hubba-hubba

[Daniel Long]

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>   I have an earlier hubba-hubba, and I traced habba-habba to 1915.

Oh Barry, you ARE a tease.  Tell me more, tell me more.
Danny

P.S. Someone sent me this.   A Chinese origin sounds possible
considering and the early users (US soldiers) and the timing (consider
gung-ho), although the phonology of hao pu hao seems all wrong.   I
don't even understand the second theory.   (Why would fishermen be
_warned_ of fish?)

> QPB Encyclopedia of Word Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson,1997,
>     published by Facts on File Inc NYC  says:
> hubba-hubba. "A delirious delight in language making," Mencken calls
> the coining of HUBBA_HUBBA. The expression was ubiquitous during WW2
> made famous by a leering Bob Hope, the linguistic equivilant of a wolf
> whistle that was uttered lasciviously when as attractive woman walked
> past a group of men. Sexual but highly complimentary, it was often
> hubba hubba hubba, the third awesome hubba thrown in for added emphasis
> if body language warranted it. Anyway, we're told that the term originated
> with "flyboys" US Airmen who got it from Chinese airmen being trained at
> a Florida airbase early in WW2. Supposedly it is a corruption of the
> familiar Chinese greeting HOW_PU_HOW. A second theory, wholly unpalatable,
> traces the expression to Hubba, "a cry given to warn fishermen of the approach
> of pilchards."

--
Daniel Long, Associate Professor     tel  +81-426-77-2184
Japanese Language and Literature Dept.    fax  +81-426-77-2140
Tokyo Metropolitan University
1-1 Minami Osawa, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo  192-0397 Japan
mailto:dlong at bcomp.metro-u.ac.jp
http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/long/