It’s an odd sort of interjection. I wonder how it started.

I recently came a cropper when I used it in an email conversation with a junior member of staff whose first language is not English.

He passed a nice comment on a report I’ve sent him and I said:

“Why, thank you.”

He replied, not unreasonably, as though I’d politely asked “Why?”

The practice dates to the early sixteenth century. I’m not sure why it arose, but my guess is that its a conflation of the earlier what and ay. Interjections like this don’t arise deliberately, so there probably isn’t a logical reason behind it.

Dave Wilton - 20 November 2012 03:26 AM

my guess is that its a conflation of the earlier what and ay.

Except that English has long had the expression “Why ay”, meaning “most certainly”, now regarded as typically Geordie/Newcastle upon Tyne but found in Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and, if Fanny Burney is believed, on the lips of Dr Johnson. Where that stands in relation to this discussion, however, I know not ...

Except that English has long had the expression “Why ay”, meaning “most certainly”

sounds like “Why, I oughta...”

A friend of mine in his late 80’s uses this regularly.

Thanks, people. I’ll file it under JOOTT.

Geordies and north easterners (you can cause major offence hereabouts by labelling everyone from the north east Geordies) in general pronounce it “whey” or “wee” +ay.

We also start sentences with ‘Well…’ and ‘What…’ and although there are nuances in meaning they’re often more or less interchangeable. (E.g. ‘Why, you don’t like it?’ and ‘What, you don’t like it?’ convey the identical meaning, IMO)

‘What’, of course, goes back at least as far as Beowulf, in the form Hwæt. Maybe English-speakers have always just felt a need to preface their remarks with something beginning with the hw/wh aspirate.

Just a footnote or side issue: of those US types who do not have the which/witch merger, i.e., who distinguish /w/ from /hw/, many or most pronounce the interjection “why” as /wai/ but pronounce “why” in other applications (adverb, noun) as /hwai/.

(Do I know why /hwai/ that is? Why /wai/, I surely don’t!)