Body & Soul0 min ago
hooligans
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what is the origin of the word 'hooligan'?
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According to an article in the Irish Times by Diarmaid O Muirithe , the origin of hooligan is uncertain.
'Hooley first appeared in print in Bartlett's Dictionary of American English in 1877 spelt huly, and described as a noise, an uproar. It also gives the phrase "to raise huly".
'Many's the time I've heard that this hooley gave rise to hooligan, but this notion is based on folk-etymology, which says that London police court reports of 1898 refer to Hooley's Gang; unfortunately no positive confirmation of this has been discovered.
'In a Daily News item printed on 8 August, 1898, there is, "the constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of rough youths calling themselves Hooligans". But this harmless gang may have taken its name either from a music hall song of 1880 which described the doings of a rowdy Irish family, the Hooligans, or from a character of the name which appeared in a series of adventures in Funny Folks, a popular journal of the day.
'An earlier citation gives a farce by T G Rodwell, first performed in 1824, and called More Blunders Than One, which featured a drunken Irish butler named Larry O'Hoolagan, whose name in Irish would have been O hUallachain. Better to side with Oxford and say that both hooley and hooligan are of uncertain lineage.'
'Hooley first appeared in print in Bartlett's Dictionary of American English in 1877 spelt huly, and described as a noise, an uproar. It also gives the phrase "to raise huly".
'Many's the time I've heard that this hooley gave rise to hooligan, but this notion is based on folk-etymology, which says that London police court reports of 1898 refer to Hooley's Gang; unfortunately no positive confirmation of this has been discovered.
'In a Daily News item printed on 8 August, 1898, there is, "the constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of rough youths calling themselves Hooligans". But this harmless gang may have taken its name either from a music hall song of 1880 which described the doings of a rowdy Irish family, the Hooligans, or from a character of the name which appeared in a series of adventures in Funny Folks, a popular journal of the day.
'An earlier citation gives a farce by T G Rodwell, first performed in 1824, and called More Blunders Than One, which featured a drunken Irish butler named Larry O'Hoolagan, whose name in Irish would have been O hUallachain. Better to side with Oxford and say that both hooley and hooligan are of uncertain lineage.'
Find out a little more about this at article 2133
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