pooh-pooh

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See also: poohpooh and poo-poo

English

WOTD – 18 January 2017

Etymology

From a reduplication of pooh (“an utterance of the word pooh”).

Pronunciation

Verb

pooh-pooh (third-person singular simple present pooh-poohs, present participle pooh-poohing, simple past and past participle pooh-poohed)

  1. (transitive) To dismiss idly with contempt or derision.
    • 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, chapter 58, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1848, →OCLC, page 578:
      [W]hen he went abroad with Dombey and was chasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would have pooh-pooh'd you—would have pooh-pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord!
    • c. 1861, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “On Ribbons”, in Roundabout Papers, London: Smith, Elder & Co., published 1863, →OCLC:
      In England, until very late days, we have been accustomed rather to pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote ribbons and crosses tinsel gewgaws, foolish foreign ornaments, and so forth.
    • 1861, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter VIII, in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part I, page 119:
      Mr Macey, though he joined in the defence of Marner against all suspicions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the tinder-box; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion, tending to imply that everything must be done by human hands, and that there was no power which could make away with the guineas without moving the bricks.
    • 2001 June 21, Murray Sayle, “After George W. Bush, the deluge”, in London Review of Books‎, volume 23, number 12, archived from the original on 9 September 2016, pages 3–9:
      Pooh-poohing the IPCC's science has been one line of attack by [George W.] Bush's backers.
    • 2004 September 23, David Simpson, “The kid who talked too much and became President”, in London Review of Books‎, volume 26, number 18, archived from the original on 18 March 2016, pages 3–5:
      [Bill] Clinton haters will pooh-pooh all of these acknowledgements as the index of a compulsive sociability that knows no limits and upholds no standards, a psychic necessity we should not make into a moral virtue.

Alternative forms

Further reading

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