# Interjection
An interjection is a word, sound, or short phrase spoken suddenly to express an emotion or reaction, such as *oh*, *ouch*, *wow*, *huh?*, or *mmhm*, and it stands grammatically apart from the sentence around it.[1](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/interjection) Once treated by linguists as marginal to language, interjections have been reappraised in recent decades: around one out of every seven turns in conversation is an interjection, and the most common ones are not involuntary exclamations but a small set of adaptive interactional tools that streamline everyday language use.[2](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031422-124743)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Definition | A short sound, word, or phrase spoken suddenly to express an emotion; grammatically independent of the sentence[1](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/interjection) |
| Frequency in talk | Around 1 in 7 conversational turns is an interjection[2](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031422-124743) |
| Main types | Primary interjections (oh, ouch, shh) and secondary interjections adapted from other parts of speech (wow, boy)[3](https://www.scribbr.com/parts-of-speech/interjections/) |
| Conversational roles | Continuers (mmhm), repair initiators (huh?), and change-of-state tokens (oh)[2](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031422-124743) |
| Etymology | Late Middle English, via Old French from Latin *interiectio*, from *interjicere* ("to throw between")[1](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/interjection) |
| Typology (2025) | First broad-scale cross-linguistic study analyzed 523 expressive interjections in 144 languages[4](https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/the-semantic-typology-of-expressive-interjections-colexifications/) |
| Class size | A large, potentially infinitely extendable class, unlike the closed classes of other pragmatic markers[5](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216608001859) |
## Definition and categories
Grammars define the interjection as an invariable part of speech that resists standard criteria of inflection, syntactic integration, and propositional meaning; even its phonetic structure may be irregular relative to the rest of the lexicon.[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/interjections-in-early-modern-english-grammars-balancing-tradition-innovation-and-metalinguistic-awareness/0DAA8B6F2A9FC58FA1FB78852518EC44) In everyday terms, interjections are a grammatically independent part of speech that can often be removed from a sentence without changing its truth-conditional meaning.[3](https://www.scribbr.com/parts-of-speech/interjections/)
**Primary and secondary forms.** A primary interjection is a form that functions only or mainly as an interjection, such as *oh*, *ouch*, or *shh*; a secondary interjection is a word normally used as another part of speech, such as a noun or verb, that can also stand alone as an exclamation.[3](https://www.scribbr.com/parts-of-speech/interjections/) Descriptive work adds functional subdivisions: emotive interjections convey feelings such as pleasure, surprise, shock, and disgust (*ouch*, *wow*, *hooray*, *ugh*), while volitive interjections such as *shh* or *shush* command someone to act, for example to be quiet.[7](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/interjections) • [3](https://www.scribbr.com/parts-of-speech/interjections/)
## Historical treatment
The category's history explains its marginal reputation. [Ancient Greek](https://www.edgepedia.org/ancient-greek) grammarians generally treated interjections as a subclass of adverbs; Latin grammarians, most notably Priscian, created *interiectio* as an independent part of speech, replacing the Greek category of articles, which Latin lacks, in order to preserve the canon of eight word classes.[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/interjections-in-early-modern-english-grammars-balancing-tradition-innovation-and-metalinguistic-awareness/0DAA8B6F2A9FC58FA1FB78852518EC44) Within this tradition interjections were defined as items expressing a passion of the mind through an irregular voice.[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/interjections-in-early-modern-english-grammars-balancing-tradition-innovation-and-metalinguistic-awareness/0DAA8B6F2A9FC58FA1FB78852518EC44) Nineteenth-century linguists went further, regarding them as non-linguistic or paralinguistic; one formulation held that "language begins where interjections end."
