Word of the Day

: October 22, 2018

brouhaha

noun BROO-hah-hah

What It Means

: a state of commotion or excitement : hubbub, uproar

brouhaha in Context

There was much brouhaha in the tabloids over the young actor's sudden marriage to the woman who had been his high school sweetheart.

"But where do you go, when the temperatures are soaring and you want to cool off but without all of the brouhaha that comes along with a trip to one of our more popular, crowded city beaches?" — Ji Suk Yi, The Chicago Sun-Times, 25 July 2018

Did You Know?

Some etymologists think brouhaha is onomatopoeic in origin, but others believe it comes from the Classical Hebrew phrase barukh habba', meaning "blessed be he who arrives" (Psalms 118:26). Although we borrowed brouhaha directly from French in the late 18th century, etymologists have connected the French derivation to that frequently recited Hebrew phrase, distorted to something like brouhaha by worshippers whose knowledge of Hebrew was limited. The word eventually came to be used in a sense similar to "applause" and in the sense of "a noisy confusion of sound"—the latter being the sense that was later extended in English to refer to any tumultuous and confused situation.