HOOTENANNY

[Dr. Goodword]

• hootenanny •

Pronunciation: hut-næ-ni • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: (Slang) 1. A thingamabob, thingamajig, or whatchamacallit. 2. Something insignificant, of little importance. 3. A folk music jam session.

Notes: The venerable Oxford English Dictionary, known to collect every word that has ever appeared in English print, gives three spellings for today's Good Word: hootnanny, hootenanny, and hootananny. Those who use this word seem to have settled on the one we give above.

In Play: Among older Southerners, you still hear this word used to refer to a thingamabob: "Well, I got the lawnmower back together but I have this little hootenanny here left over. Do you know what it is?" Another quaint Southernism using hootenanny is this one: "I don't give a hootenanny what she says, I've never seen that woman in my life!" We probably owe this word's reference to folksong session to Pete Singer, who recalled it from the 30s and popularized it later on.

Word History: No one seems to know where this word came from, which unfetters us to speculate. First, what we do know? The word first appeared at the beginning of the 20th century in the sense of "doohickey, thingamabob". For the third meaning, I would bet on an old Southern expression, hoot 'na holler "a hoot and a holler", used now to refer to something insignificant: "They live just a hoot 'na holler from here." However, my grandparents often referred to children making a lot of noise as "a-hootin' an' a-hollerin'." The interesting connection here is that the -in' an' reduces to enan. It is imaginable that the hollering "yelling" was dropped, leaving hootin' an'. All we would then need is the common English suffix, -y and a shift of accent to give us hootenanny. But this is all speculation: evidence is sorely lacking. (Let's give David Kile a hoot of thanks for suggesting this absolutely Southern US English word.)

[Stargzer]

... For the third meaning, I would bet on an old Southern expression, hoot 'na holler "a hoot and a holler", used now to refer to something insignificant: "They live just a hoot 'na holler from here." ...

I always thought that "a hoot 'n' a holler" was an unspecified distance, not too far but not too close; a good bit farther away than "a stone's throw," but maybe a bit closer than "down the road a piece."

[sluggo]

Have never ever heard this word used in anything but the third sense.

... We probably owe this word's reference to folksong session to Pete Singer, who recalled it from the 30s and popularized it later on....

I think Doc means to invoke the venerable Pete Seeger here-

Wiki:
According to Pete Seeger, in various interviews, he first heard the word hootenanny in Seattle, Washington in the late 1930s. It was used by Hugh Delacey’s New Deal political club to describe their monthly music fund raisers. After some debate the club voted in the word hootenanny, which narrowly beat out the word wingding. Seeger, Woody Guthrie and other members of the Almanac Singers later used the word in New York City to describe their weekly rent parties, which featured many notable folksingers of the time. Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.

Pete's still kicking, will be 89 this year.