Whoop
nounA loud cry or shout of excitement, joy, or triumph.
How to spell whoop
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce whoop
What does whoop mean?
- nounA loud cry or shout of excitement, joy, or triumph.
- verbTo shout loudly with excitement, joy, or encouragement.
Whoop in a sentence
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noun
A delighted whoop went up from the crowd when the home team scored.
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verb
The fans began to whoop the moment the band walked on stage.
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noun
She let out a whoop of triumph as her name was read for the award.
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verb
He could not help but whoop when he heard he had passed the exam.
Where does whoop come from?
Language of origin: French
Whoop is an imitative or onomatopoeic word, meaning it was coined to mimic the sound of a sudden loud cry rather than being inherited from an older root word. It appears in Middle English around the 1300s as 'whopen' or 'houpen', and it is closely related to the Old French 'houper', meaning 'to call out' or 'to shout to someone'. The original idea was simply the noise a person makes when calling, cheering, or driving animals, and over the centuries it settled into the sense of an excited shout of joy or triumph. The breathy spelling with 'wh-' reflects how the word was once sounded with a strong puff of air, which is also why the medical term 'whooping cough' captures the gasping, crowing intake of breath. Because the word is built from sound rather than from Latin or Greek parts, the silent-feeling 'h' tucked after the 'w' is the main spelling trap, since the modern pronunciation often drops that breathiness entirely.
How the word is built
- whoop (imitative root, no affixes); the wh- spelling preserves an older breathy 'h' onset
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