Uff-da! is an exclamation of disgust or annoyance. In Norwegian, it means roughly the same as Yiddish Oy vey!, and is now common in areas of the U.S. settled by Norwegians, particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Etymoloy of “Uff-Da!””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Joe Fisher, and I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida.
Hi, Joe. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Joe. What’s on your mind?
Well, I have this word that I’ve been wondering about. I originally come from a little town called Aberdeen, South Dakota, and we have a primarily Scandinavian background. And my grandparents would always throw around this word called oofta, and basically, you know, an exasperation kind of like, oh, I’ve got to walk up this hill, ufta, you know, that kind of thing. And I always ask, what’s the actual definition or history of the word? And they would always say, well, ufta means ufta.
Well, that’s helpful.
Ufta means oy vey.
Yeah.
Oy vey.
Yeah, kind of. And so what other circumstances would you hear this? Mostly in times of when you’re being tested, it’s like, oh, I’ve got to go out and shovel 15 feet of snow, ufta. Or, oh, today was a long day. You know, nothing but making lutefisk and lefse. Oofta.
What’s a lefse?
I know what lutefisk is. It’s basically a flat pastry kind of. I’d have to remember exactly how they made it. You put butter on it and sugar and you roll it up. Very quite tasty.
Yeah, sounds ideal. You get the taste of lutefisk out of your mouth.
Oh, that’s good. And it seems to come from Norwegian. U-F-F, and the next word is D-A, da, oof, da. And it means exactly what you’re saying. It’s an expression of surprise or disgust or pain or something that, I don’t know, how would you describe it, Grant?
Yeah, I think the dictionaries say disgruntlement or unhappiness or concern or disagreement. It’s like just anything on the negative spectrum of emotions.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it’s mostly heard in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And it spawned a whole industry, really. I mean, if you do a Google image search, there are so many products from that area that have UFTA on them. I think you can get UFTA on a casket now. It’s just everything can have UFTA on it.
I always use it to test. People tell me they’re from the Midwest. I’ll use it as like a code word. I’ll be like, oh, yeah, you know what UFTA means? And they go, oh, yeah. There you go. I go, okay. And they’re like, no. And I go, yeah, you’re not really from the Midwest.
Yeah, classic shibboleth, right? Just proving that they’re insiders.
Yeah, right. You might want to get the T-shirt that says, what part of OOFTA don’t you understand?
That’s a great one. That’s pretty much what we know about it. I mean, if you go to Minnesota and Wisconsin, you will definitely be understood if you say OOFTA.
Yeah, it does trickle in some of the neighboring states, the Dakotas, Iowa, but mostly in those two states where all the Scandinavians settled.
Oh, awesome.
Yeah. Joe, thanks for your call. Really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you so very much.
All right. Cheers now. Take care.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Oofta. It’s what I call a chamber of commerce word. Everyone knows that it’s their word. It belongs to their community, and they’re really proud of it. And yet, it’s still used unironically and unselfconsciously and as a matter of normal conversation.
Well, isn’t it wonderfully expressive?
Yeah. I mean, just the vowels and the consonants. I would put a motion. It’s like the sound you make when you have to get up, but you don’t want to get up. That’s how I think about it. Hit the snooze button one more time.
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