Definition:
The part of speech that usually expresses emotion and is capable of standing alone. See also:
Etymology:
From the Latin, "thrown in"Examples and Observations:
- "Bam!"
(Chef Emeril Lagasse) - "Yabba dabba do!"
(Fred Flintstone in The Flinstones) - "When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat."
(Henry David Thoreau) - "Well!"
(Jack Benny) - "Psst! h'm! ah! oh! hem! ah! ha! hey! well! oh! pooh! poof! ow! oo! ouch! hey! eh! h'm! pffft!
"Well! hey! pooh! oh! h'm! right!"
(Raymond Queneau, "Interjections," Exercises in Style, translated by Barbara Wright. New Directions: 1981) - "It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had to almost hide my face, because tears were welling up in my eyes. Just the thought of playing with Bird, wow!"
(Herbie Hancock) - "I'm much bigger in Britain than I am there. I'm well known, but my name's 'That Guy' in America. . . . People shout: 'Hey! I know you! You're That Guy.'"
(Billy Connolly) - "Hoo-ah!"
(Al Pacino as Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman) - "M'm! M'm! Good!"
(Campbell's Soup advertising sloagn) - "Aye, yii, yii, yiiii,
I am the Frito Bandito."
(1970s television commercial for Frito's Corn Chips) - "Cowabunga"
(Chief Thunderbird in The Howdy Doody Show and Bart Simpson in The Simpsons) - "Woo-hoo," "Yoink!" and "D'oh"
(Homer Simpson in The Simpsons)
Pronunciation: in-tur-JEK-shun
Also Known As: ejaculation, exclamation

