Site name and logo

Hoo-ha

Q From Paul Wagner: Your use of hoo-ha this week prompts me to ask your learned advice on its origins, and on those of the possibly related idiom, just a bunch of hooey.

A So far as my sources know, hoo-ha and hooey are not related, though the evidence suggests that people do at times confuse them. Hoo-ha is the easy one; this has been recorded since the early 1930s, then as now with the sense of a commotion, a rumpus or a row (though T S Eliot used it early on with the idea of a fit of anxiety, so making it very close in meaning to a case of the heebie-jeebies, a sense I’m told it has also had in Australian slang). It has various spellings, such as hoo-hah, with and without the hyphen. It seems very likely that it came from Yiddish hu-ha for an uproar or hullabaloo, which in turn probably derives from a Polish exclamation.

Hooey has the main sense of nonsense or rubbish. It’s a little older than hoo-ha, being recorded first about 1912. Its origin is less well attested and none of the many dictionaries I consulted ventured an opinion. However, Jonathan Green, in the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, suggests it might come from a Russian slang term for the penis.

There is also brouhaha, which looks as though it might be the original of hoo-ha, but it seems not to be, even though its first use in English goes back only a little further.

Support this website and keep it available!

There are no adverts on this site. I rely on the kindness of visitors to pay the running costs. Donate via PayPal by selecting your currency from the list and clicking Donate. Specify the amount you wish to give on the PayPal site.

Copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–. All rights reserved.

Page created 30 Sep 2000