Blowing a raspberry, strawberry, razzing or making a

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

cheer, is to make a noise similar to flatulence that may signify derision, real or feigned. It is also used in childhood

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

play. It is made by placing the

tongue The tongue is a muscular organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surface (dorsum) is covered by taste ...

between the lips, or alternately placing the lips against any area of skin, and blowing. When performed against the skin of another person, it is often a form of

tickling Tickling is the act of touching a part of a body in a way that causes involuntary twitching movements or laughter. The word evolved from the Middle English ''tikelen'', perhaps frequentative of ''ticken'', to touch lightly. In 1897, psycholo ...

. A raspberry (when used with the tongue) is not used in any human language as a building block of words, apart from jocular exceptions such as phonemic play and the name of the comic-book character Joe Btfsplk. However, the vaguely similar

bilabial trill The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\. Features Features of the voiced ...

(essentially blowing a raspberry with one's lips) is a regular consonant sound in a few dozen languages scattered around the world.

Spike Jones Lindley Armstrong "Spike" Jones (December 14, 1911 – May 1, 1965) was an American musician and bandleader specializing in spoof arrangements of popular songs and classical music. Ballads receiving the Jones treatment were punctuated with gun ...

and His City Slickers used a "birdaphone" to create this sound on their recording of "

Der Fuehrer's Face ''Der Fuehrer's Face'' (originally titled ''A Nightmare in Nutziland'' or ''Donald Duck in Nutziland'' ) is a 1943 American animated anti-Nazi propaganda short film produced by Walt Disney Productions, created in 1942 and released on January 1, ...

", repeatedly lambasting

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!" In the terminology of

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, the raspberry has been described as a

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...

linguolabial Linguolabials or apicolabials are consonants articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum which extends from ling ...

trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cus ...

, transcribed in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

, and as a buccal interdental trill, transcribed in the

Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internatio ...

Name

The nomenclature varies by country. In most anglophone countries, it is known as a raspberry, which is attested from at least 1890, and which in the United States had been shortened to razz by 1919. In the United States it has also been called a Bronx cheer since at least the early 1920s. The term "raspberry" derives from the

Cockney rhyming slang Rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction in the English language. It is especially prevalent among Cockneys in England, and was first used in the early 19th century in the East End of London; hence its alternative name, Cockney rhymin ...

"raspberry tart" for "fart" (that is, "blowing a fart").

References

Flatulence Onomatopoeia Gestures Articles containing video clips Sounds by type Metaphors referring to food and drink {{#related:Rhyming slang

Name

See also

References