hooligan
(ˈhuːlɪgən)
[Origin unascertained.
The word first appears in print in daily newspaper police- court reports in the summer of 1898. Several accounts of the rise of the word, purporting to be based on first-hand evidence, attribute it to a misunderstanding or perversion of Hooley or Hooley's gang, but no positive confirmation of this has been discovered. The name Hooligan figured in a music-hall song of the eighteen-nineties, which described the doings of a rowdy Irish family, and a comic Irish character of the name appeared in a series of adventures in Funny Folks.]
A young street rough, a member of a street gang. Also attrib. and transf.; spec. Hooligan Navy U.S. Naut. slang, the U.S. Coast Guard Service.
| 1898 Daily News 26 July 5/1 It is no wonder..that Hooligan gangs are bred in these vile, miasmatic byways. Ibid. 8 Aug. 9/3 The constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of young roughs, calling themselves ‘Hooligans’. 1898 Daily Tel. 6 Aug. (Ware), William Lineker, decribed as a Hooligan, sets upon an inoffensive man. 1898 Daily Graphic 30 Aug. 4/4 Mr. White..stated that every Saturday and Sunday nights gangs like the ‘Hooligan gang’ came to his house, broke the windows, glass, &c., and made disturbances. 1898 Westm. Gaz. 15 Sept. 1/2 The Khalifa was, after all, only a sort of Soudanese Hooligan. 1901 Pall Mall Mag. Feb. 198 Nobody will claim honesty as a Hooligan virtue. 1922 L. Hisey Sea Grist 7 Haven't even been in the Hooligan Navy? Just land lubbers. 1932 H. Walpole Fortress iii. 439 Crowds of roughs and hooligans, urged on by the more violent Chartists, drove their way towards the stands with shouts and threats. 1938 Auden & Isherwood On Frontier iii. ii. 110, I always suspected that you and your gang of hooligans would rat. 1962 L. Farago Tenth Fleet 119 Thus was born the Coastal Picket Patrol or, as the Coast Guard called it, the Corsair Fleet. Its own personnel, mostly amateur yachtsmen, preferred to refer to it as the ‘Hooligan Navy’. 1963 Daily Tel. 27 Dec. 1/6 Some driving he had seen amounted to ‘downright hooligan behaviour’. 1971 Guardian 29 July 11/4 Rome's young black-shirted hooligans like to taunt the long-haired guitar-strummers by roaring around them on motor⁓cycles. |
Hence
ˈhooligan v. intr., to act as a hooligan; also
trans., to treat (a person) roughly;
ˌhooligaˈnesque a., like a hooligan;
hooliˈganic a., resembling that of hooligans;
ˈhooliganism, the characteristic behaviour of hooligans, rough horseplay;
ˈhooliganize v. intr., to act as a hooligan.
These derivatives, with the exception of
hooliganism, are only occasional, but they are inserted here because of their additional testimony to the currency of
hooligan.
| 1898 Pall Mall Gaz. 19 Aug. 9/3 Any unauthorized person found trespassing on the aforesaid sphere would be Hooliganed without further notice. 1899 Ibid. 5 Jan. 2/3 The proprietor of Lord Tennyson (in wax) says that it was a certain young man, who, with others,..when called upon to desist, Hooliganed about and threw the late Laureate's head at him. Ibid. 1 Feb. 2/3 Larking about in the usual hooliganesque way. 1902 Daily Chron. 20 Sept. 5/6 Stay then your Hooliganic lark. |
| 1898 Daily Tel. 12 Aug. 5/7 ‘Hooliganism’, or youthful ruffianism. 1898 Daily Graphic 22 Aug. 14/2 The avalanche of brutality which, under the name of ‘Hooliganism’..has cast such a dire slur on the social records of South London. 1900 19th Cent. July 90 To strike at the very roots of truancy, juvenile crime, and Hooliganism. 1911 Catholic Times 1 Sept., The recent outbreak of hooliganism [in Liverpool]. 1955 Times 14 June 6/6 In a talk with journalists he denied one by one the Government's charges of hooliganism against Catholics. 1973 Oxford Mail 23 Jan. 8/2 The ban had been imposed on safety grounds ‘following incidents on Sunday night involving hooliganism by youngsters’. |
| 1901 Pall Mall Mag. Feb. 198 The Hooligan..would Hooliganise less..if in his ruffianism he risked a cut of it [sc. the whip]. |