This marginalization persisted in [Early Modern English](https://www.edgepedia.org/early-modern-english) grammars, where treatment of the label varied strikingly: some grammarians retained the category with little elaboration, others subsumed interjections under adverbs or "consignificant" words, and still others omitted the label altogether.[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/interjections-in-early-modern-english-grammars-balancing-tradition-innovation-and-metalinguistic-awareness/0DAA8B6F2A9FC58FA1FB78852518EC44) In recent decades the picture has reversed, with interjections becoming a central object of inquiry in pragmatics, conversation analysis, and historical linguistics.[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/interjections-in-early-modern-english-grammars-balancing-tradition-innovation-and-metalinguistic-awareness/0DAA8B6F2A9FC58FA1FB78852518EC44)
## Interjections in conversation
A 2024 review by Mark Dingemanse, a linguist at Radboud University, surveys work that inverts the received view of interjections as primitive grunts or affect bursts. The most common interjections in talk form a small set of agile interactional tools: continuers like *mmhm* help people co-construct complex interactional structures, repair initiators like *huh?* help people calibrate mutual understanding on the fly, and change-of-state tokens like *oh* display knowledge as it evolves in interaction.[2](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031422-124743)
**Pragmatic marker functions.** Neal R. Norrick, professor of English linguistics at Saarland University, analyzes interjections in everyday talk as pragmatic markers that initiate utterances and relate them to preceding interaction. Much of a primary interjection's significance comes from its turn-initial position, and much of its meaning in a given case depends on its intonation contour. Secondary interjections like *wow* and *boy* signal contrast, elaboration, and transition, and the class as a whole accepts an unlimited number of new items.[5](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216608001859)
Single interjections carry multiple functions. A conversation-analytic study of *hello* in televised talk shows showed that beyond its established uses as a greeting or summons, it can express surprise or positive evaluation, reproach someone for misconduct, evaluate a state of affairs negatively, and mark a proposition as obvious, with many uses tied to one of two characteristic emphatic intonation contours.[8](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216625002450) In Mayali, an Australian language of [Arnhem Land](https://www.edgepedia.org/arnhem-land), a class of "organizing interjections" structures discourse and often constitutes complete conversational turns, with lexical meanings that include explicit presuppositions about discourse context.[9](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037821669290053E)
## Cross-linguistic semantics
Expressive interjections are most likely a universal feature of human languages, yet their typology long remained little studied. The first broad-scale cross-linguistic study, by Maïa Ponsonnet and published in *Lingua* in 2025, examined colexification patterns, that is, which experiences tend to be expressed by the same interjection. From lexicographic sources the study assembled 523 interjections expressing pain, disgust, or joy in a diverse sample of 144 languages, then inventoried which other meanings associate with each.[4](https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/the-semantic-typology-of-expressive-interjections-colexifications/)
The analysis found that pain, disgust, and joy each associate with a large and diverse set of experiences with significant overlap, but with strong contrasts in the most prevalent associations:[4](https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/the-semantic-typology-of-expressive-interjections-colexifications/)
- **Pain** interjections often express generic negative emotions, sorrow, fear, and compassion.
- **Disgust** interjections often express dislike or disapproval, contempt, and to some extent irritation.
- **Joy** interjections often express admiration, approbation, and congratulations.
Pain and disgust associate preferentially with negative experiences and joy with positive ones, while disgust and joy share a preference for socially oriented experiences that pain does not show. All three frequently associate with surprise, presumably because it is neutral in valence, making surprise a pivot in the semantic networks formed by interjections.[4](https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/the-semantic-typology-of-expressive-interjections-colexifications/)
## Form, prosody, and computational treatment
**Prosody.** An acoustic study of 250 tokens from English-language YouTube vlogs found that speech rate is the most robust cue distinguishing interjections from discourse markers: interjections are produced more slowly and occur more frequently with pauses, although both categories show localized pitch elevation and increased loudness relative to surrounding speech.[10](https://journal.kci.go.kr/jksci/archive/articleView?artiId=ART003300320)
**Machine processing.** Despite their frequent use to express agreement, hesitation, or requests for information, interjections are typically dismissed as "non-words" by Automatic Speech Recognition engines, and recent work has built interjection classification datasets and models to improve human-computer interaction.[11](https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03181)
## References
1. [interjection noun, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/interjection)
2. [Mark Dingemanse (2024). Interjections at the Heart of Language. Annual Review of Linguistics 10:257–277](https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031422-124743)
3. [What Is an Interjection? Scribbr](https://www.scribbr.com/parts-of-speech/interjections/)
4. [Maïa Ponsonnet (2025). The semantic typology of expressive interjections. Lingua 324, 103979](https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/the-semantic-typology-of-expressive-interjections-colexifications/)
5. [Neal R. Norrick (2009). Interjections as pragmatic markers. Journal of Pragmatics 41(5):866–891](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216608001859)
6. [Interjections in Early Modern English grammars, English Language & Linguistics (Cambridge Core)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-language-and-linguistics/article/interjections-in-early-modern-english-grammars-balancing-tradition-innovation-and-metalinguistic-awareness/0DAA8B6F2A9FC58FA1FB78852518EC44)
7. [Interjections (ouch, hooray), Cambridge Grammar](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/interjections)
8. [Jan Svennevig and Kristine Hasund (2025). Pragmatic functions of the interjection hello. Journal of Pragmatics 250:85–98](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216625002450)
9. [Nicholas Evans (1992). 'Wanjh! bonj! nja!': Sequential organization and social deixis in Mayali interjections. Journal of Pragmatics 18:225–244](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037821669290053E)
10. [Namjin Lee and Tae-Yeoub Jang (2026). Acoustic Characteristics of English Interjections and Discourse Markers. JKSCI 31(1):359–367](https://journal.kci.go.kr/jksci/archive/articleView?artiId=ART003300320)
11. [Beyond Words: Interjection Classification for Improved Human-Computer Interaction, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03181)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Languages and linguistics › Linguistics › Grammar, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics › Grammatical categories, functions, and relations*
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