Hooray!
An old word, a timeless sentiment
My friend Anita Diamant writes: “Huzzah! Hooray! How many ways are there to express that in English? And from whence do they come? Is there anything new in this category?”
Anita: I very much like being reminded that there are still — always — things to exclaim hooray! about, so thank you for this question.
Photo by Shiona Das on Unsplash
Happy, excited English-speakers have been shouting huzza or huzzah since the 1600s. Soon those exclamations were joined by variants that have been rendered as whurra, hurrea, hurrah, hoorah, and hooroar. (Standardized spelling is a rather new thing.)
As for today, let’s see … we also have yay, yippee, whoopee, woo-hoo, and whoo, plus standard words used as exclamations like hot dog, sweet, and awesome. The 1990s brought us booyah and the early 2000s offered up woot or w00t — which are too new or limited in use to show up in the Oxford English Dictionary, though Merriam-Webster can tell you about them. If you know of newer joyous exclamations, please tell us about them in the comments.
In conclusion, here’s a fun fact, from the OED: Some people in Australia and New Zealand say hooray or hooroo instead of goodbye. Hooray!
Email me with your language questions, peeves, problems, etc., at barbaraswordshop@gmail.com, and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Correspondence may be edited. If you subscribe to The Boston Globe, look for my column, “May I Have a Word,” in the Ideas section every other Sunday.
Substack reader John Massaro sent me the following e-mail. It came with a photo where the blank space is, but moving photos from here to there isn't something I'm good at. Sorry.
I recently read your email regarding Anita Diamant's inquiry about the term "Hooray." It's possible you and she are already familiar with the "Oorah" term noted in the material below. I am John Massaro from Wells, Maine and I do not know nor am I related in any way to Marine Sergeant John Massaro who is credited with creating the term. Still, I probably only know about Oorah because the Sergeant and I share the same name.
Your Marine Corps
The Marine sergeant major behind the 'oorah' battle cry
By Gidget Fuentes
Nov 10, 2015
1948 John R. Massaro Camp Pendleton California
The oldest living sergeant major of the Marine Corps is a legend of sorts.
Retired Sgt. Maj. John Massaro left his hometown of Cleveland during the 1940s to enlist in the Marines. His career would span three decades, taking him to combat zones in Korea and Vietnam, and finally into the role of the Marine Corps' top enlisted leader before his retirement in 1979.
That highly abbreviated biography of the eighth sergeant major of the Marine Corps would get the attention of any Marine. But official service anecdotes credit him with popularizing "oorah" in the Marine lexicon — and that alone has cemented him into leatherneck lore.
While there are several theories about the origins of the saying, some Marine Corps historical references suggest that Massaro carried the popular phrase into his drill field tours after it was used during his days with 1st Marine Division Reconnaissance Company in the mid-1950s. Massaro, then a company gunnery sergeant, and the men who boarded the submarine Perch for recon and raid training in the decade after World War II got in the habit of saying "oorah" while imitating the sub's klaxon horn that sounds off as "arrugah."
"It became some kind of greeting, when you saw one of your shipmates or one of your Marines, instead of saying, 'How are you?'" Massaro said. "It kind of got passed around. It was used as a chant, when people were running."
Other references cite his follow-on tour at San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot – his second of three tours there – with using the phrase with recruits.
"Oorah" has become a battle cry for the generations since, a phrase symbolic of the Marine Corps as much as "leatherneck" and "devil dogs." Some historic references cite Massaro's tour at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego as the place "oorah" really caught hold when he began using the phrase with new recruits.
Massaro, for one, is baffled why he's credited with the word. "I don't take credit for it," he said, chuckling. "It was a phrase or a term originally coming from boarding a ship."
The roots of "oorah" stretch beyond reconnaissance. It was likely coined by the infantry several years earlier. Massaro, speaking by phone from Utah, said he and other riflemen with Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, first went aboard the Perch in 1949 for troop transport training, "so it really wasn't something that was original to recon."
Massaro was just a teenager when World War II ended. After training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, he rode a train to Camp Pendleton, California, where he was assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. His infantry career included three tours on the drill field, and assignments with recon and aviation units before being named SMMC.
"I was blessed," he said. "I try to sit back and look. The hand of Providence guided me where I went."
There's yahoo and wahoo, too!