DEFINITION OF “OOMPH”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 54, 25 November 1946, Page 6

DEFINITION OF “OOMPH”

FOOTWEAR COMPANY’S APPEAL

REFUSAL OF REGISTRAR OF TRADE MARKS

Mr Justice Evershed asked for a definition in the Chancery Division when an American footwear company appealed' against the refusal of the Registrar of Trade Marks to register the word “oomphies” as a trade mark.

An answer was forthcoming to enlighten the Court from a firm of trade mark agents in New York. Oomph, it stated in a letter, was a word in the domain of American ‘.‘slanguage.” The consensus of opinion,- it continued, is that the word oomph was originally coined in Hollywood as particularly descriptive of Ann Sheridan—oomph is to Ann Sheridan what “It” was to Clara Bow.

The letter also quoted a book of slang and said that an oomph girl was a passionate young woman and a hot mama—an actress with sex appeal. A girl may have beauty of both mind and body and be still markedly lacking in oomph. Music may be said to have oomph in that it is animated in a spine-tingling way.

“The foregoing may be said to be a solid brothei’, eight beats to the bar. It cooks with gas and should really send you. (If this is abstruse, round up one of our younger G.l.’s).”

Both judge and counsel confessed themselves baffled in their attempt to translate the latter definition.