hoodlum

First attested in a December 1866[1] Daily Alta California article, which mentions "the 'Hoodlum Gang' of juvenile thieves".[2] Several possible origins have been proposed. It may derive from a Germanic word like Swabian hudelum (“disorderly”)[1][3] or Bavarian Haderlump (“ragamuffin”).[4]

Herbert Asbury's book The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (1933, A. A. Knopf, New York) says the word originated in San Francisco from a particular street gang's call to unemployed Irishmen to "huddle 'em" (to beat up Chinese migrants), after which San Francisco newspapers took to calling street gangs "hoodlums".

• IPA^(key): /ˈhuːdləm/, /ˈhʊdləm/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: hood‧lum

hoodlum (plural hoodlums)

1. A gangster; a hired thug.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:criminal

   • 2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎:

     In Sam Mendes's excellent gangster movie Road to Perdition (2002), he tested the boundaries further playing a hitman – but while we know he's a killer, we never really see him go full-pelt hoodlum.

2. A rough or violent youth.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:troublemaker

• A short form, "hood," also exists.
• A nonstandard, jocular plural hoodla (treating the word like a Latin noun) also exists.
• The behavior of a hoodlum may be referred to as "hoodlumism."

• “Frederick Bee History Project”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), 2014 October 4 (last accessed)