Word of the Day for Friday, March 28, 2008

hullabaloo \HUL-uh-buh-loo\, noun:A confused noise; uproar; tumult.

True, he had diplomatic immunity as the assistant agricultural officer at the consulate, but the publicity and hullabaloo of an arrest and interrogation, not to mention expulsion from the country, would not be career-enhancing.-- Stephen Coonts, Hong Kong

By jumping on and off goods trains and encountering a sympathetic manager who hid him down a mine until the hullabaloo over his escape had died down, he finally reached freedom.-- David Stafford, Churchill and Secret Service

Hullabaloo is perhaps a corruption of hurly-burly, or the interjection halloo with rhyming reduplication.

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