hoopoe

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old French huppe,^[2][3][4] recorded in Anglo-Norman from 1121–35,^[5] which gave the obsolete bird name hoop, later altered to the present form.^[6][7][8][2] The French word comes from Vulgar Latin *ūppa, an alteration of Latin upupa,^[8] a name imitating the bird's cry.^{[8][9][7][3][10]} The OED and the Shorter Oxford explain the change from the older name as assimilation to the Latin word,^[6][7] while Merriam-Webster calls it imitative.^[11][12] Collins and Dictionary.com start instead from an earlier form hoopoop, which they call imitative,^[13][14] and Etymonline takes the word directly from Latin.^[9] Skeat thought the French word had been confused with another Old French form, pupu.^[15] Similar names appear in other languages, such as Ancient Greek ἔποψ (épops) and Polish dudek,^[9][16][10] and Beekes doubts that the Greek word can be called Indo-European, since it is built on an imitation of the call.^[17]

Earliest recorded meaning

The bird: 1668, in Charleton's Onomasticon Zoicon, in the OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged.^[6][11] Etymonline agrees on the 1660s,^[9] and Cresswell gives late Middle English, the period of the older name.^[18][6]

Semantic evolution

The name has always meant the same bird, but its older form was less steady.^[6] English hoop, recorded from 1481 in Caxton and last in 1718, was identified or confused with the lapwing because both birds have a crest;^[6][7] from 1669 it was also a local name for the bullfinch.^[6] Cotgrave glossed French hupe as a woollen tuft on a cap, a bird's crest and "the Whoope or dunghill Cocke",^[6] and Skeat held that the French sense "tuft" came from the bird.^[15] A 12th-century Cambridge bestiary, quoted by Etymonline, warned that anyone smearing himself with the bird's blood at bedtime would have nightmares of suffocating devils.^[9] In French the showy, foolish-looking bird also seems to have given a word for a gullible person, the source of dupe.^[2][19]

Timeline

• 1481 – hoop, the hoopoe (obsolete after 1718).^[6]
• 1668 – the form hoopoe.^[6][11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A crested bird of Europe, Asia and Africa, Upupa epops, with a long down-curved bill, pinkish-brown plumage and black-and-white wings.^[13][7][11]
2. Any bird of the family Upupidae.^[11][6]

Related words

• dupe

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
3. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2008), 11th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap
5. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
13. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
15. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
16. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
17. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
18. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
19. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul