Ups
« previous post | next post »
In his novel Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon seems to be advocating a small, specific piece of English spelling reform, exemplified in these quotations:
“Center of the cop universe for sure,” Doc nodding sympathetically, “but we can’t all be Bigfoot Bjornsen can we— ups I mean who’d want to be him anyway?” hoping this wasn’t pushing things, given Pat’s mental health, frail on the best of days.
“It’s bound to be a Movie for TV, ain’t it, whatever happens. Bigfoot can end up with script and production credits, even play himself, the asshole, but ups, eleventh-commandment issues, ignore that I said that.”
“What? You forgot to put it in something waterproof again?” “Ups.”
“One that didn’t get him hassled into a fatal heart attack. . . . Ups, but there I go, being bitter again.”
The OED glosses oops as an interjection "Expressing apology, dismay, or surprise, esp. after an obvious but usually minor mistake", and gives the pronunciations as
Brit. /(w)ʊps/ , U.S. /(w)ʊps/ , /(w)ups/.
where /ʊ/ is the vowel of foot, good, could, etc., and /u/ is the vowel of goose, food, loop, etc. I'm used to hearing and using the three pronunciations /wʊps/, /ʊps/, and /ups/, roughly in that order of frequency — though I don't think I'd include the /w/ in reading the written form "oops". (The fourth implied option /wups/ seems wrong to me.)
The Wiktionary entry gives the same two options for the vowels, without including the /w/ as an option (reserving that for the entry spelled "whoops":
/uːps/, /ʊps/
But I naturally interpret Pynchon's spelling "ups" as /ʌps/, with the vowel of strut, cup, pup, etc. — and this is so far from English spelling norms that I had to think twice about the examples quoted above in order to reject the more-or-less meaningless interpretation with a plural form of up, as in "life's ups and downs".
This leads me to wonder whether Pynchon is actually referencing a (regional?) variant pronunciation of oops with the strut vowel, i.e. like "ups" in "ups and downs" — or rather is just trying to emphasize the normal /ʊps/ pronunciation in an idiosyncratic way. So let me ask our English-speaking readers: Do any of you pronounce oops with the strut vowel?
FWIW, the OED gives the etymology of oops as
Perhaps shortened < upsidaisy int. (compare whoops int. and quot. 1925 for whoopsie int. at that entry), or perhaps a natural exclamation which has become confused with upsidaisy int.
I don't retain any sense of a connection between "oops" and "upsidaisy" (or "ups-a-daisy" or any of its other spellings), but FWIW, I think that upsidaisy (in whatever spelling) has the goose vowel by preference.
.
Stan Carey said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:20 am
Opps is a common misspelling (or variant, depending on how you look at it). I tend to think its users are confused about the spelling, but maybe some of them actually say it that way.
[(myl) I haven't seen that — but wouldn't it imply yet a fourth option — the lot vowel — rather than the strut vowel?
This sort of discussion underlines (a) how many vowel categories English has, (b) how bad a job standard orthography does at representing those categories, and (c) how little help IPA symbols can be in a situation where multiple regional varieties are involved. So thanks again to John Wells for his Lexical Sets idea (and implementation), even in the face of his own diffidence:
I sometimes think that a century from now my lexical sets will be the one thing I shall be remembered for. Yet I dreamt them up over a weekend, frustrated with the incoherent mess of symbols used in such contemporary publications as Weinreich’s ‘Is a structural dialectology possible?’.
]
n0aaa said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:24 am
Maybe more book than goose, so the "ups" makes sense, although I've never seen that spelling before. Stopped me cold. I thought UPS, first.
Dick Margulis said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:34 am
Ups-a-daisy, for me, has the STRUT vowel. I don't think I've heard the word outside the context of a learning to walk, but I strongly associate it with that activity and always assumed the first syllable had to do with getting up off one's butt. In fact, I think the word pretty consistently, in my experience, has followed "Baby faw down go boom."
R Fandango said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:39 am
I know very little about Thomas Pynchon, but I do know that Robert Heinlein also regularly uses the spelling wups for what it took me a while to work out was intended to represent the interjection more commonly spelled "whoops". The first time I saw it, I also thought it was pronounced as [wʌps] and intended to be an idiosyncrasy of one particular character, but it turns up throughout Heinlein's oeuvre:
"Flèchette gun?"
"Wups! In my purse. Loaded and locked. Purse clipped to my seat, outboard."
(The Number of the Beast)
That's our family and we are all going to Earth. Wups! I left out three-the infants.
