The Big Picture You know you've said it. Maybe not intentionally, but you've said it. It's a catchphrase that became so popular it landed in the Oxford English Dictionary as a legitimate word . It's simple yet effective, a single word that can express frustration, anger, stupidity, even sadness depending on how it's inflected, second only to a certain multi-purpose naughty word in its scope of use. And it has been around for a long, long time. 34 years, to be precise.
How an "Annoyed Grunt" Turned Into Homer’s Catchphrase on 'The Simpsons' In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, with the creative talent behind The Simpsons on the eve of its 500th episode in 2012, Dan Castellaneta recounts how he came up with the famed catchphrase. Before the show began, Castellaneta was a member of Second City in Chicago and was on stage performing the day that Tracey Ullman and Heide Perlman happened to be in the audience.
Dan studied pictures of Homer as a means of finding a voice that best suited the character. The look of Homer brought to Castellaneta's mind the famed actor Walter Matthau, so he started from there and "cartoonified" the voice further to match the aesthetic. With Julie Kavner going for a tired, quiet voice for Marge, what Castellaneta was doing with Homer was a perfect balance. One thing, though, stumped Castellaneta.
Why Homer's "D'oh!" Has Outlived Other Catchphrases From the Show Ever since it was first uttered in the 1988 short "Punching Bag," "d'oh!" has become Homer's go-to catchphrase, with one extremely detailed source from 2017 having counted 1,130 times "d'oh" had been said to that point .
But for a show that practically bleeds catchphrases, how has "d'oh!" endured? Likely for three reasons: a near-universal understanding, the ease with which it can be separated from the show itself, and a longer shelf-life.