I was looking at words from "long ago and far away" and bumped into whooperup. At a guess, I thought it might describe a sound one might make while celebrating, and might perhaps be a bit of Old West slang (as in, "The cattle drive is over, let's head into town and whooperup."). Nnnnot quite.
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According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, whooperup is a noun meaning "a second-rate singer who produces noise rather than music." Green's notes it's of British origin and offers up a first-use date of 1909. Dusty Old Thing adds a few more adjectives with the definition of "loud and disorderly people engaged in discordant song."
Turning to Google's Ngram, I did find one reference to whooperup in an 1891 issue of Outing: An Illustrated Weekly Magazine of Sport, Travel, and Recreation (Vol. XVIII) in a chapter titled "Harry's Career at Yale." So perhaps we can nudge this non-musically-inclined word back into the 19th century...
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| Whooperups, whooping it up. Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay |
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