Use of the word "miffed" archived

Teachers choose spelling words for many reasons. Sometimes to illustrate a spelling rule, sometimes because of literature they are reading. I don't consider miffed to be a slang usage. Pissed is slang, miffed not so much.

miff sounds slang to me.

And Americans pronounce the H in Herbert and drop it in (h)erbs because that is what is correct

To put herbs (pronounced with the H) on a salad would downright miff me!

Miffed is one of those great words with an onomatopoeic origin. It is first found as a noun, miff, in the 17th century. Miff was meant to sound like the exclamation of disgust "mff" and may be related to the German muffen 'to sulk'. People were said to be in a miff, or to take a miff: "This is not to be done . . . lest some of the Bees take a miffe and goe home again" (C. Butler, Fem Mon, 1623).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the noun gave rise to the verb miff, at which point it was possible to miff someone. The past participle of this verb, miffed, is most common today as an adjective meaning 'offended or upset'. There are two other adjectives from the same root with the same meaning: miffish and miffy.

Who gets miffed? For some reason, there is a vague association of miff with women. I'm not sure if this reflects the speaker's understanding of the word miffed, or his/her understanding of women. Sir Walter Scott called it a "women's phrase" (Redgauntlet, 1824). Beresford considered "how very miffy those Ladies are said to have been" (Bibliosophia, 1810). The modern use of miffed, however, is not restricted to women. Football coaches ("Hollis miffed at call"), Hollywood directors ("Cameron miffed at DiCaprio") and criminals ("Davioni. . . miffed over the failure of his friends to raise his bail. . .") are all miffed in the headlines of today's news.

Interestingly, a friend tells me that she says she says miffed when she means "pissed" or "pissed off" but wants to be more polite. The gray area between miffed and "pissed" may be contributing to the popularity of miffed in modern English.

Further evidence that miffed is neither old nor feminine is the band Slightly Miffed whose music has been reviewed as "Monty Python meets metal."

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19991028

I'm also an expat Brit, albeit from north of the border miss, and would agree that miffed would not have been considered standard English for school usage when I was in school there. Miffed to me is less strong than pissed (off) but would be similar to "in a snit" or "knickers in a twist", neither of which would have been used in school or formal writing.

I assumed the h is dropped in herb in the US because they stayed closer to the French pronunication. This from pulledoutofmybum.com, though!

Language is a living thing. It changes all the time,from region to region and over time. How long ago were you expats in school?

Get over it. Your in the "States" now.

What exactily is wrong with learning to spell the word miffed (in use since the 17th century BTW)

Yous guys gotta learn to roll with the punches! And don't get your knickers in a twist either!

Thank God I'm in the States, now. I've been spelling that word "you're" all these years. ;-P

And, FWIW, I'm 35 so it wasn't that long ago!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/miffed

Sounds like you were miffed by that experience. I had no idea it was slang...

Or would it be "miffed at" or "miffed because of" or....

Looking at the reference K_soze posted, I don't see them listing miffed as slang.

Someone, Churchill maybe, said that the Americans and the British were one people separated by a common language. :bigsmile:

I don't consider "miffed" exactly slang, although I don't know anyone who uses the word regularly. However, it is an odd word for a third grade spelling exercise, simply because it isn't in common usage.

I read an article a few years ago about how English has changed over the years, on both sides of the pond. The conclusion of the article was that "Brahmans" such as Tom Kean, Sr. and William F. Buckley probably speak English as it was spoken in both countries prior to 1776. I have no idea if this is correct or not.

I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said that.

I use it verbally when I am somewhat dismayed, or things haven't quite gone the way I would have wanted them too etc... such as I was miffed that there was such a long line in the ice cream parlour and I didn't want to wait that long..

Miffed, in my eyes is a lesser emotion that being pissed off, *****ed off, annoyed etc etc.

As far as miss-l-toes confusion with the American pronunciation of HERB as in the name and "ERB" the plant I too am without understanding or comprehension.

I think the American pronunciation of herb is modeled on the French. We apparetly respect them more than you Brits (at least as far as cuisine is concerned).

That's always been my understanding too, shanabana. I don't know what happened with place names, though: New Orleans, Bayonne and Montpellier, for example, got anglicised for sure!