{"id":15457,"date":"2018-04-27T11:35:34","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T10:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=15457"},"modified":"2018-04-27T11:35:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T10:35:34","slug":"what-a-foofaraw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=15457","title":{"rendered":"What a foofaraw!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever come across the word foofaraw<\/strong>? If not, can you guess what it means?<\/p>\n

I stumbled on it in a book I’m reading at the moment, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries<\/em><\/a> by Kory Stamper. It is used in the following context:<\/p>\n

“Dictionaries, he explained, were records of the language as it is used, and so we must set aside our disdain for the adverb “good” [..] and record its long use in our dictionaries in spite of the rather pointless foofaraw around its existence.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reference to the use of good as an adverb is illustrated by the phrase “I’m doing good”, which pedants would tell you should be “I’m doing well”.<\/p>\n

\"Foofaraw<\/p>\n

Merriam-Webster<\/a> defines it as “frills and flashy finery; a disturbance or to-do over a trifle.”<\/p>\n

Dictionary.com<\/a> defines it as “a great fuss or disturbance about something very insignificant; an excessive amount of decoration or ornamentation, as on a piece of clothing, a building, etc.”<\/p>\n

According to Wiktionary it means “Overly excessive or flashy ornamentation or decoration; Fuss over something of little importance.” It’s pronounced [\u02c8fu.f\u0259\u02cc\u0279\u0254], was first used in writing in the 1930s, and is of uncertain origin.<\/p>\n

Dictionary.com<\/a> suggests that it may be related to the French word fanfaron<\/em> (boasting, boaster), which is either imitative, or could come from Arabic \u0641\u064e\u0631\u0652\u0641\u064e\u0627\u0631\u200e (farf\u0101r), which is possibly the origin of fanfare in French and English. The word fanfaron is an obsolete English word for a bully, boaster or braggart [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

I might use the word hoo-ha<\/strong> instead of foofaraw. It means “a fuss, uproar, commotion or stir; hype; brouhaha, hullabaloo”, and is also written hoohaa, hoohar, hoo-haa, hoo-har or hoo-hah. It possibly comes from the Yiddish \u05d4\u05d5\u05be\u05d4\u05d0\u05b7\u200e (hu-ha – a hullabaloo) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Do you know other words with a similar mean to foofaraw or hoo-ha?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever come across the word foofaraw? If not, can you guess what it means? I stumbled on it in a book I’m reading at the moment, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper. It is used in the following context: “Dictionaries, he explained, were records of the language as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,104,111,121,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arabic","category-english","category-french","category-hebrew","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}