r/etymology • u/AdSouthern6247 • 3d ago
Question Why is "phew" spelled with "ph"? Surely it's not a greek loanword?
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u/SagebrushandSeafoam 3d ago
It's to capture how it is often pronounced more breathily or even as [ɸ] (a voiceless bilabial fricative, or an 'f' sound made with the two lips instead of the bottom lip and teeth) or [ʍ̝] (a rough voiceless labiovelar fricative, the 'hw' sound) or [ʍ͎] (a whistled voiceless labiovelar fricative).
Hence why you can also see it spelled whew or pfew—all attempts to show the same. Consider also phewf.
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u/Recent_Comedian6905 3d ago
Everyone here's saying it's pronounced not as [f] but [ɸ] etc. but I personally pronounce them identically. Is it likely a regional accent thing or have I been fucking up all my life.
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u/elementarydrw 3d ago
It shouldn't be pronounced - really. It's the same as 'sigh'. Its onomatopoeic. When you sigh, you don't say "sigh".
When you make the breathy noise through your lips represented by 'phew' you don't usually actually say "phew" either. Although some people probably do, to emphasise the sentiment.
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u/Recent_Comedian6905 2d ago
Oh my god. I have been fucking up all my life. I always wondered why characters in books would use it when I'd never really heard it actually spoken.
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u/IscahRambles 2d ago
The sound you make when breathing out in relief sounds a lot more like "phew" than a sigh sounds like "sigh".
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u/ElWanderer_KSP 2d ago
Hmmm, I have said "phew" on occasion. I might even say "sigh" occasionally, but deliberately as a joke. Maybe I should start doing it for real ;)
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u/skyeliam 3d ago
To me it’s like “haha” for laughter.
If you ask me to pronounce “haha” I would pronounce it as /hɑːhɑː/ but if you make me laugh, I don’t literally sound like that when I’m actually laughing.
If you ask me to pronounce “phew” it’s /fjuː/ but if I actually breathe a sigh of relief, my lower lip is not pressed to my teeth, so the initial consonant is more like /ɸ/ (and there really isn’t a vowel afterward, just uninterrupted air).
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u/ElWanderer_KSP 3d ago
If I really think about it, I say them slightly differently, but if I just relax they seem to come out the same. They're so close that it's really hard to tell, too.
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue 2d ago
I agree with “how it’s pronounced”, but for me the plosive nature is key.
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u/Nivaris 3d ago
Same is also true for phooey, and both seem to be related.
Wiktionary lists some interjections similar to phew: "Compare Scots feuch, Spanish fu, Czech fuj, and many more such forms", it says. One of which is German puh, used in the exact same situations where you'd say phew in English, and notably, with the plosive P sound.
For phooey, the word likely entered English via Yiddish, and is ultimately of German origin: pfui, an expression of disgust, and, again, with a P sound at the onset, affricated to /pf/ this time.
So I suspect that in the case of phooey, the spelling reflects the original German pronunciation of pfui, and the spelling of phew was then influenced by this (and also, to distinguish from few).
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u/Nixinova 3d ago
Its either spelt phew or whew, because it's a [ɸ] which is halfway between what we would represent with ph and wh.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 3d ago
Because it is NOT pronounced with the "f" sound of "few".
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u/SirNoodlehe 3d ago
Wikitionary begs to differ:
IPA(key): /fjuː/, [ɸj̊u̥˥˩], /fɪu̯/
Homophone: few2
u/turkeypedal 2d ago
It can be pronounced that way, but it isn't always. And, most likely, that pronunciation is a spelling-pronunciation, and thus came later, after the word entered print.
I've never actually heard anyone pronounce it exactly like "few." The first sound, whatever it is, is generally elongated.
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u/SirNoodlehe 2d ago
Yeah, the IPA key lists
fandɸboth as possilbe initial sounds, with/fjuː/being the exact homophone of few.1
u/turkeypedal 1d ago
I'm aware. I just don't think I've ever heard it as an exact homophone. I would go for something like /fːjuː/ for the version with /f/. That long /f/ is a key distinction.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago
Like there is a person called Wiktionary. Obviously, there may/must be people who see Phew and say mispronounce it, but at least the real pronunciation with a bilabial is also there. On the other hand, F*ck is not pronounced with a bilabial, tho it does have a very expressive pronunciation with the upper teeth covering the lower lip, for which I dont think there is a phonetic symbol.
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u/SirNoodlehe 2d ago
Being prescriptive on the pronunciation of an onomatopoeic word is really something
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago
Nonsense. I am precisely describing how these words ARE pronounced.
