Word of the Week: Blooper

Blooper: A misspoken word or phrase, especially one uttered on broadcast media. In baseball, a weakly hit ball or a high, lobbed pitch. Both usages are American in origin.

Blooper in the sense of "blunder" arose about 10 years after the word was coined in the mid-1920s. According to Richard Lederer, author of several popular books on language, the baseball term was coined almost simultaneously with to bloop: to operate a radio set "in such a way that it emitted howls and whistles, perhaps an echo of our reactions to physical or verbal howlers." Both coinages were probably onomatopoetic: imitative of the radio howl and of the sound of a poorly hit ball.

Beginning in the late 1940s, live television broadcasting greatly increased the potential for verbal blunders. Michael Erard¹, in his recently published book Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, writes that a radio and TV director named Kermit Shafer was responsible for making "blooper" a household word:

Shafer was the first to transform other people's flustered speaking, slips of the tongue, and inadvertent solecisms from television and radio broadcasts into gold. In his hands, a blooper wasn't just a mistake. It was a noteworthy event, a slice of everyday media life, otherwise evanescent, that he shined up for display. There was the Vick's 44 Cough Syrup commercial that guaranteed "You'll never get any better!" Or as the stumbling newscaster said, "Also keeping an eye on the Woodstock Rock Festival was New York's governor Rockin Nelsenfeller."

Shafer claimed (erroneously) to have coined blooper; he also trademarked the word. (Shafer's trademarks appear to have expired, but there are several other live "blooper" trademarks.) He produced many records with titles such as All Time Great Bloopers, Prize Bloopers, and 100 Super Duper Bloopers. In 1974 he made a feature-length movie, Pardon My Blooper! 

For discussions of blooper on the American Dialect Society's listserv, see here and here.

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¹Erard's surname is a felicitous near-aptronym: a slightly bloopered version of "error."

Comments

[m erard]

Thanks for your comments on my book. Shafer gets a lot of criticism for reproducing many broadcast bloopers after the fact, but I think he's more significant for turning bloopers into intellectual property, material that people want to be legally protected -- and that one has to pay to use.

As for the near-aptronym of my name: the stress on the two words isn't the same (on the first syllable of "error," on the second of "Erard"). Adults do make intonation errors like these but usually with words that have more than 2 syllables. You might note that the first syllable of my surname is pronounced the same as the verb, "err." That way, you get the near-aptronym, but you don't have to look for an explanation in speech errors.

I hope you've enjoyed the book!

[Nancy Friedman]

Michael--Thanks for dropping by, and yes, I enjoyed your book very much. And thanks for not being too hard on me for having a little whimsical fun with your surname. I realized the pronunciation wasn't identical, but the visual resemblance to "error" was too amusing to resist.