Hip hip hooray (also hippity hip hooray; ''Hooray'' may also be spelled and pronounced hoorah, hurrah, hurray etc.) is a

cheer Cheering involves the uttering or making of sounds and may be used to encourage, excite to action, indicate approval or welcome. The word cheer originally meant face, countenance, or expression, and came through Old French into Middle Engli ...

called out to express congratulation toward someone or something, in the

English-speaking Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest langua ...

world and elsewhere. By a sole speaker, it is a form of

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...

. In a group, it takes the form of

call and response Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...

: the cheer is initiated by one person exclaiming "Three cheers for... omeone or something (or, more archaically, "Three times three"), then calling out "hip hip" (archaically, "hip hip hip") three times, each time being responded by "hooray" or "hurrah". In England they used to say it to bring merry and cheer, and is still said to salute the

Sovereign ''Sovereign'' is a title which can be applied to the highest leader in various categories. The word is borrowed from Old French , which is ultimately derived from the Latin , meaning 'above'. The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or ...

at public events.

History

The call was recorded in England in the beginning of the 19th century in connection with making a

toast Toast most commonly refers to: * Toast (food), bread browned with dry heat * Toast (honor), a ritual in which a drink is taken Toast may also refer to: Places * Toast, North Carolina, a census-designated place in the United States Books * '' ...

. Eighteenth century dictionaries list "Hip" as an attention-getting interjection, and in an example from 1790 it is repeated. "Hip-hip" was added as a preparatory call before making a toast or cheer in the early 19th century, probably after 1806. By 1813, it had reached its modern form, hip-hip-hurrah. It has been suggested that the word "hip" stems from a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

, "''H''ierosolyma ''E''st ''P''erdita", meaning "Jerusalem is lost", a term that gained notoriety in the German

Hep hep riots The Hep-Hep riots from August to October 1819 were pogroms against Ashkenazi Jews, beginning in the Kingdom of Bavaria, during the period of Jewish emancipation in the German Confederation. The antisemitic communal violence began on August 2, 1 ...

of August to October 1819. Cornell's Michael Fontaine disputes this etymology, tracing it to a single letter in an English newspaper published August 28, 1819, some weeks after the riots. He concludes that the "acrostic interpretation ... has no basis in fact." Ritchie Robertson also disputes the "folk etymology" of the acronym interpretation, citing Katz. One theory about the origin of "hurrah" is that the Europeans picked up the Mongol exclamation "hooray" as an enthusiastic cry of bravado and mutual encouragement. See Jack Weatherford's book ''

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World ''Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World'' (2004) is a history book written by Jack Weatherford, Dewitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. It is a narrative of the rise and influence of Genghis Khan and his success ...

''.Murphy, Joseph W. (November 21, 2005 )
"Re: Hurray!!!! A Mongol Word?"
Tech-Archive.net. Retrieved February 19, 2013.

References

{{reflist English phrases Interjections Etiquette

History

See also

References