Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Blowing a raspberry
Act of making a noise like flatulence From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
A raspberry or razz, also known as a Bronx cheer, is a mouth noise similar to a fart that is used to signify derision. It is also used as a voice exercise for singers and actors, where it may be called a raspberry trill or tongue trill.[1] It is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing, so that it trills against the lower lip, and as a catcall in public arenas is sometimes made into the palm or back of the hand to amplify the volume. In Russia it is commonly accompanied by rolling the eyes.[2]
Blowing a raspberry is common to many countries around the world, including European and European-settled countries and Iran.[3] In anglophone countries is associated with catcalling opposing sports teams, and with children. It is not used in any human language as a building block of words, apart from jocular exceptions such as the name of the comic-book character Joe Btfsplk. However, the vaguely similar bilabial trill (essentially blowing a raspberry with one's lips) is a regular consonant sound in a few dozen languages scattered around the world.
Spike Jones and His City Slickers used a "birdaphone" to create this sound on their recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face", repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!"[4][5]
In the terminology of phonetics, the raspberry has been described as a (pulmonic) labiolingual trill,[6] transcribed [r̼] or [r̼̊] (depending on voicing) in the International Phonetic Alphabet;[a] and as a buccal interdental trill, transcribed [ↀ͡r̪͆] in the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, which also suggests that ↀ may be used as an abbreviation if a speaker frequently uses the sound.[7]
Remove ads
Name
The nomenclature varies by country. In most anglophone countries, it is known as a raspberry, which is attested from at least 1890,[8] and which in the United States had been shortened to razz by 1919.[9] The term originates in rhyming slang, where "raspberry tart" means "fart".[10] In the United States it has also been called a Bronx cheer since at least the early 1920s.[11][12]
In Italian it is known by the Neapolitan word pernacchia, in Spanish as pedorreta or trompetilla.
There is no particular word for it in Russian.[2]
Remove ads
See also
- Golden Raspberry Awards, which are named after the term
- The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town
- Flatulence humor
References
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads