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Take Our Word For It NOE 15
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Melanie Crowley
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Jan 17, 2004 16:25 PST
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Take Our Word For It NOE No. 15
http://www.takeourword.com
For Mac users who have trouble with our regular home page:
http://www.takeourword.com/indexmac.html
(You should test our regular home page, however, as we removed the
Javascript that we think was causing you Mac users some difficulty. If
you are able to access the regular home page now, please let us know.)
**Greetings**
At long last, another NOE issue!
**This Week's NOE**
The word hoopla came to our attention recently, and of course our
etymological curiosities were piqued (and don't you just hate it when
people write "peaked" for "piqued", even if the words are etymologically
related? See "Words You Thought You Knew...", which we reviewed last
week, for more discussions of pique/peak/peek and other such language
difficulties).
A hoopla is a commotion. How did such an odd word come to mean that?
Well, prior to "commotion" it was "an exclamation accompanying a quick
or sudden movement", the OED tells us. That exclamation was originally
French: houp-là. [All of those who have written to us about our lack
of diacritical marks in this newsletter, take heart!] The French words
are a kind of command meaning, "Up" or "Get up". One of our sources
likens the French words to the English "upsydaisy", said when one picks
up a tot. The sense of houp-là changed in French from the command to
move to an exclamation of sudden movement (the upsadaisy sense), which
is the original sense that English took. Then, in English, it came to
refer to a collection of sudden movements or a commotion, and the
spelling became phonetic. Hoopla dates from 1870 in written English.
By 1907 hoop-la was used as the name of a ring toss game, but the OED
thinks that came from the word hoop "circular band of metal or wood"
with the addition of la, an exclamation that called attention to an
emphatic statement (related to lo). "What's all the hoopla about
hoop-la?" The spelling of the game name remained hyphenated, probably
evidence that the OED's derivation is correct.
**Laughing Stock**
Keep sending us funny stuff! We're sending Martha Saylor's gift
certificate today (for last week's Laughing Stock). Enter to win an
Amazon.com gift certificate for yourself.
**Derivation**
We have one copy of Derivation left. It will go to the next donor of $75
or more. Thank you again to the creator of Derivation for giving us 6
games with which to raise funds for TOWFI. See the Derivation web site:
http://www.entspire.com/home.asp to learn more about this game. It is
for sale in our book store. http://www.takeourword.com/bookStore.html
**New Game**
We have a new game to play and review. It is called Wild Words and you
can learn more about it at http://www.wildwords.us/ . We hope to review
the game in the next few weeks and, if we like it (sure looks and sounds
good!), we will sell it in our book store. Stay tuned!
**Next Issue**
We should have a new issue next weekend.
Until next time,
Take Our Word For It!
Melanie and Mike
http://www.takeourword.com
http://www.takeourword.com/indexmac.html
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