Buzz
With hundreds of episodes and still counting, The Simpsons has revolutionized our everyday language. Here are 10 terms the show has popularized, either by coining them or redefining them to evoke laughter, reflection, and more laughter.
1. Chocotastic
In the seventh season episode "King-Size Homer," Homer aims to exceed 300 pounds to qualify for work disability. He consults Dr. Nick Riviera, a graduate of the Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, who introduces him to the three overlooked food groups: the Whipped Group, the Congealed Group, and the Chocotastic! (Dr. Nick's emphasis.)
Interestingly, when Homer inquires about accelerating his weight gain, he’s advised to replace bread with Pop Tarts. Years later, stores in the UK and Australia began selling "Frosted Chocotastic" Pop Tarts. According to Kellogg's, chocotastic refers to "a chocolate-flavored filling in a frosted pastry," packing 198 calories per serving.
2. Craptacular
Unimpressed by Homer’s lackluster Christmas lights, Bart remarks in season nine’s "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" that the display looks "craptacular." While the term may have existed before its December 1997 debut on the show, it gained widespread popularity as a way to describe something or someone as "spectacularly awful" after its use on The Simpsons.
Post-Simpsons, the term appeared in various contexts, such as the 2002 Marvel Comics series The Craptacular B-Sides, a Howard Stern competition where participants weighed their waste after a 24-hour eating binge, and an "Annual Holiday Craptacular" event supporting the San Francisco Food Bank.
3. Cromulent
Cromulent was coined by Simpsons writer David X. Cohen, who later co-created Futurama with Matt Groening. Cohen introduced the term in the season seven episode "Lisa the Iconoclast," where Ms. Hoover assures Mrs. Krabappel that the semi-fictional "embiggen" is a "perfectly cromulent" word.
Today, cromulent is included in Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English
4. D'oh!
Although D'oh isn’t explicitly written in Simpsons scripts—it’s noted as an "annoyed grunt"—it’s recognized in Webster's Millennium Dictionary of English and the Oxford English Dictionary as a term "used to express frustration over a foolish or stupid action, especially one’s own." Dan Castellaneta originally elongated the sound as "Doooooooo" to imitate actor James Finlayson from Laurel & Hardy films. At Matt Groening’s suggestion to shorten it for timing, it evolved into the iconic "D'oh!"
While Castellaneta drew inspiration from a Laurel and Hardy actor, the exclamation "D'oh" was frequently used by actress Diana Morrison on the BBC radio show It's That Man Again between 1945 and 1949. As the character Ms. Hotchkiss, Morrison would exit scenes with a frustrated "d'oh!" after dealing with her boss, Tommy Handley.
5. Embiggen
The term Embiggen debuted in 1884 when C.A. Ward sought to create a deliberately unappealing new verb to illustrate the concept of neologisms. Over a century later, it resurfaced in "Lisa the Iconoclast" as part of Springfield’s "cromulent" motto: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."
Although Embiggen hadn’t been recognized by mainstream dictionaries, a group of physicists used it in their 2007 paper, "Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking," published in High Energy Physics [PDF], stating, "...the gradient of the Myers potential encouraging an anti-D3 to embiggen is very mild." The OED and Merriam-Webster officially included embiggen in their dictionaries in 2018.
6. Jebus
In season 11’s "Missionary: Impossible," Homer calls out to Jebus for help while fleeing from a relentless Betty White and her PBS pledge drive associates. Despite Homer’s occasional church attendance, his reference wasn’t to the ancient Jebusites from the Old Testament, who lived in and established a town called Jebus (later Jerusalem) before King David’s conquest—he simply mispronounced Jesus’s name.
7. Kwyjibo
In the season one episode "Bart the Genius," Bart tries to cheat during a Scrabble game by placing "kwyjibo" on the board. When questioned about its meaning, he describes it as a "large, clumsy, hairless North American ape ... lacking a chin," a clear jab at Homer. This made-up word from The Simpsons writers later became one of the names for the Melissa mass-mailing computer virus that targeted Windows users in 1999. Additionally, Kwyjibo refers to an Iron Oxide Copper Gold deposit in Quebec and a complex yo-yo trick.
8. Meh
Research into the origins of meh suggests it might have Yiddish roots, but its first recorded use as an expression of indifference appeared in a July 9, 1992 Usenet post criticizing Melrose Place. John Swartzwelder is credited with incorporating meh into a Simpsons script, claiming he heard it from an advertising writer in the early '70s who deemed it the funniest word ever. Regardless of its origins, The Simpsons popularized it, earning it a spot among the 20 words that defined the 2000s, as noted by BBC News online.
9. Unpossible
Ralph Wiggum famously justified his academic standing by declaring, "Me fail English? That's unpossible!" in "Lisa on Ice." Interestingly, unpossible is a legitimate term with a centuries-old history, dating back to at least the 15th century, and serves as an alternative to "impossible." After Ralph revived this archaic word, unpossible has been adopted as a title for a collection of short stories and a well-known game.
10. Yoink
Simpsons writer George Meyer is credited with introducing the term "yoink" to describe the act of taking something from someone or something. Former showrunner Bill Oakley mentioned on Twitter that Meyer borrowed yoink from Archie Comics. However, after being uttered over 23 times on The Simpsons, yoink has become the go-to expression for humorously acknowledging the theft of someone's belongings.
