WORD ARCHIVE
DOH
DOH is Homer Simpson's word — the sudden recognition of one's own mistake
What DOH does
DOH is culturally fixed by The Simpsons, but it taps into a real need: a word for the precise moment of realizing you have made an obvious mistake. No other word serves this function as well.
DOH as literary candidate
DOH was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001 — a sign that a word associated with a cartoon character had genuine lexical standing. Its cultural durability is evidence of how precisely it captures its moment.