American English’s Love Affair with the Yiddish Word “Meh”

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Basketball immortal Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s recent column in The Hollywood Reporter, in which he eloquently lambasted remarks made about Jews by black sports and entertainment stars like DeSean Jackson and Ice Cube, deserves to be applauded. Commenting on “the shocking lack of massive indignation” over such remarks, Abdul-Jabbar wrote: “We expected passionate public outrage. What we got was a shrug of meh-rage.” And he continued: “When reading the dark squishy entrails of popular culture, meh-rage in the face of sustained prejudice is an indisputable sign of the coming Apatholypse.” It’s a pleasure to see the man who revolutionized the slam-dunk coin the word “Apatholypse,” which should go down as one of 2020’s winning neologisms.

“Meh-rage” is less original. Indeed, the adjectival use of meh, which began its English career as an exclamation (or perhaps more accurately, as an anti-exclamation), has been rampant for quite a while. Often, the word is unhyphenated, like any other adjective. There are meh moments, and meh movies, and meh conversations, and meh people, and meh just about everything. Although I’ve yet to come across a reference to a meh peak experience, I suppose it’s just a matter of time.