(I tried searching for this both here (with difficulty as ‘doh’ is too short) and on google but couldn’t find anything except simpsons references and news articles saying “D’oh has been included (without the apostrpohe) in OED. Other phrases…”)
Why is there an apostrophe in D’oh? I think it always used to be Doh and now is invariably D’oh.
To my ear there’s no pause in the word there, and I couldn’t find or think of anything it might be a contraction of, which were the two obvious ideas.
There is an entry in the OED:
It says of the etymology that:
There’s also a series of examples from a while back using “doh” so my memories and common sense aren’t made up.
I’d have to go through The Simpsons Season 3 DVD comentaries to find the exact story, but as I recall, Matt Groening—the creator of the Simpsons—comments on how he put the apostrophe in because it better reflects how it is pronounced. The OED spells it withought the apostrophe (according to Matt Groening) because their etomologists found a book with an earlier use of the word without it.
I’d have to go through The Simpsons Season 3 DVD commentaries to find the exact story, but as I recall, Matt Groening—the creator of the Simpsons—comments on how he put the apostrophe in because it better reflects how it is pronounced. The OED spells it without the apostrophe (according to Matt Groening) because their etymologists found a book with an earlier use of the word without it.
I suppose that makes sense. I googled for a wav file (perhaps I should have earlier) and found one here: http://wilstar.com/wav.htm
I can’t decide if I can hear anything that needs a ', but I suppose if Matt can, that’s the final word. OTOH, I defy someone to pronounce Doh that clearly isn’t D’oh…
Well, generally, Homer really seems to nail the “d” in D’oh, so I think that the apostrophy is used as sort of an accent mark, since the “d” part of the D’oh never really changes, but Homer’s drawn out the “oh” part a few times or used a different inflection on it.