ooh

Why does the interjection ooh have an h at the end? Just to change the vowel sound of the letters oo or, to add a faint voiceless h at the end of the word?

It has had an 'h' at the end since about the 16th century. prior to that it was 'oo' and simply a longer form of 'oh'. As it is onomatopoeic, there is no standard spelling - oo, oooh, ooh, ooo, ooohh, oooohh are possible.

ManOfWords said:

to add a faint voiceless h at the end of the word?

No. Oh - WordReference.com Dictionary of English - listen. 👁 Thumbs Up :thumbsup:

Sorry if I'm being too irksome, but some words seem to have a faint/weak h sound [Hmm... I can - it is a final voiceless sigh. I was going to say that the "h" in Bah! is slightly less than the one in Ah!... ] and others, like ooh, don't. So what I'm understanding is that they have (naturally) the weak sound because the puff of air produces it, for they are interjections/onomatopoeics, right? adding an h was just a convention?
By the way I tried listening to them, some voices produce a subtle puff at the end, others don't.

Yes, it's true for me that Bah! is said with a heavy exhalation of air, and therefore there is a kind of sound. The letter <h> in Oh! and Ooh! is just decorative: they are not pronounced. (OK, Oh distinguishes the word from O as a kind of vocative marker.)

👁 Wink ;)
thanks!