Umm-ahh! Whatever happened to this popular childhood taunt?

We first heard the word in the 1950s, give or take. A singsong chant to flag trouble, perhaps in Sydney, or Melbourne, or northern NSW: “Umm-ahh!”

An exclamation to denote an act of naughtiness, the word was rife across Perth in 1960, plus Hobart and Darwin. Adelaide too, where Morgan grew up in the 1990s: “My mum said it to me more than I did. Seemed to be a parent thing, and she grew up in the ’60s.”

Umm-ahh: Once a playground staple, the story behind the uniquely Australian gibe remains a mystery.Credit: iStock

Kids in the ACT, the Riverina knew the word’s tonal crescendo. In the 1970s, the slang infested Albury-Wodonga, though Rebecca, now a mum, can’t recall her own kids using it. The memory tracks with Roderick Campbell, who wrote: “Umm-ahh was popular in the ’80s, inner Melbourne. But haven’t heard my kids or nieces say it this century.”

Thinking back to boyhood, John Clemmensen can still hear the taunt in his mind, yet can’t isolate its origins. Hence his email: “I remember the word as a kid, as do other people I ask. But there’s nothing on the web, nothing in dictionaries.” Except two Reddit forums John found, both confirming the gibe’s transient existence, a playground chorus with little proof of the term occurring elsewhere.

Save for NZ, as Carley Olley vouched, growing up in the 1970s. “Maybe it’s an accent thing, but I might have spelt it umm-ar, or even ummer.” A tweenage Mark Pulley recalls his mates hooting umm-ahh in Armidale, NSW, a decade on, always wondering how it was spelt.

Anyone’s guess, Mark. Since one kid’s umm-ahh is another’s umma, as per the T-shirts printed by Elisabeth Roberston and her mates in their last years of high school, Sydney 1980s. Nationwide, however the spelling, the cry betrayed a schoolyard misdemeanour, the onlooker’s exclamation typically escorted by “You’re in so much trouble.” Or “I’m telling the teacher.” Or sometimes, says Gerald McCulloch: “You kissed your mum-ahh!”

In the Australian National Dictionary, the likely page is occupied by umbrella wattle and umpty-doo (topsy-turvy). Online, sifting the Macquarie, I was told by the site’s “fuzzy search” function that I must be seeking amah (an Indian wet nurse) or umrah (a Mecca pilgrimage), which I don’t think Sue Bolton meant when she saw me putting cicadas in Andrew Mutton’s lunchbox.

Kylie Mole, the eye-rolling teen created by Mary-Anne Fahey for the Comedy Company, is deemed a populariser of umm-ahh. Though being the late ’80s, the brat hardly coined the gotcha. So who did? Kenneth Williams, the Carry On thespian from 1958 onward, was fond of a cheek-sucking “oooh-ahh” on spying mischief, though his mock-shock was more complicit than judgmental.

Supporting the distinction were several expats, via Reddit and my own survey, who talked about learning the slang when migrating here. James, say, landed in South East Queensland in the late ’70s. “As a newly minted Pom, I just followed along to fit in. It was bad enough having a North London accent.”

Australasian only then, umm-ahh remains an enigma. Not just its spelling, its source, its syllabic variants, with some regions favouring an interceding mum, but also its complex relationship to dobbing, a custom our culture apparently loves to disparage. Nowadays, the taunt feels more a jocular threat to blow the whistle, a lost childhood spell sung with fond irony by Boomers and Xers, the deeper truth lurking behind the umm-ahh mystery nothing short of umpty-doo.

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