英语听力精选进阶版 11220（在线收听）

Mwah! 

Professor David Crystal 

You've seen it on television, or in the street, hundreds of times, 

thousands of times. Two people come towards each other, they 

obviously know each other very well, and they start to kiss each 

other - but it's not a full frontal kiss. No, what happens, one 

person puts the cheek against the other person's cheek and they 

have what is often called an 'air' kiss. They make a kissing noise, 

which shows that they're coming together, as great intimates, but 

it's not a real kiss at all. And many people then give this air kiss a 

noise, a word, and it's usually 'mwah', 'mwah' - something like 

that.  

Now, how do you write it?  Well nobody knows quite how to 

write it, but it's really m-w-a-h. I saw it written in about the mid-nineties for the first time. And, there's a plural too:  "there's lots 

of mwahs about these days" I remember reading in somebody's 

journal at one point. It's an affectation, it's associated with a social elite – probably 

everybody does it to a degree or another.  

What's unusual is to get the effect coming out as a word. It's a sort of 'sound 

symbolic' word - mwah - it's a lovely way of expressing the actual noise that takes 

place when you do a phoney kiss of this kind. And I've never done it myself - I'm 

not a 'mwah' type person - but I think an awful lot of people are. I certainly don't 

think I've ever heard it on the radio and certainly not as a way of saying goodbye 

to listeners - but I'll try it out and see what happens, so 'mwah'!!