hoopla

Definition

A bustling to-do, excited speech or noise.

Etymology

Earlier houp-la, hoop la, first attested in c. 1877, probably from French houp-là, oup-là (“upsadaisy, upsy-daisy”), a cry to various animals close to humans like horses and dogs, of likely onomatopoeic origin (but see là). Compare interjections like whoop, ahoy, hoo.

Example Sentences

• "Say you don't know me, or recognize my face / Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place / Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight / Too many runaways eating up the night"
• "Campers enjoyed all of the traditional camp hoopla: color wars, shared team games with other camps and young eager college students spending their summer as counselors."
• "Some astronomers dislike the whole supermoon hoopla. They point out that the term originated with astrology, not astronomy; that perigee full moons are not all that rare, coming an average of every 13 months; and that their apparently swollen dimensions are often as much a matter of optical illusion and wishful blinking as of relative lunar nearness."