(Podkayne of Mars)
The sheet-covered form raised slowly up about a foot. "Wups! Don't get too light. We don't want to lose you."
(Stranger in a Strange Land)
Ralph Hickok said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:46 am
I have heard and seen both "woops" and "whoops" used, as well as "upps." But every time i see a UPS truck, I envision the driver dropping a package :)
BlueLoom said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:55 am
In my childhood, woops (pronounced to rhyme with "foot") meant to throw up/vomit: "I feel as if I'm going to woops."
For my current pronunciation of "oops" (AmE, east coast, mid-Atlantic), I would say/think either oops to rhyme with foot or oops to rhyme with goose. Both feel natural to me.
Dick Margulis said,
January 3, 2015 @ 9:11 am
Ralph Hickok: Many UPS customers (shippers, that is, particularly small shippers of fragile items) pronounce UPS as oops for that very reason.
Joel said,
January 3, 2015 @ 9:24 am
Contrary to your last line, for what it's worth, there's a British TV show for children called "In the Night Garden", and one of the characters is called Upsy Daisy, pronounced with her (?) first name with the STRUT vowel.
chips mackinolty said,
January 3, 2015 @ 9:26 am
I can only imagine Heinlein and Pynchon are playing with a bit of spelling reform, in which both the GOOSE and FOOT vowels would work reasonably equally with OOPS. Those readers who immediately see the "reform" as a STRUT vowel is endemic among English speakers when they are confronted by non-English orthographies, despite common words like PUT. It's particularly common with the mispronunciations of Aboriginal place names such as Gunbalanya and Nhulunbuy, in the media and daily life, where the letter U almost invariably is rendered as a STRUT vowel.
In another somewhat different instance, the place name Barunga (where the U should be pronounced as a FOOT vowel) has pretty well been supplanted by an AH vowel, even amongst younger Aboriginal speakers. The original pronunciation would seem to be disappearing.
chips mackinolty said,
January 3, 2015 @ 10:15 am
As a follow on Barunga.
The stress has shifted from the first syllable to the second; and the NG has morphed into a NGG (or NGK for those orthographies that deal with it this way).
Chris said,
January 3, 2015 @ 10:26 am
For me, "oops" always uses the SHOOT vowel (/ups/) but "whoops" always uses the FOOT vowel (/wʊps/). It seems more plausible to me that "ups" indicates a /ʊps/ variation than a /ʌps/ variation.
Zizoz said,
January 3, 2015 @ 10:51 am
I have /ups/ and /wups/. But certainly not /ʌps/.
Eric P Smith said,
January 3, 2015 @ 11:33 am
Scottish Standard English: I have /ups/ only, /ʌps/ would sound crazy, and there is no /ʊ/ in Scotland.
Seth K said,
January 3, 2015 @ 11:53 am
I'd bet that the etymology is relevant here. I remember that in Mason & Dixon, for example, set in the 18th century, he always used the word 'cute with an apostrophe, as if to supply the missing link between "acute" and "cute," which was happening around the time period of the book. He's probably doing the same thing with upsidaisy –> ups.
[(myl) But "cute" really is an aphetic form of "acute", and was spelled with an initial apostrophe in the 18th and 19th centuries, so that the spelling in Mason & Dixon is historically accurate. In contrast, oops has never been spelled "ups", whether or not it was ever derived from upsidaisy (which I doubt, though Pynchon might believe it.]
Hacky Dacky said,
January 3, 2015 @ 12:21 pm
My "oops" and "woops" both have the FOOT vowel. (Raised in New York City.)
Jan Freeman said,
January 3, 2015 @ 12:38 pm
At phrases.org.uk, Ups-a-daisy is "An exclamation made when encouraging a child to get up after a fall or when lifting a child into the air," which is how I've experienced/used it (with STRUT vowel). But the entry talks about its more recent evolution into an "Oops" variant (in spelling and pronunciation) — I'm ignorant on this score, but it sounds plausible.
Coby Lubliner said,
January 3, 2015 @ 12:53 pm
I have noticed a tendency to pronounce written u as /u/ or /ʊ/, even when it is meant to represent /ʌ/, in words that are thought of as foreign, such as Punjab. But "ups"? Only in northern England.
ThomasH said,
January 3, 2015 @ 1:08 pm
Grew up in East Texas
"Oops." "upsidaisey," and "whoops" for me all have the goose vowel. I too was flummoxed by the word "ups" in the quote.
