Past its prime.

Dear Word Detective:  I was watching cartoons this weekend (I’m 46 years old, why do you ask?), and of, course, as we all know, old cartoons are the best cartoons.  One of the characters in a Bugs Bunny episode I was enjoying reacts to a strong smell by holding his nose and shouting “PEE-YOU!”.  I laughed, and I hope if I ever stop laughing at that kind of gem, somebody puts me in the ground.  Anyway, it occurred to me I had no idea where that particular phrase comes from; a brief internet search turns up many different spellings (include one very intriguing “P.U.”), but not much information on origin.  Can you help? — Chris, Kansas City.

Old cartoons are indeed the best cartoons, and, in my humble opinion, old cartoons are one of the few rationales for the existence of television.  By old cartoons, incidentally, I mean, as you do, those of the Looney Tunes school of inspired nonsense, not that lame Disney stuff.  Looney Tunes brought us Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Tweety, and Marvin the Martian.  Disney gave us Mickey, Minnie and, let’s see, oh yeah, Goofy.  No contest.

Since the early 17th century (and probably much earlier), English has had a number of interjections intended to express disgust, impatience or weariness.  These have included “pfeu,” “pooh,” “pfu” and, most enduringly, “phew” and “pew.”  All of these forms were “imitative,” simulating the action of blowing through pursed lips as an expression of disgust, etc. (“Phu, a fig for his Money,” 1726).  While we use “phew” to express relief (often sarcastically) today, “pew” or “pyoo” in particular came to be a common reaction when encountering a bad smell or another disgusting phenomenon (“Pew!  That yogurt must be old enough to vote!”).

Now fast forward to the early 19th century, when there was a fad among fashionable young people which consisted of abbreviating popular sayings into initialisms.  “All right” was rendered as “A.R.,” “no good” became “N.G.,” and so on.  Often the words were also deliberately misspelled before they were abbreviated, as in the case of  “all correct,” transformed into “oll korrect” and thereafter into “O.K.”  (Martin Van Buren’s unsuccessful re-election bid in 1840, supported by campaign clubs called O.K. Clubs as a pun on his nickname “Old Kinderhook,” further established “O.K.” in the popular lexicon.)

It is very likely that this “initialization” rage among the youth of the day also expanded “pew” into “pee-yoo,” and transformed it into “P.U.”  It’s hard to pin an exact date on the invention because many of the products of this fad didn’t make it into print until years later (if at all), but my guess is that “P.U.” and its longer form “pee-yoo” have been signifying disgust since at least the mid-19th century.

No, no, the gorilla is Margaret Thatcher.

Dear Word Detective:   I was reading an article in Slate regarding copyright issues with China, when I was distracted by a link to Wikipedia’s discussion of “fair use.”  Reading the Wikipedia page, I was struck by the concept that parodies are generally accepted as “fair use” while satires are not.  This, in turn, led to a discussion with a friend regarding the difference between parody and satire. The definitions seem to run in entangled circles.  (The least confusing, Wikipedia, says “parody” is using a work in order to poke fun at or comment on the work itself and “satire” is using a work to poke fun at or comment on something else.)  Again, this in turn led to wondering if words like “parody,” “paradox” and “paradigm” are related.  A bit later, my wife and I were watching “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother,” which was categorized as a “spoof.”  So, an additional question is: What the difference is between a spoof and a parody? — Ray.

That’s a heck of a question.  Incidentally, if you ever wake up itching to start a fight on the internet that will last until the sun is a burned-out cinder, all you need do is to type the words “fair use.”  I won’t venture into that legal thicket, but I can say that Wikipedia is broadly correct about the distinction between parody and satire.

A “parody” is a mocking imitation of the style or sensibilities of another work (novel, film, song, etc.) or genre of work, aiming to ridicule the work, genre and/or its author(s).  If I dislike the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (which I do), and write my own version of Lord of the Rings, imitating Tolkien’s style, in which the “rings” are stolen car rings run by drunken elves, that’s parody.  It’s done to mock Tolkien’s books.  If, however, I write a novel clearly imitating Tolkien’s stories but set in Washington, DC and intended to make fun of Congress, that’s satire, and if I “borrow” too many details from Tolkien’s work, I may need a good lawyer.  Satire doesn’t require a single source, however, and many fine satires mock general social attitudes or conventions (e.g., Stan Freberg’s brilliant satires of the advertising world in the 1950s).

“Parody” in English dates back to the late 16th century, and comes from the Greek “paroidia,” a combination of “para” (beside, parallel to, “mock”) plus “oide” (song, also the source of our “ode”).  “Paradox,” an apparently contradictory statement that is nonetheless true, is rooted in the Greek “paradoxon,” in which “para” in this case means “beyond” and “doxa” means “opinion or wisdom.”  “Paradigm,” which we use today to mean “overall conceptual framework,” originally meant “model or example,” and comes from the Greek “paradeiknynai,” meaning literally “to show side-by-side.”  Apart from sharing the versatile prefix “para” in three different senses, “parody,” “paradox” and “paradigm” are unrelated.

“Satire” comes from the Latin word “satira,” from the phrase “lanx satura,” meaning, figuratively, “full plate,” and originally referred to a collection of poems or essays attacking a wide range (“full plate”) of follies.

“Spoof” is both a broader and a vaguer term than either “parody” or “satire,” and we use it today to mean any sort of light parody, satire or the like meant in good fun and not to be taken too seriously.  “Spoof” was originally the name of a game invented by the British comedian Arthur Roberts (1852-1933) around 1884, and apparently Roberts simply invented a silly word for his silly game.  The Oxford English Dictionary describes “spoof” as “a game of a hoaxing and nonsensical character,” but skimps on the details.  By 1889 “spoof” was also being used to mean “hoax,” but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that “spoof” acquired its current meaning of “a satirical skit or routine.”  Interestingly, the old “hoax” sense of “spoof” is still used in technical circles, where forging a return address on an email message is known as “spoofing.”