Ballyhoo

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /bæliˈhuː/

Definitions

1. A sensationalized and noisy promotion or fuss serves to capture public interest and attention
2. This term indicates a hyperbolic and flamboyant display meant to attract substantial attention from audiences
3. Boisterous and exaggerated promotion intended to draw attention

Etymology: The barkers of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair often get credit for inventing the word, supposedly shouting something like "ballyhoo" up and down the Midway Plaisance to pull in crowds. It is a good story, but it has never been verified, and it cannot be the origin: the word was already in American print more than a decade before the fair opened. It is an Americanism, recorded from the 1830s or 1840s, and its earliest sense was something like a showman's boastful speech: loud promotional talk meant to stop people in their tracks. By 1882 it turns up in print meaning "a big deal." By the early twentieth century it had settled into circus and carnival language as the name for the barker's pitch and advertising patter, and around 1901 circus slang also used it for a short sample of a sideshow, a taste of the act given out front so that passers-by would pay to see the rest. From noisy publicity on the fairground it spread to clamorous publicity anywhere, and then to any sensationalized fuss at all. By the 1920s it was big enough to name an era. Frederick Lewis Allen, looking back on a decade of crossword crazes, prize fights and tabloid murder trials, titled a chapter of "Only Yesterday" (1931) "The Ballyhoo Years." Nobody knows where the word came from, though there is no shortage of candidates. The favorite is Ballyhooly, a village in County Cork, Ireland, with a reputation for rowdiness. One older line of speculation adds that "ballyhooly" was used as a word for hell itself. A noisy Irish place name drifting into American speech and losing its tail is a plausible story, but it remains speculation, with nothing to tie the village to the showman's word. Another guess makes the word a scrambled "hullabaloo." The two do sound alike, but the resemblance is the only evidence. Even the "hoo" has no secure ancestry of its own, and etymologists generally treat the whole thing as an obscure American coinage rather than a compound that can be taken apart. The Caribbean offers false trails too. English has a fish called the ballyhoo, a slender halfbeak whose name was borrowed from American Spanish "balajú," probably from the Taíno language, and it is not the source of the barker's word. The same name has been used for a kind of schooner, possibly from Spanish "balahú," meaning schooner. These appear to be separate words that happen to share a sound. The showman's word, for all the noise it has made, has never been traced to a source.

Synonyms: exaggeration, hype, fuss, commotion, advertising

Antonyms: calm, serenity, tranquility, quiet, rest