blow a raspberry
idiomatic phrase

- to make a rude sound by sticking the tongue out and blowing

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

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ORIGIN

It’s difficult to imagine what a raspberry has to do with making an unpleasant noise.

For this, and other interesting expressions, we can thank the Cockney rhyming slang that was popular in London in the 19th century and still used by London taxi-drivers today.

This unique dialect is said to have originated from small-time criminals in London’s backstreets as a means of trying to fool the police.

The method was relatively simple. Pick two related words - like apples and pears - and then find a word that rhymes with the latter; stairs for instance; and suddenly the phrase apples and pears refers to stairs.

Other examples include Adam and Eve for believe, trouble and strife for wife, and dog and bone for phone.

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Coming back to today's OWAD, the phrase raspberry tart rhymes with fart, so the blowing gesture became known as “blowing a raspberry.”

Blowing a raspberry is widely known across different cultures, in particular in childhood phonemic play, either solely by the child, or by adults towards a child to encourage imitation to the delight of both parties.

In the U.S. it is often referred to as a “Bronx cheer,” in honour of the New York Yankees baseball fans who were known to heckle players they didn’t like or who were playing badly. The Bronx is a district of New York City where the Yankees make their home.

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SYNONYMS

This phrase is also expressed as “give someone the raspberry” and with the verb “razz” (He was razzed by the crowd after missing an easy goal). In the terminology of phonetics, the sound is described as a voiceless linguolabial trill, or as a buccal interdental trill.

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SOURCES

Bill Bryson - The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way
Kenneth L. Pike - Phonetics:
The Oxford English Dictionary

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Practice OWAD in an English conversation today, say something like:

“Guess what! someone at the back of the room BLEW A RASPBERRY during the shareholder meeting.”

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