Origin of "hoopie"

[Wilson Gray]

There was Major Hoople, a chracter in the cartoon, Our Boarding House.
More recently, there was the band, Mott The Hoople.

-Wilson

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 11:09 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>  Subject:      Re: Origin of "hoopie"
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  FWIW, Lee Pederson in _American Speech_ 1980 reported "hoople" [sic] as a synonym for "hayseed...hick..hillbilly...yokel [etc.]." Evidently a typo, though "hoople" has seen some use in the sense of "lunkhead."
>
>   "Hoopie" is in DARE. T.H. White thought in 1965 it referred to all West Virginians, and a recent ref. at Google Books specifies that "hoopies" are from "the southern part" of WV.
>
>
>
>   JL
>
>  Patti Kurtz <tb5fab at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender: American Dialect Society
>  Poster: Patti Kurtz
>  Subject: Origin of "hoopie"
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Hi everyone. A student in my composition class asked me "what's the origin
>  of the term "hoopie" (slang for someone from WV?" I didn't know (but I
>  recall using this politically incorrect term as a college student in SW PA),
>  so I got curious and thought I'd ask here. I did a little googling and
>  found a suggestion that it comes from "hooper" (one who fits hoops around
>  barrels) because of the fact that people from the hills would come into
>  town to buy hoops for their barrels (presumably for moonshine, maybe?) is
>  this accurate? I checked my "shorter" OED (sorry, it's all I have
>  available) and found no entry on "hoopie."
>
>  This is for my curiosity, not for the student's research or anything-- it
>  was just a discussion question he raised and it rang a bell with me because
>  of my experience with the term.
>
>  Thanks.
>
>  Patti Kurtz
>  Minot State University
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
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 -Sam'l Clemens

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