Learn English – Is “hooray” generally considered to be onomatopoeic

onomatopoeia

Is this word onomatopoeic, just an interjection, both, something else?

Best Answer

It's not onomatopoeic in the normal sense, since onomatopoeia describes a word which mimics the thing it stands for. Unless hooray can satisfactorily be construed to mimic anything but itself and its own variants, it doesn't count as onomatopoeia. For instance, if it were possible to know that hooray did not descend from a word, and did descend from a natural and common noise, then it would be onomatopoeic.

On the surface, Wikipedia seems to favor the onomatopoeia hypothesis:

Of the different words or rather sounds that are used in cheering, "hurrah", though now generally looked on as the typical British form of cheer, is found in various forms in German, Scandinavian, Russian (ura), French (houra). It is probably onomatopoeic in origin; some connect it with such words as hurry, whirl; the meaning would then be haste, to encourage speed or onset in battle. The English hurrah was preceded by huzza, stated to be a sailors word, and generally connected with heeze, to hoist, probably being one of the cries that sailors use when hauling or hoisting.

But even while it states that it is "probably onomatopoeic", it goes on to feed the other viewpoint, namely that hurrah did in fact originate from an arbitrary word, and therefore is not onomatopoeic.

Related Topic