Hootenanny

[Beverly Flanigan]

Yes, I agree on your timeline; shindig is way old!  But I was expressing
surprise that a 1970s show (presumably) would be called "Shindig."  Disco
was the "in" thing in the '70s (and I was already way too old for
that).  But "hootenanny"-- that was indeed a Pete Seeger kind of term!

At 05:57 PM 3/7/2005, you wrote:
>Disco?!  Good grief--"shindig" was a word my dad used for any big party,
>get-together or "do."  So it's older than my 62 years, let alone disco.
>
>Peter
>
>--On Monday, March 7, 2005 5:26 PM -0500 Beverly Flanigan
><flanigan at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:
>
>>Yes, this was how we used the term in the '60s too.  But shindig?  Wasn't
>>that disco?
>>
>>At 05:09 PM 3/7/2005, you wrote:
>>>So widespread was it that there was a short-lived TV series of that name
>>>about 1965.  Each week it featured a folk-music concert from a different
>>>college campus.
>>>
>>>If memory serves, it was replaced by "Shindig," which featured babes
>>>dancing in cages.
>>>
>>>JL
>>>
>>>sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>Poster: sagehen
>>>Subject: Re: Hootenanny
>>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>-------
>>>
>>> > Another sense, that no-one's mentioned so far, is known in the UK from
>>>the New
>>> > Year TV party "Jools' Annual Hootenanny". Jools Holland is a jazz
>>> > pianist, a raconteur and definitely someone to be seen with, and he
>>> > hosts this annual broadcast musical gathering from about 11am until
>>> > 1am every 31 December - 1 January; fashionable people are invited and
>>> > interviewed by him, and play / sing their music if they are musicians.
>>> >
>>> > Before this ADS-L thread I had never come across the word except in
>>> > Jools' context, and so assumed that it must mean something noisy /
>>> > raucous / joyful (onomatopoeia from 'hoot' and from the number of
>>> > syllables and different vowels
>>> > in the word, I suppose). But if there are more Google hits for
>>> > 'thingumajig'-like meanings, perhaps Jools calls it that because it
>>> > doesn't fit
>>> > comfortably into any other definition, so he doesn't really know
>>> > *what* to call
>>> > it?
>>> >
>>> > Damien Hall
>>> > University of Pennsylvania
>>>~~~~~~~~
>>>The other use of "hoot(e)nanny," more like the one you cite, and which I
>>>didn't learn until I was in college in the late 40s, was for a
>>>singalong--usually folk, labor, political kinds of music. Pete Seeger
>>>might have presided over this sort of event: don't really remember. I
>>>think that usage was fairly widespread.
>>>A. Murie
>>>
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>
>
>
>*****************************************************************
>Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
>******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************