brouhaha

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”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹuː.hɑː.hɑː/

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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

   • 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, →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.

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.

• IPA^(key): /bʁu.a.a/

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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.

• “brouhaha”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
• Michael Quinion (2004) “Brouhaha”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.

• “brouhaha”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.