Where does the saying "oops a daisy" come from?

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Where does the saying "oops a daisy" come from?
I think it started when some clumsy clown managed to trip over a daisy. As he did so he exclaimed: "Ooops - a daisy!"
Reply:There are lots of forms of this expression: upsidaisy, upsa-daisy, upsy-daisy, and oops-a-daisy, variously hyphenated on the rare occasions they turn up in print. These days, it’s just a nonsense word. It’s said to a child as encouragement to get up again after falling over, or when somebody is picking it up. Though the one thing most versions have in common is a reference to a daisy, a flower is not involved.





The common origin of all of these is up-a-daisy, dating from the early eighteenth-century. An even earlier version is the English dialect up-a-day. This is just as nonsensical a phrase, but it does show that the final part of the modern expression is actually a corruption of day.





Its history is closely bound up with lackadaisical, which started out as the cry alack-a-day!, “shame or reproach to the day!” (that it should have brought this upon me), but which by the eighteenth century had turned into lackadaisy.





Alack-a-day! was once a passionate and heartfelt cry, but it degenerated over time into a flabby exclamation of unease over some minor upset. It seems to have provided the model for up-a-day, originally a dialect term that eventually made it back into mainstream English, albeit in modulated and variable form.
Reply:funny, i never thought of it as oops-a-daisy. just oopsy-daisy for the rhyme.
Reply:The common origin of all of these is up-a-daisy, dating from the early eighteenth-century. An even earlier version is the English dialect up-a-day. This is just as nonsensical a phrase, but it does show that the final part of the modern expression is actually a corruption of day.





Its history is closely bound up with lackadaisical, which started out as the cry alack-a-day!, “shame or reproach to the day!” (that it should have brought this upon me), but which by the eighteenth century had turned into lackadaisy.
Reply:Ups-a-daisy


Meaning


An exclamation made when encouraging a child to get up after a fall or when lifting a child into the air.


Origin


It is difficult to choose which of the numerous variants of the expression to use as the heading of this piece. As with many words that are said to small children, it is more often a spoken term than one that appears in print and this has led to much inconsistency about how it is spelled. In fact, I can't think of a single term that appears in so many different spellings. For example:





Upsidaisy


Upsa daesy


Upsy-daisy


Oops-a-daisy


Oopsy-daisy


Hoops-a-daisy





The form in which it is now most commonly spoken and spelled is 'oops-a-daisy'. The first known printed record of any form of the term is in Clough Robinson's The dialect of Leeds and its neighbourhood, 1862:





Upsa daesy! a common ejaculation when a child, in play, is assisted in a spring-leap from the ground.





This was preceded by 'up-a-daisy', which has its own variations of spelling - 'up-a-dazy', 'up-a-daisey', etc. Jonathan Swift used this in his collection of letters, which was published in 1711 as The Journal to Stella:





Come stand away, let me rise... Is there a good fire? - So - up a-dazy.





ups-a-daisyThe earlier dialect term 'upaday', which has the same meaning, appears to be the source. The 'daisy' part is a fanciful extension of 'day', perhaps alluding to the child being on the ground amongst the daisies. Of course, the name daisy itself derives from 'day' - the flower, which closes at night and exposes its yellow centre in sunlight, was thought of as the day's eye.


Not content with spawning so many forms, ups-a-daisy also has a role in the coining of the word 'lackadaisical'. This first appears in the language in 1768 and can be traced backwards to 'alack-the-day', which dates to at least Shakespeare's usage of it in Romeo and Juliet, 1592:





Shee's dead, deceast, shee's dead: alacke the day!





In the next century, this mutated to the more familiar form 'lack-a-day', which is found in The Grounds %26amp; Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion, by John Eachard, 1685:





'Lack a day! says one of the accomplish'd, in what a lamentable condition I have seen a mortal Clergyman.





In the middle of the next century we find 'lack-a-daisy', in Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Roderick Random 1748:





Good lack-a-daisy! the rogue is fled!





This is a form of 'lack-a-day' with the ending taken from 'ups-a-daisy'. From 'lack-a-daisy', it isn't a long step, either in time or language, to 'lackadaisical', which is first recorded in Laurence Sterne's A sentimental journey through France and Italy, 1768:





Sitting in my black coat, and in my lack-adaysical manner, counting the throbs of it.





'Ups-a-daisy' is clearly also the direct source of 'whoops-a-daisy'. This has a different meaning and is an exclamation made after a stumble or other mistake. It is usually said by the perpetrator of the error and the saying out loud is a public acknowledgement, somewhat like 'mea culpa'. 'Whoops-a-daisy', and the shortened forms 'whoops' and 'oops', are all American in origin. The expression is first recorded, as 'Whoopsie Daisy!', in the New Yorker, in September 1925.


In the 1999 film Notting Hill, Hugh Grant's character falls over, saying 'whoops a daisies'. Julia Roberts' character then says:





"No one has said 'whoops a daisies' for fifty years and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets."





Maybe that's true in California, but it's rather surprising that the film's English screenwriter, Richard Curtis, gave her that line in a film set in London. Like many in the UK, I still use the phrase frequently, but, as a large middle-aged man with a small amount of straight brown hair, I don't qualify on any of Roberts' criteria.
Reply:God I really hate people who answer questions that they have no pre knowledge of. They just go to a website and copy n paste a load of blah blah blah. If you dont know the answer then simply answer another question where you really have an idea of what you are on about. The asker can simply go to a sight and do the same. they might of already done this and are not happy with the sites answer that's why they are asking here. I HATE COPY N PASTERS LOL
Reply:My wife is native Russian, and says that, amidst her Russian. Go figure.





EDIT:


God I really hate people who answer questions that they have no pre knowledge of. They just go to a website and copy n paste a load of blah blah blah. If you dont know the answer then simply answer another question where you really have an idea of what you are on about. The asker can simply go to a sight and do the same. they might of already done this and are not happy with the sites answer that's why they are asking here. I HATE COPY N PASTERS LOL