When someone points out the blindingly obvious, a listener might respond with “duh!” There are other options, too, including no duh!, doy!, and der! Grant creates an online survey to find out which terms people tend to use. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Duh!”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
I do.
Who is this?
I’m Russell from Dallas.
All right, Russell. Welcome to the program, Russell. What can we do you for?
Well, I have something that’s puzzled me. I try and stay hip to the lingo of the young people. And I’m pretty familiar with the way they use the terms way and no way, for instance. One dude is telling another dude a story and it sounds outlandish. So the guy says, no way, which the dude retorts, way. And, you know, it’s a counterpoint point thing. Right? But then I’ve heard this other thing down in Austin where somebody will tell like a self-deprecating story and then at the end of it, they’ll punctuate it with the term duh. And so sometimes another person jumps into the conversation and says duh in response. And I think that’s an insult. But then I’ve heard this other one where they say, no duh. And I’m not sure how to take it. I mean, do you guys have a clue?
Not always, but maybe on this one. I’m not quite sure that it’s the same usage that I grew up with, but it sure sounds like it. And I think it’s a different phenomenon than way and no way. Most people knew that from the early 90s. I know it was used in Wayne’s World in 1992.
No way.
Yeah, way.
Oh, way.
And it was definitely earlier than that, but that was a moment of popularity for way, no way. And da and doi and der, which are variations on the theme, and no da and no doi and no der go back even further.
When we first heard from you about this, Russell, I put up a survey on the web to ask people about this and a couple of the forms of it that we can’t say on the air, like no blank, Sherlock.
Gee, what would that be?
And it turns out that people have been saying da, at least they’ve reported saying da, since the 1940s and probably earlier. So we have a lot of people telling us their birth date, where they’re from, and which one they say, duh or doinder. And duh, by far and away, is the one that they all say. And a lot of people, however, also say no duh. And they’re kind of contradictory, aren’t they? Right?
Like Martha says to me, did you get a haircut? And I say, no duh. You know, I’m like, I went from long locks to bald head, right? But I might also say, duh. And so they’re exactly the same meaning, but just slightly different form. As far as I can tell in this little throwaway survey that I did, I don’t see a difference. But there’s no way to really test this without talking to tens of thousands of people. If only I had a way to get this question out to a lot of people at once.
Well, we’ll see. Russell, what we’re going to do then is we’re going to put this out to our listeners who have this magnificent ability to bring us a great deal of data all at once. How do you use da and no da? Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send your does and no does an email to words@waywordradio.org. And if you’ve got something to say about no der and no doy, well, we welcome those, too.
I appreciate your explanation. I look forward to the survey results.
Yeah, me too. We’ll talk about that on the air, and we’ll put something out in our newsletter, okay?
Very good.
Cheers, folks.
Bye-bye.
All right, take care.
