I've heard many people use the interjection blah, or remark that they have the blahs, but Mad Magazine in the 1950s used the bleh spelling for the interjection, suggesting that it's all the same word.
When I look at dictionary.com, I find no entry for bleh, but they list eyewash as a synonym for blah, as an interjection.
What brings this to mind is an irritated and inflamed eyelid. Blepharitis, they call it, from the Greek word for eyelid. It doesn't normally bring one to his knees, not even put a man to bed, but it's annoying, and if one ignores it, as one tends to do with small aches and pains, it doesn't get better on its own, but rather hangs around forever, slowly grinding away like sand in one's swimsuit, until finally it brings on a sense of malaise - the blahs - and at least in me, mild disgust that I didn't bother to get and use some ointment weeks ago.
Dictionary.com says blah originated 1915-1920, and the word is imitative in origin. But is it? We use it often with highly expressive body language, but it doesn't strike me as onomatopoeic of anything in particular.Â
Could there be an etymological connection between blepharitis, bleh, and blah?
<-- off to get some eyewash
I remember it being used in Mad Magazine. It was the first time I had seen it and I haven't seen it much since then. Mad used a lot of words that I thought they created themselves. (axolotl, potrzebie) Later I found out they would get some foreign words and give them another meaning.
Even though I don't hear it much, it is in several slang dictionaries. I like this one. I think it has probably been replaced with "meh."
I remember Mad Magazine also using blech, presumably pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative (or thereabout, think chutzpah chutzpah) rather than the affricate ch of church Also blecch when particularly emphatic as in the spoof STAR BLECCH.
Glenn, you have corrected my memory. Blech is the word from Mad rather than bleh. But I have read bleh before. You know we can't trust my memory so I won't even try to tell you where I have seen it. But I really do think it is the same as meh.
I think the number of Cs in bleh blech blecch bleccch can be taken as an indication of the level of distaste or disgust.
Bleh might be distaste, with blech as disgust, blecch as repulsion, bleccch as revulsion, blecccch as abhorrence, etc. Or am I reading too much into this?
So how many Cs would you rate the following foods on the bleh - blecccch scale?
liver
snails
frog legs
rattlesnake meat
monkey brains