Hip Hip Hooray - History

History

The call was recorded in England in the beginning of the 19th century in connection with making a toast.

It has been suggested that the word "hip" stems from a medieval Latin acronym, "Hierosolyma Est Perdita", meaning "Jerusalem is lost", a term that gained notoriety in the German Hep hep riots. English usage predates the riots, for example Thomas Moore wrote in his Memoirs that "they hipped and hurraed me" in 1818, a year before the riots, and The life of Pill Garlick (1813) likewise has a crowd toasting to the hero's health "with . . . hip! hip! hip! and a hoorra!".

Another claim is that the Europeans picked up the Mongol exclamation "hooray" as an enthusiastic cry of bravado and mutual encouragement, according to Jack Weatherford's book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

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