Adrian said,
January 3, 2015 @ 4:18 pm
People seem to have quite a bit of trouble spelling interjections. E.g. I often see oops, hee hee and whoa misspelled opps, he he and woah. I suppose it's fair in a way that there should be variation in the spelling of such words, but it still jars.
Chas Belov said,
January 3, 2015 @ 6:11 pm
For me:
– oops has the GOOSE vowel and only rarely the FOOT vowel*
– whoops has the FOOT vowel and only rarely the GOOSE vowel*
– upsadaisy (sp?) has the CUP vowel (and a schwa in the 2nd syllable)
* – Not that I say either one that often – well, maybe "oops" but I'm aware of having two different pronunciations for both words.
ThomasH said,
January 3, 2015 @ 6:38 pm
Variations of spelling of interjections may be accounted for [yes, other thread, causation is implied] by their absence from many spell checks
Jason said,
January 3, 2015 @ 8:39 pm
But… it isn't a reverse debate! It merely degenerated into a contest of oleaginousnessness!
J.W. Brewer said,
January 4, 2015 @ 12:01 pm
I think (subject to the unreliability of self-observation tainted by self-consciousness) that my usage generally tracks that of Chris: "whoops" with FOOT vowel but "oops" with GOOSE vowel. I had never previously noticed this difference or considered that this might be peculiar.
Ethan P said,
January 4, 2015 @ 12:49 pm
I recall one of Nicholson Baker's many footnotes in The Mezzanine regards the usage of a lone "oop"-
"Among average men, the singular "oop," is the normal usage; the word is found in its plural as "oops" most often among women, gay men, or men talking to women, in my experience, although there are so many exceptions to this that it is irresponsible of me to bring it up."
– which is such an ungrounded observation, with a dash of Baker's mild early-career homophobia, that he immediately disowns it, though I'll admit since I read the book there hasn't been a week of my life that I haven't noticed this occur & been reminded of it.
[(myl) By "noticed this" do you mean that you've noticed men (or others) using /up/ or/ʊp/ rather than /ups/ or /ʊps/? If so, what's the region and social stratum? I ask because I don't think I've ever heard the s-less version, though perhaps for some reason I just haven't registered the sound in question as being an instance of the same quasi-lexeme.]
V. Call said,
January 4, 2015 @ 3:59 pm
Idaho native. Oopsie-daisy, oops, and woops all with the goose vowel.
I begun noticing "yammy/yammie" in place of "yummy" by Dutch speakers writing in English.
Ethan P said,
January 4, 2015 @ 5:02 pm
I've noticed working & middle class young-ish men in the Southeastern U.S. (not exclusively hetero, unlike Baker's assumption) using "oop", with the sound interjected in a droplet-like "whoop!", almost like the end vowel in "atten-HUT!" – not always, but frequently enough (I don't think I "notice" if someone says "oops" so who knows how frequently).
Funnily enough, I searched Baker's subsequent books and he tends to still have his straight male characters say "oop" to one another so it seems as though it's held true for him, despite his attempt to discard it in the middle of the original observation. His 2011 novel "House of Holes" does have a male character exclaim "oop" to a female, but it's a male character made entirely of "long, ultraviolent light bulbs" so I'm not sure if that counts.
Michael Watts said,
January 4, 2015 @ 6:53 pm
For me, whoopsy-daisy is also possible; that would seem to be relevant. Like many other people here, I have the FOOT vowel in whoops and either FOOT or GOOSE in oops, with GOOSE preferred.
Nathan said,
January 4, 2015 @ 7:56 pm
In my ideolect of one, as a 35-year-old guy from British Columbia, I definitely prefer "oop" to "oops" when i'm interjecting in social media…
Greg Morrow said,
January 5, 2015 @ 2:32 pm
Raised in Kentucky. I suspect that I am comfortable with either FOOT or GOOSE oops or whoops, and STRUT upsadaisy when standing someone/something up and FOOT upsadaisy when someone/something falls over. I would not be surprised if I have a usage distinction between oops and whoops; my lexicon is pretty emphatic that they have separate lexical entries.
STRUT upsadaisy is pretty clearly from analogy with up, and FOOT upsadaisy from analogy with oops, for me.
KevinM said,
January 5, 2015 @ 3:37 pm
Mid-Atlantic. U as in "push."
Jean-Michel said,
January 5, 2015 @ 3:54 pm
A problem with the "spelling reform" suggestion is that Inherent Vice uses the conventional spelling as well:
Doc recapped the trip to Vegas, or what he remembered, interrupting himself ten minutes in to point out, “Of course if they can tap your computer lines, the phone here ought to be duck soup for them.”
