enthusiasm”) as its Word of the Year in 2007—although it still hasn’t made it into the OED.

An interjection has even figured prominently in military history. During the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944, a German officer demanded the surrender of U.S. forces surrounded at Bastogne, a vital road junction in Belgium. The American commander, Anthony McAuliffe, responded to the ultimatum with a single word: Nuts!. This response confused the Germans: they asked what it meant, and it was explained that in this context, it meant something like “Go to hell!” (The American forces held out until reinforcements relieved the siege a few days later.)

Interjections are also commonly used as a marker for sarcasm or verbal irony—as in “Gee, you’re a real genius!” if someone has, in fact, acted rather stupidly. In some cases, this usage has become so stereotypical that it is enshrined in the dictionary. The OED lists har de har and whoop-de-do as being reliably associated with sarcasm, whereas interjections signaling verbal irony include gasp, hip hip hooray, shocker, and zip-a-dee-do-da.

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Too informal?

Given their utility, why don’t interjections get more respect? One reason may be that they are associated with casual or informal speech or writing. Words in this class aren’t the type that you would expect to see in a business report, a legal document, or a scientific article. In this respect, they are much like emojis—those ubiquitous smiling and crying faces that litter our text messages. And while it is true that many interjections are highly informal—eek or gosh come to mind—there are others, such as alas and hark, that are very formal.

It's hard to imagine how communication could function without nouns or verbs. But it’s even harder to imagine how we could give voice to our emotions and reactions without interjections. Far from being linguistic oddities, interjections are the words that allow us to express our inner lives.