Sep 23, 2009
Irony: Looking up uff da to make sure I spell it correctly so as to not look stupid.
The all-knowledgeable wikipedians say Uff da “can also be spelled uff-da, uffda, uff-dah, oofda, ufda, ufdah, oofta or ufta.”
How about ooughduh?
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Born and raised Californian…never heard of this before.
Considering where I come from and the way I talk, you must get nervous to be out with me in public!?!?:)
Dear friend from Minnesota (yes I said that with the accent in my head) taught me this expression and I love it because as far as I know it is a clean exclamation.
Uff WHo? Never heard of him.
Meta: Looking up uff da to make sure you spell it correctly so that you don’t look stupid in a post about looking up uff da to make sure you spell it correctly so that you don’t look stupid.
Whee!
KP
No way! That’s a real expression? My friend taught me to say that when we did somersaults, but after having not heard it again for 15 years, I always thought he had just made it up.
Imagine my surprise one morning last winter when I was working in the school library and our Chinese exchange teacher came in and said, “Uff da!” I laughed and he paused a moment or two and then said, “What means ‘Uff da?’”
Just try explaining that to someone who doesn’t speak much English.
(He followed that up with a very hesitant “Ya, sure, YOUbetcha?” Thank you host family.)
You betcha.
Funny… I was just going to look it up today for the same reason. Now I don’t have to.
Don’t the Veggie Tales folk use this word alot? Maybe that’s oofta. Or that’s how they pronounce it…
Or maybe I’m remembering wrong.
Usta!
Well, here in my area we say things like fourdy-four referring to Highway 44. But uff duh, never heard of it.
In my Norwegian family uff-da is more an emotive sound than a spell-able word. I read your list and could hear my grandmother giving a subtle shade of meaning to each by her inflection and intonation. Norwegians don’t talk much, but she could sure say a lot by how she pronounced it. Love the post. BTW not all the spellings are correct… some are Swedish. LOL
Screenwriters for movies taking place in MN are most likely to have to worry about this.
According to the subtitles on “Silly Songs with Larry,” it’s ufta. I, however, have another alternate spelling: oophduh.
ok, call me a crazy californian but i’ve NEVER heard of this.
what does it MEAN?
Really, you Californians! It’s just an expression like “good grief”, or “oh no”. I think. That’s how I use it.
“The term has been heard among men when a particularly attractive woman enters a room, or depending on the tone of voice, when a particularly unattractive woman enters the room.”
TYW. (Thank You Wikipedia.)
I like the fact that Wikipedia says “citation needed” after that sentence. I wonder what a good citation source for that would look like…
As you can probably surmise, our last name is often mispronounced. You’ve just landed on a way for us to explain, “Like rough or tough…or uff da!”
Sorry – “uff” is more like roof. ;-)
Uff Da – Midwestern exclamatory, similar to ‘phew’
example: “Uff Da, that ketchup is spicy, Lena!”
You Californians ought to order a copy of “How to Speak Minnesotan.”
My grandma uses this expression just about every time she collapses into her chair just before the 10pm news.
I say our generation of Norwegians revive the Uff Da!
btw, if you’ve never been to Decorah, IA the last weekend in July, you MUST GO. If for nothing else, to pig out on Varme Polse Rømmegrøt. Mmmmmm!
sorry, that was Varme Polse AND Rømmegrøt. I don’t think I would dip sausage in Rømmegrøt – yuck! Well, maybe the lefsa part…