Word.ws English Dictionary

why oh why

why oh why phrase: a strengthened form of why, as used in questions.

Phrase

why oh why?

  1. A strengthened form of why, as used in questions.
    • Why, oh why, oh why oh / Why did I ever leave Ohio?1953, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, “Ohio”, performed by Rosalind Russell, Edie Adams, in musical Wonderful Town
  2. (UK, attributive, sometimes) A statement of exasperation associated with reactionary viewpoints.
    • Are these terrible figures greeted by hysterical "why-oh-why?" letters to the Times demanding a huge shift in resources from road-building to rail-modernisation?1993, New Statesman Society
    • Indeed, a right-wing paper is hardly ready for press without a why-oh-why article on children's failures to identify verbs and nouns.2005, Fred Sedgwick, How to Teach with a Hangover: A Practical Guide to Overcoming Classroom Crises, A&C Black, →ISBN, page 94

Words that rhyme with why oh why

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about why oh why

What does why oh why mean?
Why oh why means a strengthened form of why, as used in questions.
What part of speech is why oh why?
Why oh why is a phrase.

Words near why oh why in the dictionary

  1. why is the ocean near the shore
  2. why keep a dog and bark yourself
  3. why me
  4. why not
  5. why not Zoidberg
  6. why oh why
  7. why on Earth
  8. why so serious
  9. why'd
  10. why'm
  11. why'n't

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: why oh why (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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