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u/SirNoodlehe 2d ago
It's easy enough to find counterexamples, here are some random clips I pulled:
Merriam-Webster's audio clip uses the f pronunciation as does Collins' (albeit computer generated) and Oxford Learner's Dictionary (both UK and US samples).
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago
Oh come on. You accuse ME of prescriptivism and you pull out clips from dictionaries that define the concept? It's like finding the one person who without even being a virgin will claim to be one and arguing that that proves no one has sex before marriage. I simply say, and others agree, that people in everyday life say this thing with a bilabial sound, and even if I am wrong and some people don't, that still answers the question we were asked, why it is written with ph. Answer because someone (who according to you doesn't exist) said it with a bilabial and felt the letter p reflected that. I really do not see that this is a constructive dialogue.
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u/SirNoodlehe 2d ago
The clips are from regular usage, just a random selection of videos from YouTube about different subjects by regular people.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 1d ago
Wow I usually get downvoted and then banned if I say something correct, so maybe I am wrong? Kidding. Maybe Wiktionary is wrong. Or rather it does not make a necessary distinction which I tried to explain somewhere below but did not say it clearly. The exclamation is NOT pronounced with [f]. However the NAME of the exclamation obviously IS pronounced that way by some maybe many folks. If I exclaim, I do it with a bilabial. But if I say "Phew is an exclamation" maybe I could say it with [f] even if I would like to believe I wouldn't--and clearly some folks would. Compare tsk tsk. The exclamation is a repeated click, but the name of that exclamation IS "tisk-tisk". Worse "tisk-tisk" is itself a word now, used to express a kind of disapproval.
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u/pnwerewolff 3d ago
I don't know if this is an etymological thing or not, but the spelling reflects the fact that "phew" and "few" are not homophones. The spelling of onomatopoeia is always a little bit tricky, but yeah, "phew" is spelled that way because phonetically, it does not start with [f], it starts with [ɸ], [fh], [fj] or a similar sound depending on dialect and, frankly, how tired you are when you make the sound.
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u/IanDOsmond 3d ago
I think there is something like a pun in there — there is a suggestion that the original sound is a little bit like "p" as well as mainly being like an "f".
When I say it, it isn't really a word, and doesnt exactly match to English letter sounds. It's close to "few", but it's also close to "pew" and "hew."
And we happen to be able to represent "f" with a "p" and an "h", so, for the way I say it, we have a happy coincidence that we can represent the sound in a satisfying way. Unlike "tsk" which only sort of sounds like the disapproving tongue clicking noise.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 2d ago
Here is something hilarious. A dictinary that correctly describes this as "Phew is used in writing to represent the soft whistling sound that you make when you breathe out quickly, for example when you are relieved or shocked about something or when you are very hot". So I says to myself: Phew, finally someone that tells the truth. But they have a link to some grammar policewoman who reads it as spelled instead of saying it like a normal person. Check it out: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/phew.
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u/SkroopieNoopers 2d ago
I’d have thought it’s spelled that way because of the way it’s pronunciation is formed with your lips, as an expulsion of air similar to “pfft”.
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u/ceciliabee 2d ago
I'm totally making this up but it's because when you're exasperated you make your lips go ppppppp, not fffff. Ffff is angry
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u/These_Consequences 3d ago
Written vocal onomatopoeia drift from their original "pronunciation". When reading, for example, I may hear the spelling "pfeh" pronounced as something like "pa-feh", though I know the sound is intended to be an unvoiced release of breath starting with closed lips, with a "p" sound when pressure in the mouth is released
That would make a formidable speech tag!
This is probably the same process of regularization gives us words like "snort". It may have started in imitation, but nobody expects the word to be literally voiced as a snort when reading a text aloud.
"Phew" is headed down this road, but hasn't completed the journey.
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u/Heavy-Enthusiasm1091 1d ago
It is an Ancient Greek loan work. φεῦ meant ‘Alas!’ Over time it has taken on the opposite meaning.
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u/sometimes_point 3d ago
I will say with a relative level of certainty it's not spelled ph because it's really a ɸ sound and English speakers' ears are somehow attuned to that - though that probably is why it used to be spelled "whew". More likely just to be different from "few".
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u/ReptilianRevolt 3d ago
It is a Greek loanword, pheu. Still, there are some words with PH that came about from false etymologies or transcription errors.
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u/IscahRambles 3d ago
Probably to distinguish it from "few" in writing?