ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

"Woah" is what Snowy says in the English-lang Tintin books. Seems ridic anywhere else.

Is it supposed to rhyme with "Noah"?

WH = wuh sound (where, when, why, etc.) + OA = dominant sound in OAts, OAr, etc

This doesn't make much sense in England ('wh' pronounced exactly the same as 'w', e.g. 'watt' and 'what') and 'oats' and 'oar' start with totally different vowel sounds.

This came up recently and in a moment of revelation I realised that I would always use 'Woah' for the exclamation of surprise, and 'Whoa' as an instruction, mainly for horses, but generically to indicate any sort of need to come to a halt. I have no idea if this is actually a thing other than in my brain.

Oh, free trial of online OED -

details here http://goo.gl/vUHcR

Go to http://www.oed.com/ then the sign in and password is trynewoed.

I'm going for Option 1 -

Dictionary
Browse the whole dictionary from A to Z.

Hurrah, they've revised their entry on "gaydar."

I hope it now says suzy invented it!

Earliest citation now:

1988 Philadelphia Inquirer 23 Mar. b7/1 Making use of what he called ‘gaydar’, Richard A. Friend moved to the center of a stage‥and scanned the audience of about 60 students and staff‥. Friend, an instructor in human sexuality at the University of Pennsylvania, told the crowd he would point out all the lesbians and gays in the audience and have them stand up.

Does Suzy know Richard A. Friend?

I've always written the former, but someone was moaning about it the other day and since then I've seen it written as "whoa". Is this a US thing?

Yeah, this was me in the irrationally angry thread. I'm afraid "woah" is going to be universally accepted usage within a few years, but it's total nails-on-blackboard to me.

I refuse to let that happen, not in the United States of America, at least.

I hate it too, mostly because it looks like it would rhyme with Noah. "WO-ah"

Godammint.

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/97/screenshot20110107at119.png
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/97/screenshot20110107at119.png

"Woah" is what Snowy says in the English-lang Tintin books. Seems ridic anywhere else.

― Jesus Christ, the apple tree! (Laurel), Friday, January 7, 2011 5:16 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

^^^

Yes. And even there it always bugged me, because I wasn't sure what sound I was supposed to be imagining coming from Snowy. I decided it was just a funny European way of writing BARK BARK BARK.

I always kind of heard it as an old-fashioned clown horn, I can't help myself. "Ah-WOOOO-gah!"

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2009/04/whoa-and-woah.html

Earliest citation now:

1988 Philadelphia Inquirer 23 Mar. b7/1 Making use of what he called ‘gaydar’, Richard A. Friend moved to the center of a stage‥and scanned the audience of about 60 students and staff‥. Friend, an instructor in human sexuality at the University of Pennsylvania, told the crowd he would point out all the lesbians and gays in the audience and have them stand up.

Does Suzy know Richard A. Friend?

― Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Saturday, 8 January 2011 05:56 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude DADT was repealed, he's now Richard My Boyfriend

What sensible orthographic relationship could be shared by both woah and Noah?

fwiw (what with the free subscription and all)

†1. whoa ho ho, used to call attention from a distance. Obs.

a1616 Shakespeare Winter's Tale (1623) iii. iii. 76 He hallow'd but euen now. Whoa-ho-hoa.
1623 Shaks. Merry W. v. v. 187 Whoa hoe, hoe, Father Page.
(Hide quotations)
€
2. A word of command to a horse or other draught-animal to stop or stand still; also used otherwise in collocation with other words, as come hither whoa, gee-whoa, hait-whoa, whoa back. Hence used jocularly to a person as a command to stop or desist. (Cf. woa int.)

/wəʊ/
Forms: Also woah.(Show Less)
Etymology: Variant of whoa int.
Thesaurus »

= wo int. 2.

1841 Dickens Old Curiosity Shop ii. xxxviii. 3 Woa-a-a then, will you?
1856 Putnam's Monthly Mag. Nov. 530/1 With a loud ‘woah!’ the man stopped the beast [sc. ass].
1892 Chevalier Wot Cher! iv, ‘Woa! steady! Neddy Woa!’
(Hide quotations)

Derivatives

woa v. to stop (trans. and intr.) with the call of ‘woa’.

1870 S. Lanier Nine from eight 31, I woa'd my mules mighty easy.
1871 M. Legrand Cambr. Freshman 252 Woa, Princey, woa! But Prince wouldn't ‘woa.’

in family guy when stewie's doing that irritating "cool wHip" thing, thats what you wrongheaded whoa-advocates are sounding like. it's obvious just from looking at the word and the way people pronounce it that the expression of surprise is 'woah'. elements of what GR ring true though.

unless this is another orrible americanisation in which case im out.

I'd never seen "woah" until the last couple of years; assumed it was sloppy smartphone typing.

My trusty old Australian OED has only 'whoa' and lists only the definition about horses. Will not use either word until I have a definitive answer.

david walliams says woah if that helps

in family guy when stewie's doing that irritating "cool wHip" thing, thats what you wrongheaded whoa-advocates are sounding like.

So are you saying it should be spelled Cool Wiph?

Nobody knocks Stewie on my watch.

waht

wewh, close one

My friend just wrote "whoah" on Facebook.

from the nyt this morning:

"A few top universities have become more choosey about giving credit."

"choosey" with an e? guess the isley brothers approve

this post by Mark G reminded me of a question I had:

Yeah, but most if not all other female "non-pop-music" gets compared to Kate Bush.

now that 'non-pop-music' I think should be just 'non-pop music', but what are you supposed to do in general if you're adding a hyphenated prefix to a term that's already hyphenated? Two hyphens just don't look right.

Technically, the uh boy I don't know any of the terms for this, this is gonna be messy...

The original term drops the hyphen, and the new modifying term picks it up. Thus, "non-pop music".

right, that was my intuition. will come in useful someday i'm sure, thx.

Are you imagining, for instance, a magazine that employs a pop-music critic and a non-pop-music critic?

A similar example was discussed upthread.

(I would probably use both hyphens. Nabisco would use an en-dash: "non–pop music critic.")

I'm tired, so:

An era where...
or
An era when...

?

when, for me

An era of ______

well that all depends on whether you follow with an overarching description or a more specific event/occurrence?

If it's that specific, I don't think "era" would be the correct noun.

maybe so.

'when this happened' doesn;t have much of a ring to it though.

I would take era when over era where in most instances, but especially in cases where the signifier that follows is expressed as an activity, although where is acceptable, due to eras having boundaries. As in: "an era when women bobbed their hair and men wore KKK hoods."

The formulation era of would be more suitable where the signifier is expressed as an intransitive state or an abstraction: "an era of bobbed hair on women and KKK hoods on men..."

that's where i was, but i didn't know how to say that properly. clearly i should have asked on the copyeditors and grammar fiends thread

It is the Achilles’ heel of 3-D television: the clunky glasses that viewers must wear to see images pop out in 3-D.

"The Achilles' heel"? Really?

achilles's in any case imo

push the boat out like

Stupid or clumsy metaphors and similes are not strictly matters for grammar fiends, but rather for arbiters of style.

apostrophe with no additional "s" is AP style for proper names that end with "s"

but shouldn't it be "the Achilles heel" as in "the Fosbury flop"?

In my opinion one is referring to a particular heel that belonged to Achilles, so that using the possesive apostrophe is more appropriate than using no apostrophe. But that is just me talking, not an expert per se.

get an expert on the per se phone

trolling for groans

"achilles' heel" would be OK without the article

Weird that the thing that enables 3D is its weakness, but whatever.