Hooray

How to spell hooray

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hooray

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hooray mean?

1. interjectionA shout of joy, triumph, or approval.

Hooray in a sentence

• Hooray, the mortgage is finally paid off after twenty years.

• The whole office shouted hooray when the contract was signed.

Where does hooray come from?

Language of origin: Other

Hooray is a reshaped spelling of the older exclamation hurrah, which English used from the early 1700s as a shout of triumph or encouragement. Hurrah itself was an alteration of huzza, a cry that sailors and crowds used when cheering, and its ultimate source is genuinely uncertain; word historians link it loosely to a family of similar German and Scandinavian cheering cries. Over time speakers softened and respelled the ending, so the rolling 'rah' became the smoother 'ray', giving us hooray alongside the variant hurray. Because all of these forms are echoic, meaning they imitate the natural sound of a cheering voice rather than descending from a fixed root, the spelling was never tightly fixed, which is exactly why a writer can hesitate between hooray, hurray, and hurrah. The doubled 'oo' and the open final 'ray' are the two spots where the modern spelling most often goes astray.

How the word is built

• hoo-
• -ray (an altered, reshaped form of the older exclamation hurrah; not built from separate meaningful roots)