It's the Word Geek! Huzzah!
Of the many phrases and words that come to us from nautical lingo -- e.g. being "three sheets to the wind" and liking "the cut of his jib" -- I would bet that one you would not think of is the simple shout, "Hurray!" And yet, it appears that we owe that word to those crafty, scurvy dogs.
It seems the siring term is "Huzza!" coming from that great age of sailing, the 16th century. Sailors, famous for their invented shouts, (Who can forget the fan favorite, "Ahoy!" I mean, what's wrong with "Oy! You on the ship!" I'll never know.) coined this one, apparently because just saying "Aaaaaa!" sounded too stupid. So when friends would board or leave ship, sailors, to avoid the less sophisticated vowel movement, would add a sibilant before the cry to give it more zing. "SSss-Aaaaah!" This verbal contraption morphed into its more formal presentation, "Huzzah!" You've got to admit, it is more fun to shout.
Now there also must be something zeigeisty going on here, because it turns out that other languages have variations on "hurrae" and "hrrr" for their shouts. ("Hurrah!" was supposedly the favored battle cry of Prussian soldiers in their war of liberation, 1812-1813.) So some people think that exposure to these variations gave rise to "Hurrah!" in the 1700s and "Hurray!" or "Hooray!" in the 1800s.
Interestingly enough, the junior member of the crowd turns out to be "Yahoo!" Close to it, but unrelated, is "Yippee!" Though it's derived from "hip", which meant a shout as far back as the 1700s with no clear originating term (though the OED suggests the Latin "heus," I don't buy it), "yippee" doesn't come into use until the 20th century in America. But later in the 20th century is "Yahoo!" Swift invents the term for one of the peoples that Gulliver encounters in his travels (1726) starting its history as a term for "wild man," but according to the OED, it's not used as an interjection until the 70s.
The 70s?!? Now, that just has to be wrong. There's no way people weren't saying, "Yahoo!" in the 50s or even the 40s.
Anyway, when you're at the ball park and the guy at bat smacks one deep into the outfield, when your neighbor shouts, "Hurray!" you can grab him by his collar and castigate him from using that fru-fru European shout. If "Yippee!" was good enough for Sinclair Lewis and Raymond Chandler, it aught to be good enough for him.
It seems the siring term is "Huzza!" coming from that great age of sailing, the 16th century. Sailors, famous for their invented shouts, (Who can forget the fan favorite, "Ahoy!" I mean, what's wrong with "Oy! You on the ship!" I'll never know.) coined this one, apparently because just saying "Aaaaaa!" sounded too stupid. So when friends would board or leave ship, sailors, to avoid the less sophisticated vowel movement, would add a sibilant before the cry to give it more zing. "SSss-Aaaaah!" This verbal contraption morphed into its more formal presentation, "Huzzah!" You've got to admit, it is more fun to shout.
Now there also must be something zeigeisty going on here, because it turns out that other languages have variations on "hurrae" and "hrrr" for their shouts. ("Hurrah!" was supposedly the favored battle cry of Prussian soldiers in their war of liberation, 1812-1813.) So some people think that exposure to these variations gave rise to "Hurrah!" in the 1700s and "Hurray!" or "Hooray!" in the 1800s.
Interestingly enough, the junior member of the crowd turns out to be "Yahoo!" Close to it, but unrelated, is "Yippee!" Though it's derived from "hip", which meant a shout as far back as the 1700s with no clear originating term (though the OED suggests the Latin "heus," I don't buy it), "yippee" doesn't come into use until the 20th century in America. But later in the 20th century is "Yahoo!" Swift invents the term for one of the peoples that Gulliver encounters in his travels (1726) starting its history as a term for "wild man," but according to the OED, it's not used as an interjection until the 70s.
The 70s?!? Now, that just has to be wrong. There's no way people weren't saying, "Yahoo!" in the 50s or even the 40s.
Anyway, when you're at the ball park and the guy at bat smacks one deep into the outfield, when your neighbor shouts, "Hurray!" you can grab him by his collar and castigate him from using that fru-fru European shout. If "Yippee!" was good enough for Sinclair Lewis and Raymond Chandler, it aught to be good enough for him.
posted by - caj at 9:09 PM
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