Lisa and Bart Simpson saying “meh” in The Simpsons 2001 episode “Hungry Hungry Homer”
3 February 2025
Meh is an interjection expressing apathy or uninterest. We don’t know exactly when people began using it, nor where it comes from. Two explanations are commonly proffered. The first is that it is simply a transcription of an inarticulate, oral grunt or sigh. The second is that it comes from the Yiddish מע (me), which can be an interjection with the senses of “so-so” and “be it as it may.”
The interjection mneh appears in W.H. Auden’s 1969 poem Moon Landing, expressing his apathy over watching the historical event on television:
Worth going to see? I can well believe it.
Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert
and was not charmed: give me a watered
lively garden, remote from blatherers
It is possible that Auden was picking up on the Yiddish usage. While he was not Jewish, he was living in New York in 1969 and may have heard the interjection and incorporated it into his vocabulary.
The meh transcription appears by 1992, when it is recorded in a Usenet discussion about the television program Melrose Place:
>>So is the TH cute?
>YES!!
Meh... far too Ken-doll for me…
(TH stands for token homosexual.)
But it would be the repeated use of the interjection on the animated television show The Simpsons that would catapult meh into the mainstream. It was first used on that show in October 1994 in the episode “Sideshow Bob Roberts,” in which Lisa is investigating possible voter fraud at the Springfield library:
Librarian: Here you go … the results of last month’s mayor election, all 48,000 voters and who each one of them voted for.
Lisa: I thought this was a secret ballot.
Librarian: Meh.
(Not relevant to the history of meh, but just before this exchange Lisa utters this prescient line, “I can’t believe a convicted felon would get so many votes.”)
But the exchange that really cemented meh in the public consciousness was this one from the March 2001 episode “Hungry Hungry Homer”:
Homer (after watching Blockoland commercial): Kids … how would you … like to go … to … Blockoland?
Bart & Lisa (in unison): Meh.
Homer: But the TV gave me the impression that…
Bart: We said meh.
Lisa: M-E-H. Meh.
The long association of Yiddish with comedy could be the inspiration for the Simpsons writers using the term. But we can’t say with absolute confidence that the interjection as we know it comes from the Yiddish.
Meh can also be used as an adjective. This usage dates to at least 2007, when the following appears in a 27 January 2007 review of the television show 24:
Let's be frank here: 24 has lost its mind. The hinges were always loose, but this sixth series is something else. It opened last week with Jack mute, scarred and bearded following months of torture in a secret Chinese prison. The man could scarcely walk. Two hours later he was cheerfully high-kicking a suicide bomber out the back of a train.
Nuts. But somehow it all seemed, to use a bit of internet parlance, a bit “meh.”
Sources:
Auden, W.H. “Moon Landing.” The New Yorker, 6 September 1969, 38/2.
Bierma, Nathan. “‘Meh’ Joins Ranks of Little Words that Do Grunt Work.” Chicago Tribune, 13 April 2007, D2/1-2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Brooker, Charlie. “The Guide: Charlie Brookers Screen Burn.” The Guardian (London), 27 January 2007, 52. ProQuest Newspapers.
Dorrance, John. “Yes, I Actually Watched Melrose Place.” Usenet: soc.motss, 10 July 1992. Google Groups.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. meh, adj.
Groening, Matt, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon. “Hungry Hungry Homer.” The Simpsons, episode 12.15, 4 March 2001.
———. “Sideshow Bob Roberts.” The Simpsons, episode 6.5, 9 October 1994.
Harkavy, Alexander. Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, fourth edition. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1928, 307/1, s.v. מע. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Meh.” Languagehat.com, 13 April 2007.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2015, s.v. meh, int. & adj.
Yagoda, Ben. “Pardon the Interjection.” Slate.com, 16 February 2007.
Zimmer, Ben. “Meh-ness to Society.” Language Log, 8 June 2006.
———. “Three Scenes in the Life of ‘meh.’” Language Log, 26 February 2012.
Image credit: Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television, 2001. Fair use of a single still frame from a television program to illustrate the topic under discussion.