brouhaha

English

WOTD – 19 February 2011

Etymology

Borrowed from French brouhaha, but disputed as to where from before that. Possibly from Hebrew בָּרוּךְ הַבָּא (barúkh habá, “welcome”, literally “blessed is he who comes”).

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈbɹuː.hɑː.hɑː/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Noun

brouhaha (plural brouhahas)

  1. A stir; a fuss or uproar.
    Synonyms: commotion, hubbub, kerfuffle; see also Thesaurus:commotion
    It caused quite a brouhaha when the school suspended one of its top students for refusing to adhere to the dress code.
    • 1972, John Drury Clark, “Halogens and Politics and Deep Space”, in Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 74:
      For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three-foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty — the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.
    • 1981, “Elephant Talk”, in Discipline, performed by King Crimson:
      Talk, it's only talk / Babble, burble, banter / Bicker, bicker, bicker / Brouhaha, balderdash, ballyhoo / It's only talk / Back talk
    • 1984 August 5, “Women Lawyers Unit Describes Its Role”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      In the brouhaha over the reappointment of Superior Court Judge Sylvia Pressler, we organized massive support - telegramming, telephoning and writing to encourage the State Senate to exercise its advise and consent function responsibly.
    • 1999, “The Brouhaha”, in Hello Nasty, performed by Beastie Boys:
      What's all the fanfare, what's the to do / We're known to bring the hullabaloo / On stage or at the spa / Guaranteed we bring the brouhaha / ‘Cause it's a brouhaha
    • 2022 September 5, Roger Cohen, “Of Barbecues and Men: A Summer Storm Brews Over Virility in France”, in The New York Times‎[2], →ISSN:
      Ms. Rousseau, a senior member of the Europe Écologie-Les Verts party, said in an interview that she was surprised by the sizzling brouhaha.
    • 2025 April 21, Whitney Eulich, Andrea Salcedo, “Panama accepted asylum-seekers the US didn’t want. Then its troubles began.”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
      El Salvador, caught in legal brouhaha over the case of erroneously deported Kilmar Ábrego García, has received a reported $6 million from the U.S. to imprison deportees.

Translations

French

Etymology

Disputed. Possibly by assimilation from Hebrew בָּרוּךְ הַבָּא (barúkh habá, “blessed (be) who comes”), a collocation occurring in Psalm 118:26 and an interjection meaning “welcome” in Modern Hebrew. An alternative theory holds that the origin is onomatopoeic.

In regards to the semantic evolution to “noisy meeting”, compare ramdam, sabbat.

Pronunciation

Noun

brouhaha m (plural brouhahas)

  1. brouhaha
    • 1865, Jules Verne, chapter 2, in De la Terre à la Lune [From the Earth to the Moon], J. Hetzel et Compagnie, published 1868:
      Un brouhaha, une tempête d’exclamations accueillit ces paroles.
      A brouhaha, a gale of exclamations welcomed those words.

References

Further reading

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