etymology - Origin of the word "duh"


What is the origin of the word "duh" as in the interjection:



— It's hot in the desert.
— Well, duh!



If it is of onomatopoeic origin and only appears in modern English as some sites suggest, I would be interested to know when it started appearing in English writing.



Answer



According to Merriam Webster, duh is an interjection which has two meanings:




  1. used to express actual or feigned ignorance or stupidity

  2. used derisively to indicate that something just stated is all too obvious or self-evident



Apparently this first appeared in 1966 (per Merriam Webster). If you look at Google NGrams, "duh" has appeared even in the 1800s but a quick look at the results shows that in the early cases "duh" was used mostly as a syllable in a foreign language or as a form of "the". You can see that there is an increase over time, regardless, after 1960.


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The etymology of the interjection is, as you suggested, onomatopoeic in origin. One site, Think-Ink, devotes an entire page to the discussion of the word. One thing they mention is an etymology, from the American Heritage Dictionary:



Imitative of the utterance attributed to slow-witted people.



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