What does “oxe” mean in Brazilian Portuguese?

Oxe is the all-purpose Northeastern Brazilian exclamation for surprise, confusion, or mild indignation — somewhere between “huh?!”, “what the—?!”, and “come on!”. You throw it out the instant something doesn’t add up: a strange answer, an unexpected turn, a question that makes no sense. Pronounced “OH-shee”, it instantly marks a speaker as nordestino, and one well-placed oxe does the work of a whole confused sentence.

It’s a shortened form of oxente, which itself comes from ô, gente! (“oh, people!”) — the contraction is the whole charm. Here it drives the joke twice: “Oxe, porque você não riu?” (“Huh, why didn’t you laugh?”) and, when the supposedly mute man replies, “Oxe, você não era surdo não?” (“Wait — weren’t you the deaf one?”). Chiefly heard in Bahia and across the Northeast, it can color anything from delight to exasperation depending on the tone you give it.