hep?

[swedeheart]

Okay so this is a very odd question but I need the information, so...

I'm trying to identify an interjection typically used by... erm... acrobats...? at the moment they've successfully accomplished whatever it was they were trying to do - fly through the air and land on top of a pyramid of their fellow acrobats, or whatever. Sounds like "Hep!" and seems to say "I did it! Seemed impossible to you, didn't it, but there it is!" as well as "This would be a good time to clap".

I don't what language to search in.

[swedeheart]

know

[another-view]

I don't imagine it's in any language. Kind of when a tennis player grunts URGH! It doesn't mean anything.

[swedeheart]

I imagine you're right about that, another-view, but most likely there will still have evolved some kind of consensus on how to transcribe it, if nothing else, and I'm not even sure if it's "hep" or "het" or "hut" or... "hap"... or... (I could go on)

[another-view]

From what I've seen it's just a signal like "now" before the acrobats jump around.

[LatinaLover]

I was going to help you but i have'nt got time to look through 61,100 videos so good luck!

[LatinaLover]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ac robats&search_type=&aq=f

[swedeheart]

LOL @ LatinaLover

[LatinaLover]

I did try for a little while though! loL!

[swedeheart]

another-view I know what it is but I need to know how it is generally written. The consensus on how to write it.

[swedeheart]

(...but thanks anyway, I should have said)

[Quizmonster]

Either hup or hip is, I imagine, the word you are looking for, SH>. Hup was originally used to get a horse going, so a sort of 'Yes!', which is pretty-well what the acrobats are saying...ie 'We did it!' We find hip also as the introduction to the cry, 'Hip, hip hooray', so there's the other element of ''Aren't you (we) wonderful!'

[swedeheart]

Assuming it's in English. But aren't many acrobats Not English? (god I sound like an idiot or like an AnswerBank wind up artist ha ha) The horse thing sounds kind of right, though - that might well be it. Thanks for that one, Quizmonster.

[TCL-MUMPING]

They may not be English but the sound they make is similar to how we write "hup". I don't know how you write the word for the sound a cat makes but I say a cat "yams", (pronounced yeeams) while others may say a cat "miaows (pronounced meeyows.)

We may both hear the same cat but use a different word for the same sound, the same applies to the acrobats..

[swedeheart]

Hi TCL, yes you are right, and there are many other examples like it, and so that's why I want to establish what the written tradition is rather than to rely on my ears or anyone else's. But I guess there aren't all that many novels around featuring acrobats, ha ha ha. As usual, the key to it all is probably to be found in the comic books� (Socko! Pow! Wham! Splat!) I wish someone would create a comprehensive internet dictionary devoted to "sound words", you know, like "urgh" and "eew" and such. I'd like that. Seen anything like that? I've seen a few feeble attempts but nothing to write home about.

It is the English "hup word" I am after, not the Swedish one, but I enjoyed your cat yams example very much as that happens to sound quite a bit like the Swedish word for describing what a cat does, much more so than "miaows" anyway. What is your regional accent, TCL? Don't know why but I used to think you were Scottish, but I looked Corby up in Wikipedia just now and it's in the Midlands�? (I'm just assuming your username alludes to where you're from, but maybe it doesn't. Never mind me:-)

[Quizmonster]

So what do Swedish acrobats say in these circumstances, SH? Unless things have changed recently, most circuses which toured Britain came from abroad anyway and their acrobats frequently had foreign - especially Italian - names. To make some up...The Flying Frattinis, The Jumping Giovannis etc. (The fact that they probably came from Scunthorpe was neither here nor there!)
I should have thought that 'hup' was a pretty universal sort of onomatopoeia for acrobats to use, but I'd certainly say that the English hup-word is hup!

[swedeheart]

*ducks as The Flying Quizmonster whizzes by*

In a text written in Swedish they would say either hepp or h�pp, QM. A Swedish comedian of the Tommy Cooper kind might say the same thing after a particularly cheesy joke - boom boom! /ba-dum tishhhh!

I'm going with hup, looks right to me.

[TCL-MUMPING]

I don't know how much about Corby you read on Wikipedia but at the last Census 19% of Corby folk were born in Scotland (the highest in England) and loads more are of Scots descent.

At one point in the place where I live there must have been about three quarters of the houses that were Aberdonian or Glaswegian.

The Scots Corby accent sticks out a mile in Northamptonshire as the rest of the county has a yokel accent.

As for the screen name, loon is an Aberdonian word for a lad or boy.

[Quizmonster]

Aye-aye, min! Fit like?

[TCL-MUMPING]

Chavin' awa, chavin' awa...

[swedeheart]

Note to Self: Don't just look at the piccies when 'reading' Wikipedia articles :-[

Thanks!