Huzzah, hurrah, hurray, hooah, hooyah, oorah... seems like a standard mutation over time. I'd wager that popular media added to the boom. Being the literary geek that I am, I just googled the etymology of huzzah to confirm or deny my suspicions and it looks like I guessed correctly.G26ster wrote:Welcome home sir! Got nothing funny right now, but others seem to be handling the entertainingTexDotCom wrote:Same goes for Dallas, if you're headed through here. I started my outprocessing at Camp Arifjan, KU, back in late '05 and finished up once I was Stateside again. My biggest difficulty...dealing with civilians and their more-emotion-less-logic-and-common-sense thought processes!
Welcome home (in advance) and HOOAH for a job well done!
I do have a question for the ex-military on the forum though, and I'm dying to know the answer. Where in heck did group response "HOOAH" come from? Now I'm old and dated. I last saw active duty in '78, but for 16 years was Infantry, both enlisted (thru E-6) and Commissioned (thru O-3) so I think I would have heard group "HOOAHs" if it was around back then. I assure you, it wasn't. Now there were individual "HOOAHs" during bayonet drill, but no group HOOAHs as a message of agreement as there are today. Kind of a group "Amen!"
So, any semi-old ex-army folks out there that can pinpoint the origin of the "group HOOAH" for me? When and where did it start? It's a just bit of useless information that would satisfy my curiosity. Now, if you think this is a dumb question, you are probably 100% correct
huzza
also huzzah, 1570s, originally a sailor's shout of exaltation, encouragement, or applause. Perhaps originally a hoisting cry.
hurrah
1680s, alteration of huzza, apparently influenced by similar shouts in German, Danish, Swedish. Perhaps picked up during Thirty Years' War. According to Moriz Heyne, this was the battle-cry of Prussian soldiers during the War of Liberation (1812-13). Hooray is its popular form and is almost as old. Also hurray; hoorah (1936).
Huzza or huzzah was first attested in 1573. According to a number of writers in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was originally a sailor's cheer or salute: "It was derived from the marine and the shouts the seamen make when friends come aboard or go off." (North, Examen, 1740). It might be related to the earlier hauling or hoisting cries, heisau! and hissa!, as in these citations:"With 'howe! hissa!' then they [the sailors] cry, 'What, howe, mate! thow stondyst to ny, Thy felow may nat hale the by.'" (The Pilgrims sea-voyage and sea-sickness, 1430) and "The marynals began to heis up the sail, cryand heisau heisau." (Complaynt of Scotland, 1549). There is an old word heeze or heize, meaning 'to raise', which has cognates in both the North and West Germanic languages.
Hurrah and hurray are later versions of huzzah, possibly influenced by Middle High German hurr and hurr, interjections which are imperative forms of the verb meaning 'to rush or hurry'. Swedish, Danish, Dutch, and Russian all have similar shouts which were used in hunting and chasing. Presumably, the hunters shouted hurra when they spotted their quarry, and the word came to express a sense of triumph. Army people most likely adapted this term huzzah when charging against the enemy or winning a battle.
Popular Culture:
* "Hooah" can be found in the scripts of several military-related movies. One well-known example is Al Pacino's character, a former U.S. Army officer, in the movie Scent of a Woman (which may have popularized the longer "Hoo-Ah" version). "Hooah" also features prominently in Black Hawk Down, which depicts United States Army Rangers at the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia and Lions for Lambs a film about the war in Afghanistan. In Basic, Samuel L. Jackson's character finishes each line of his training briefings with "Give me a 'Hooah', Sergeant!". In the 2004 American film The Manchurian Candidate, Denzel Washington's character responds an order with it during the brainwashing procedure. It is also extensively used by Matt Damon's character in the 2010 movie Green Zone.
* Used as the meaning of "Heard Understood Acknowledged" by private young soldiers in the movie Renaissance Man from 1994.
* In the episode "Semper Fidelis" of the TV series Jericho, former US Army Ranger Johnston Green realizes that a detachment of "US Marines" are imposters because they use the word "hooah". Genuine Marines would have said "Oorah" instead.
* The GI unit in Red Alert 2 sometimes says "hooah" in response to an order by the player.
* It is also incorrectly used in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past by the Sarge, a member of the US Marines.
* The computer game America's Army makes frequent use of the phrase, and pressing the H key on the keyboard in version 2 or below would make the player's character shout "Hooah" over the radio to other members of the player's team, sometimes eliciting a series of "Hooahs" in reply.
* In the microtransaction, free to play game of Combat Arms, "Hooah" is featured as a voice-com taunt.
* "Hooah" can be heard in Crysis, yelled by a Marine on the USS Constitution and at least one other point in the game.
* In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the NEST team replies "Hooah" when Major Lennox gives instructions before the battle with the Decepticons in Egypt.
* In the videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the US Army Rangers are heard multiple times throughout the game using Hooah for anything and everything except "no."