Seriously, I want to know. For years, I was under the impression that the stereotypical pirate expression (aside from “Death to RIAA!” or “Pass me the Vitamin C drops, ye scurvy dog!”) was “Arrr.”
Or, occasionally, “Yarrr.”
However, the past few years have brought with them a new exclamation of piracy: “Arrrgh.”
“Arrgh,” to my ears, has typically been a word used to convey frustration. Do pirates of the new millennium have it so bad that they’re just sitting back complaining about their lives? Is the pillaging business not as fulfilling as it used to be?
I really want to know.
“Arrgh” sounds like the sort of thing Charlie Brown would say if he was a pirate.
I think it goes back to the Gaelic. The word is spelled with a “gh,” but it isn’t pronounced. Now people cashing in on the pirate craze don’t realize that you don’t actually pronounce those letters.
(That answer is completely made up by me, and I have no actual proof. But it does sound kinda logical, right?)