holler

Etymology

It is from English an American variant of hollo, to shout,^[2][3][4][5] itself recorded from the 1540s^[2][3] and a variant of the interjection holla.^[6][3] Collins traces holla to French holà (“stop!, literally ho there!”).^[7] The American Heritage Dictionary and Barnhart relate the word to hello,^[8][3] and Etymonline compares colloquial pronunciations such as “yeller” for yellow.^[2] The noun is partly a variant of the noun hollo and partly formed from the verb.^[5][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

To shout: 1699, in a Virginia record printed in the Calendar of Virginia State Papers (“& theire hollerd & Immediately they answered”).^[4][9] Barnhart, Etymonline and Dictionary.com date the verb to the 1690s and call it American;^[3][2][10] Merriam-Webster Unabridged, however, dates one of its senses to 1592,^[11] the year Barnhart gives for holla in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The verb hollo was used especially of calling to hounds in hunting.^[2] Holler itself also came to mean to complain, and in a fight to give up, to cry ‘enough’.^[4] The noun appears in 1825, in J. Jennings's book on the dialects of the West of England,^[4][11] and as a complaint or fuss, often to the police, in American slang from 1894;^[12] Barnhart dates the American noun to 1896, in George Ade's Artie.^[3] In the Southern United States a holler was a work song,^[4][5][11] and Etymonline dates the singing style to 1936.^[2] The Dictionary of American Regional English records spellings such as hollour, hollored and hallows from the 19th century,^[9] and Bartlett's Americanisms (1859) gives holler as the pronunciation of holloo.^[9]

Timeline

• 1699 – verb, to shout.^[4][9]
• 1825 – noun, a shout.^[4][11]
• 1894 – noun, a complaint or fuss.^[12]
• 1936 – a style of singing, the field holler.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To shout or yell, often to get someone's attention: The coach hollered at the players to hurry.^[7][11][4]
2. To complain loudly; to protest.^[4][5]

Noun

1. A shout or call.^[7][11][4]
2. A complaint or protest.^[11][5][12]
3. A freely improvised work song of the Southern United States, as sung by African Americans in the fields.^[11][4][5]

Related words

• hollo
• holla
• hello
• halloo

Usage notes

Holler is chiefly dialectal or North American and informal.^[5][7] The OED also records holler from 1845 as an American variant of hollow, a small valley.^[4] In Northumberland dialect holler meant a great quantity, and in Cumberland huller't was used of clotted blood.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
13. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)