Neener neener neener

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Brett Barbaro. I’m in San Diego, California.

Excellent. So are we. What’s up?

What can we help with?

Well, I had a question about the word neener, and I would spell that N-E-E-N-E-R.

I think the word would be mostly used with children taunting each other, saying like neener, neener, neener.

But that’s a word that I’ve heard my entire life, been called many times.

And actually, I was wondering if it had an origin or if, in fact, it even counted as a word.

Yeah, I would say it counts as a word.

I mean, it has some value anyway.

It carries a lot of meaning, I think.

I don’t know that it’s more of an interjection than it is an other kind of word.

It’s not a noun or an adjective.

But yeah, it’s definitely a word.

So this is something you learned as a child on the playground.

Did you grow up in San Diego?

Southern California, yeah.

Southern California.

And were there other variants of this?

Were there other things that you would say?

Not really.

I mean, I guess you go na-na-na-na-na-na.

Right.

It was always associated with that tune also.

I don’t know what the origin of that little musical phrase is either.

So we can connect neener neener to a lot of these other things that people say, like nya-nya-nya-nya-nya or nanny-nanny-boo-boo, and they do all have that song.

And that song, that melody, is the same in the old rhyme by Baby Bunting.

Now, we don’t know if that’s where it came from.

It’s definitely shared.

And they all have this…

And they’re all corruptions of each other.

They have to kind of blend into each other.

The nyah-nyah, usually spelled N-Y-A-H, that one is usually considered the most common or the head form of all of them.

The canonical nyah.

The canonical form.

These go back deeply, deeply into childhood lore.

The problem with this is, we know they’re at least 100 years, is that lots of times people didn’t pay attention to the lore and the folklore of children.

So there’s not really good records until people start to notice, oh, hey, there are these things transmitted from kid to kid that never really seem to penetrate the adult world.

We should be putting this down.

And, of course, Martha knows where I’m going with this.

The couple, Iona and Peter Opie, O-P-I-E, they did a lot of work in this field, and they have a really great line that I think describes the purpose of neener, neener in expressions like that.

And it’s not so much that it’s insulting.

It’s that you get a chance to have the last word.

The way they put it is, in any juvenile exchange of pleasantries, the esteemed feature seems to be not the quality of the wit, but the ability to have the last word.

And this is what this lets you do.

If you’re all out of things to say, you’re like…

Yeah, there’s something about the sound quality.

Well, because you’ve learned that that’s taunting.

Right?

If I did it to the tune of Jingle Bells, it’s not as bad, right?

Right.

Or Bach or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Brett, how does that serve you?

Do you think that’s all right?

Yeah.

I’m going to have to look up this by Baby Bunting thing now.

Yeah, go on YouTube. There’s a bunch of versions. Try to get the ones that are the least kind of orchestrated because there’s some, you want like pure, simple version of it.

But it is the same song, but usually it’s faster when the kids do it. La neener neener neener.

Cool. All right. Thanks so much for the call, Brett. Really appreciate it.

All right. Thanks a lot.

Cheers.

Okay. Take care.

You too.

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