Blah, as suggested by the Wiktionary has an uncertain origin:
Sense “Idle, meaningless talk” (1940), probably imitative or echoic in origin. Perhaps, but cf Greek "barbarbar” ‘unintelligible sounds’ (Grillo 1989:174).
Also may be connected with bleat. – (Grillo, R. D. 1989. Dominant Languages: Language and hierarchy in Britain and France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
Etymonline suggests its earlest usage in 1918
- "idle, meaningless talk," 1918, probably echoic.
Actually "bla" is a sort of international term used, for instance, in French , in Italian and in Spanish.
Questions:
If the onomatopoeic assumption the most likely one, was the term actually coined within the English language or imported from abroad where it was possibly already in use?
Best Answer
The origin of 'blah' in the sense of meaningless talk
Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, second edition (1938) has no doubt that the actual word blah is of U.S. origin, although he then indulges in a series of etymological conjectures that amount to an embarrassment of riches:
In the fifth edition of his book (1961), Partridge appends a final option to the foregoing etymological possibilities:
Right. Partridge also has this interesting entry for go blah:
Regardless of how legitimate this remembered slang term retrospectively attributed to the year 1908 may be, the spelling blah belongs to 1930.
J.E. Lighter, Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1993) has entries for various meanings of blah:
O'Brien is Howard O'Brien, Wine, Women, and War: A Diary of Disillusionment (1918), which uses blah on three occasions besides the one that Lighter cites (which ids from an entry dated July 3, 1918):
O'Brien was an American novelist and journalist who lived in Chicago his entire life aside from his college years at Yale University and his service in France during World War I. He speaks familiarly of Carl Sandburg at one point in the diary, as though he knew him personally.
Sandburg no only used blaa blaa in a private letter but in a poem. Here is an excerpt from "Aprons of Silence," in Sandburg's collection Smoke and Steel (1920):
In fact, other Sandburg contemporaries associated him with the term. Ben Hecht, Erik Dorn (1920) refers to Sandburg as "old Carl three times, including this relevant instance:
Another impressive early instance of blah in a sense that combines onomatopoeia and the specific meaning "drivel" appears in Edward Teufer "Postlude, When the Dead Awoke," dated December 28, 1921, in The Nation (January 18, 1922):
Other early senses of 'blah'
The first matches for blah in the sense of "dull or lifeless" are almost as old as the first instances of blah in the sense of "blather." From "Flapper Filiology—The New Language," originally in the Philadelphia [Pennsylvania] Evening Bulletin, March 8, 1922, reprinted in Dialect Notes, volume 5 (1922):
None of the entries that Lighter offers for blah seem exactly on point for the instance in Jack Bechdolt, "See America First," in Argosy-Allstory Weekly (August 21, 1920):
The meaning here seems to be "a boring layabout consumed with trivial amusements and momentary distractions."
Yet another early instance of blah uses the term as, in effect, a synonym for "name redacted." From "Radio in the 'Dry' Navy: Boats of the Rum Chasing Fleet Are Equipped with Modern Spark and Telephone Transmitters—Orders and Reports Go by Wireless," in The Wireless Age (November 1922):
All of the preceding examples have been of U.S. origin, but there are two much earlier instances of a similar word/sound from England. From James Halliwell, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs (1847), volume 1, we have this notice of the archaic term blaa:
And from William Dickinson, A Glossary of the Words and Phrases of Cumberland (1859), we have this amusing entry for a regional pronunciation:
These examples underscore the simplicity of the sound blaa or blah, and the similarity it bears to other English words, both related in sense (blab, blasé, blather, blither) and utterly different (baa, bah, blow, blue, blew).
A theory of inarticulate origin
Writing in 1936, H.L. Mencken, The American Language, fourth Edition, places blah in a category of words that in his view are not derived from any meaningful prior words in English or any other language:
Mencken points readers to an excellent article by E.C. Hills, "Exclamations in American English," in Dialect Notes, volume 5, part 7 (1924). In Hills's categorization, blah falls under the heading of "articulate interjections," along with such companions as ah, ahem, ahoy, bah, boo, bosh, faugh, fie, hoopty-doo, hurrah, la-de-da, num-num-nummy-num, oh, ouch, pish, pooh, sis-boom-bah, whoah, whoopsie, and yoo-hoo. This category is one of three in Hills's system, the other two being "inarticulate exclamations" (such as laughter, weeping, shrieks, groans, grunts, and whistling sounds) and "onomatopoeic words" (such as bam, boom, bow-wow, honk-honk, meow, and moo). Hills describes the "articulate interjections" category as follows:
As for blah in particular, Hills offers this brief entry in his "General List of Exclamations:
We see an unvarnished example of onomatopoeic use of blah in the first Google Books match for the term, in Harold Susman, "Mrs. Billie's Baby," in The Smart Set (June 1911):
Augustus subsequently identifies "Blah! Blah!" as the sound a poll parrot, a choo-choo car, and person saying goodbye make, too. Ultimately, blah is an expression of infant babble without underlying sense.
I think that Hills's (and Mencken's) analysis has common sense on its side. An expression of that originates as an onomatopoeic transcription of an inarticulate exclamation or sound seems peculiarly susceptible to having multiple meanings attributed to it, which appears to be the case with blah. If we examine blah in the context of many similarly regularized forms of interjections, we may see that it is far from unusual: English has many such words. The fact that usage has refined them to the point at which they have a standard articulated form and specific meanings obscures their probable origin as sounds without meaningful content—the message of the baby Augustus in 1911.
Conclusion
It is tempting to imagine that we owe the word blah in contemporary English to the literary efforts of Carl Sandburg or, alternatively, to the corruption or transformation of any of a number of English or foreign words. Nevertheless, I think that the more likely source of blah is imitative of an originally meaningless (or at least untranslatable) sound—much as the duplicate syllable βαρ-βαρ emerged in ancient Greek to represent the gibberish sounds made by non-Greeks.