Hooah !

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 3 Aug 2005 10:32:08 -0500, Mullins, Bill
<Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:

>> So "booyah" seems originally to have been onomatopoeic for a
>> gun blast ?
>
>Looks that way.  Another cite from Amazon had a glossary of gang slang,
>and "booyah" was explicitly defined as the sound a gun makes.

In rap circles, the term was popularized by the Samoan rap group Boo-Yaa
T.R.I.B.E. circa 1990. All Music Guide agrees that the group's name
derived from "a slang term that mimicked the sound of a shotgun (prior to
becoming a more general shout of exuberance)":

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jxkzikl6bbf9~T1

See also the entry for "boo-yaa" in the Rap Dictionary:

http://www.rapdict.org/Boo-yaa


--Ben Zimmer