hoopla

noun /ˈhuːplɑ/

1. A bustling to-do, excited speech or noise.

   countable, uncountable

   Say you don't know me, or recognize my face / Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place / Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight / Too many runaways eating up the night

2. A carnival game in which the player attempts to throw hoops around pegs.

   countable, uncountable

Where it comes from

Earlier houp-la, hoop la, first attested in c. 1877, probably from French houp-là, oup-là (“upsadaisy, upsy-daisy”), a cry to various animals close to humans like horses and dogs, of likely onomatopoeic origin (but see là). Compare interjections like whoop, ahoy, hoo.

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry hoopla (CC BY-SA 4.0).

← hondelhoplophobia →

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