Whoops

How to spell whoops

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce whoops

What does whoops mean?

1. interjectionAn exclamation used to acknowledge a minor mistake, stumble, or accident.

Whoops in a sentence

• Whoops, the coffee went straight onto the keyboard.

• He muttered whoops when he realised he had sent the email to the wrong client.

Where does whoops come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Whoops is an imitative exclamation, a sound English speakers reach for instinctively when something goes wrong. It grew out of the older word 'whoop', which from the 1300s named a loud cry or shout and was itself echoic, formed simply to imitate the sound of a sudden vocal burst. By the early twentieth century 'whoops' had settled into use as a light, almost apologetic interjection marking a small blunder, a stumble, or a spilled drink. It belongs to the same family of spontaneous outbursts as 'oops', and the two are often treated as near twins, with 'whoops' carrying a slightly breezier, more theatrical tone. The spelling preserves the silent 'wh' from 'whoop', which is the small trap, since the word sounds as though it could begin with a plain 'w' or even 'h'.

How the word is built

• whoops (interjection; an emphatic alteration of the older exclamation 'whoop')