hooray

Etymology

It is an alteration of hurrah,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} and the American Heritage Dictionary calls it an alteration of huzzah.^[8] Merriam-Webster enters hooray with hurrah and hurray as its variants, and derives it perhaps from German hurra.^[9] Hurrah is itself an alteration of, and later a substitute for, huzza,^{[10][11][2][4]} which Wilton dates to 1573;^[12] the shift from z to r may be chance variation or the influence of similar cries in other languages.^[12] Similar cries are found in German, Danish hurra, Swedish hurra and Dutch hoera;^[10][11][13] Etymonline and Weekley suggest that English soldiers picked the cry up in the Thirty Years' War,^[11][13] and Merriam-Webster traces the German cry, probably, to Middle High German hurrā, from hurren (“to move quickly”) and the exclamation ā.^[14] Klein calls the word imitative.^[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Shorter Oxford dates the noun, a shout of "hooray!", to the late 17th century, and the interjection and the verb to the late 18th;^[2] Merriam-Webster gives 1686 for the interjection.^[9] Barnhart records the spellings hurra in 1686 and hurray in 1694.^[10] Hoad and Onions date hooray only to the 19th century.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

Hooray is the spelling that represents the pronunciation with a final "ray", beside hurrah with "rah".^[9][10] The cheer hip hip hooray dates from the early 19th century, with hip as a cry to attract attention from 1735 and as a cheer from 1811.^[12] In Australia and New Zealand hooray also became a colloquial goodbye, recorded from 1898 in the Sydney Bulletin,^[3][2][16] with the variant hooroo.^[7][3] In Britain Hooray Henry, a loud but ineffectual upper-class young man, seems to have been coined in the 1950s by the jazz agent James Godbolt, after Damon Runyon's Hoorah Henry of 1936.^[17] From it hooray came to be used as an adjective for noisily and affectedly upper-class people (1962).^[18]

Timeline

• 1686 – hurra, the cheer.^[10] Merriam-Webster dates hooray to the same year.^[9]
• 1694 – the spelling hurray.^[10]
• 1811 – hip as a cheer, later in hip hip hooray.^[12]
• 1898 – goodbye, in Australia.^[3][16]
• 1936 – Hoorah Henry, in Damon Runyon.^[17]
• 1962 – adjective, noisily upper-class.^[18]

Meanings

Interjection

1. Used to express joy, approval or encouragement; hurrah.^[9][7][2]
2. (Australia and New Zealand, informal) goodbye.^[7][3][6]

Noun

1. A shout of "hooray"; a cheer.^[2][7]

Verb

1. To shout "hooray".^[2][7]

Related words

• hurrah
• hurray
• huzzah
• huzza

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Onions, C. T., ed. (1966), The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Deverson, Tony; Kennedy, Graeme, eds. (2005), The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary, Auckland: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f 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 e Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ a b c d Wilton, Dave, Wordorigins.org, wordorigins.org, p. "hip hip hooray / hurrah", 10 July 2023
13. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
16. ^ a b Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
17. ^ a b Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "‘Hooray Henry’: meaning and origin", 3 August 2022
18. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com