![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordTheme week of fun words to describe an uproar:
brouhaha (BROO-hah-hah, broo-hah-HAH broo-HAH-hah) - n., a fuss, an uproar.
Honestly, all three of those pronunciations sound weird to my ear -- I generally pronounce it with nearly equal stress on all three syllables, with possibly a slightly stronger one on the first. Stress on the second is definitely "wrong." Can have the connotation of turmoil over a minor cause. We got the word from French in the 1880s, but the origin is murky -- quoth one dictionary: originally, brou, ha, ha! exclamation used by characters representing the devil in 16th-century drama." Attempts to link it to Hebrew bārūkh habbā, welcome (lit. blessed is he who comes, part of Psalms 118:26: bārūkh habbā beshēm ădōnai, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord) are unconvincing.
---L.
brouhaha (BROO-hah-hah, broo-hah-HAH broo-HAH-hah) - n., a fuss, an uproar.
Honestly, all three of those pronunciations sound weird to my ear -- I generally pronounce it with nearly equal stress on all three syllables, with possibly a slightly stronger one on the first. Stress on the second is definitely "wrong." Can have the connotation of turmoil over a minor cause. We got the word from French in the 1880s, but the origin is murky -- quoth one dictionary: originally, brou, ha, ha! exclamation used by characters representing the devil in 16th-century drama." Attempts to link it to Hebrew bārūkh habbā, welcome (lit. blessed is he who comes, part of Psalms 118:26: bārūkh habbā beshēm ădōnai, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord) are unconvincing.
---L.
