hoopla

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhuːplɑ/

• Audio (US):

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hoopla (countable and uncountable, plural hooplas)

1. A bustling to-do, excited speech or noise.
   • 1985, “We Built This City”, in Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, Peter Wolf (music), Knee Deep in the Hoopla, performed by Starship:

     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

   • 2008, Michigan Jewish History, volume 48, page 24:

     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.

   • 2014 September 7, Natalie Angier, “The Moon comes around again [print version: Revisiting a moon that still has secrets to reveal: Supermoon revives interest in its violent origins and hidden face, International New York Times, 10 September 2014, p. 8]”, in The New York Times‎:

     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.

2. A carnival game in which the player attempts to throw hoops around pegs.