“Oops,” agreed Fritz. “But continue.”
Pynchon also used both spellings in Vineland:
The dancing, rudimentary to begin with, tended toward gig's-end stillness, as conversation grew less and less meaningful to what few outsiders had blundered in, shunpike tourists who had only a dim idea tonight of just how far from the freeways they'd come. "Chickeeta, what's with all these people?"
"See how slow they're moving, Dr. Elasmo!"
"It's Larry, remember?"
"Ups, rilly…"
And later:
"First the shoes," Hector swiveling to inform him, "are my old Stacey Adamses, me entiendes como te digo?"
"Oops…." Mucho was aware of the mystique, all right, and quick to beg forgiveness.
So this doesn't seem to be a bit of unilateral spelling reform on Pynchon's part—evidently "ups" is supposed to sound different from "oops." Both Vineland and Inherent Vice are set in California, so perhaps Pynchon thinks "ups" is some sort of California thing. But I can't see any logic behind having Fritz Drybeam and Mucho Maas use "oops" while the other characters use "ups" (Mucho had previously appeared in the California-set The Crying of Lot 49, so he's hardly an "outsider" in Vineland).
James said,
January 5, 2015 @ 5:36 pm
Mucho Maas may be Californian, but he isn't a surfer deadbeat or Valley Girl. The "ups" spelling/pronunciation would seem to be specific to those castes.
I too thought of the Nicholson Baker passage as soon as I read this post. I hear the s-less version often in my mostly West coast, white, educated circles. If a woman steps into someone else's way, she may say "oops," but men will almost always say "oop." The latter sounds closer to an instinctive utterance and is somehow less deferent than the former, so it comes off as more masculine. The sibilant version is more infantile and/or feminine and therefore to be avoided. By people who worry about that sort of thing, anyway.
Jean-Michel said,
January 5, 2015 @ 11:50 pm
Mucho Maas may be Californian, but he isn't a surfer deadbeat or Valley Girl. The "ups" spelling/pronunciation would seem to be specific to those castes.
One of the two characters using "ups" in Inherent Vice is a cop, who's portrayed as nicer than the other cops but not radically different from them (for example, Pynchon writes that he possesses one of the "major cop reflexes" in the form of a "hatred of hippies"). Also, unless "Chickeeta" is a stereotypical Valley Girl name—names in Pynchon novels are so odd that "Chickeeta" doesn't really stick out to me—there's nothing that indicates her origin, unless "Ups, rilly?" (the only non-standard part of her dialogue) is supposed to be Valley-speak.
Gerald said,
January 8, 2015 @ 3:27 am
German L1 speaker here. We write that interjection as "ups" and it is a constant source of amusement about UPS…
Graham Asher said,
January 8, 2015 @ 1:51 pm
A curious thing: I've noticed that a number of my continental European acquaintances say 'oops' far more often, when speaking English, than I do as a native BrE speaker. I suspect that they're assuming that whenever oops can be used in German or whatever, it can equally appropriately be used in English; and it seems (to my ear) old fashioned now in modern English.
Patrick B said,
January 9, 2015 @ 4:06 pm
Fwiw, Pynchon was a longtime resident of Manhattan Beach Calif., where I grew up a generation later. I always pronounce oops with the foot vowel. I have never in my life heard "Oop!" Weird. #IveWastedHalfMyLife!
The "Ups rilly!" example to me is a clear signal of Valleyspeak. I imagine the u being drawn out, but placed somewhere between "foot" & "strut", + slightly nasalized. Which is also some kind of indicator of sarcasm: as in kicking someone in the shin deliberately & saying "Ups! Did I hurt you? I'm totally sorry!"
However, inserting Sarcastic Ups works for some of the Pynchon quotes above, but not all, I think. Hmm…
Also, when studying in Germany (late 80s), lots of people would use Uppsala! for the oops-like interjection (with regular German u, not rounded as in Swedish.)
Patrick B said,
January 9, 2015 @ 4:15 pm
Re Dutch speakers & "yammy" for yummy: the "strut" u is a real confuser for lots of non-native speakers. Germans also routinely replace it with an ah sound (which is odd to me, since the u is a short vowel & ah is long…)
Anyway, reminds me of the BBC Krautrock documentary, where Kraftwerk discuss hearing the Beach Boys singing "fun fun fun (till her daddy took the T-bird away", & hearing it as "fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n," which became the germ of the song Autobahn. So, one car song spawning another…