hoo-ha as euphemism

[Charles Doyle]

These discussions brought to my mind a forgotten childhood experience. In the mid-1950s in Arkansas, I was riding with my father on a Greyhound bus, which stopped at a small town.  There, near the depot, stood a statue of a cat, with a plaque identifying the site as the founding place of The Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo. Now, half a century later, I am able to Google that organization's name. It has a web site--and a Wikipedia entry!

The Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoo is an international fraternal and service organization of persons in the lumber business.  Its totem is the punning CAT.  Nonetheless, "hoo-hoo" doesn't refer to anybody's pussy (UrbanDictionary, in fact, has a slender entry for "hoo-hoo" meaning "slut, whore"). The web site explains, "The term 'Hoo-Hoo' had been uttered for the first time only a month before [i.e. Dec. 1891] by Johnson [the founder] to describe an alarming tuft of hair that grew on top of the otherwise bald head" of a fellow lumberman and friend.

The OED may decline to create an entry for "hoo-hoo" in that sense just yet.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:36:51 -0500
>From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>Subject: Re: hoo-ha as euphemism

>
>Has anyone anything to say about "hoo-hah" ~= "hoo-ah" <whore>?
>
>Joel

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