Oogy: (adjective) Creepy or icky in a way which is specifically likely to elicit an unpleasant frisson, possibly accompanied by saying “jeeblie jeeblie jeeblie” or other appropriate sound effect. Also oogier, oogiest, ooginess

Oogy appears to be a word of fairly recent coinage. It seems probable that oogy is a sort of copycat or mixture of other words such as icky and eerie. The word ugly may also figure into its origin and there could be a bit of an echoic of someone making an “ooooggghhh …” sound in response to something oogy.

I had heard that this word may have first entered popular currency due to the Stephen King film Misery where Annie Wilkes says "Oh forgive me Paul for prattling away and making everything all oogy." Segnbora-t, however, tells me that "My late grandmother, who hailed from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, used the word as far back as I can remember (so at least 1980), usually to describe my mode of dress..." So this word may have been in the popular parlance since at least the late 1970s.

There are a lot of things in this weird old world that might be classed as oogy: discovering that a new acquaintance loves watching and re-watching torture scenes from popular films, popping a cold french fry into your mouth, a weird lady staring at your girlfriend in the park or listening to alarming tales of sadistic cruelty to animals—these are all almost guaranteed to elicit a feeling of ooginess.

Oogy is a lot like icky—a creepy-crawly (bug, worm, centipede, etc.) may be icky, but if it just crawled on your hand, now that’s oogy. The quality of being eerie or creepy also plays into it—walking into a run down old house is likely to give one the creeps, but if the place has an overpoweringly vile smell or the floors are wet and sticky, that is severely oogy.

Eating mashed potatoes and finding something crunchy, someone at work espousing frightening and hateful ideologies, waking up to find out that the ants have gotten in and are swarming all over your bed and body … or the time that I found out that the posters at my college for “wide open T” parties were for folks who liked to get drunk and watch autopsy films (the T is for torso, you see) for some creepy, kinky thrill …

All very oogy.


The Buffy Lexicon (http://www.stakesandstones.co.uk/slay/handbook/dicton.html) defines oogy as “funky feeling often associated with flu symptoms.” I think that is acceptable as an alternate definition.

All the examples of ooginess in this article have actually happened to me or someone close to me (or one of em happened to Raspy) … “jeeblie jeeblie jeeblie”

Thanks to Raspy for the idea of writing this up and keeping it short!
Thanks to Segnbora-t for the additional information.
Thanks to the imdb for supplying the Misery quote.