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#174188 03/01/08 02:57 PM
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In the great tradition of tsk, chortle, and Bronx cheer, is there a word for the expression of distain produced by the sharp release of air between the bottom lip and top teeth? As in, "Pft!"

Hydra #174190 03/01/08 03:19 PM
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in the great tradition of tsk, pfft.

-ron o.

tsuwm #174195 03/01/08 04:08 PM
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The A-H dictionary has "[u]sed to express or indicate a usually sudden disappearance or ending". In the tradition of tsk to represent /ǀ/ (a voiceless dental click) but sometimes pronounced /tɪsk/, I wonder if poof is a variant of pfft? (Along the lines of tut, too.)


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
zmjezhd #174196 03/01/08 04:37 PM
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>ron o.

True. But what I mean is: Is there a non-onomatopoeic word for going, "Pfft!"

Hydra #174199 03/01/08 06:52 PM
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oh, I wondered but was led down the other path by tsk.
did you note that one source for pfft (Cambridge I think) gives U.S. for 'phut'?

tsuwm #174201 03/01/08 07:19 PM
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gives U.S. for 'phut'?

Piffle!


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
zmjezhd #174202 03/01/08 07:26 PM
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zmjezhd #174203 03/01/08 07:28 PM
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Bronx cheer is the same as the British raspberry, isn't it.

Zed #174204 03/01/08 08:37 PM
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Bronx cheer is the same as the British raspberry, isn't it.

AFAIK. It is sometimes called a voiced linguolabial trill /r̼/. Raspberry is Cockney rhyming slang for fart: raspberry tart. It doesn't seem to be used in any languages phonemically, but it does occur in Coatlán Zapotec (link, p.5.) in sound symbolism.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
Hydra #174230 03/05/08 06:45 AM
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Originally Posted By: Hydra
>ron o.

True. But what I mean is: Is there a non-onomatopoeic word for going, "Pfft!"


Do you mean for the act of blowing out an unvoiced labial sound with a dental stop at the end of it, or for the act of saying something that immediately ridicules, derides, denies and puts down what has come before? If the latter, then in Australian idiom the answer would be a mild expletive beginning with 'b' and ending in 'ullshit'.

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