Talk:Hooah

Huah in the Canadian Army
I'm a Canadian soldier. "huah" is used in the Canadian Army, but sarcastically. When someone says something you don't wanna hear, or you're told you're about to do a crappy job, a quick "huaa" is said. Definitely not pronounced the same as with the US way.

"It's going to be a great 10 day exercise" .... "huah" "B Company is tasked with x" ... "huah" "All our trucks are broken" ... "huah"

etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.151.222.19 (talk) 04:56, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

interesting story
hi. i'm german and maybe i can help a little out about the origin. Hurra is an old german military phrase. the german bundeswehr still use it as a "general" phrase. it's "hurra hurra" (just twice). but moste platoons?!? have there own phrase but this one is official. it probably directs from the old middle high german word for "move fast" and was said while attacing or short before.

it is also used under "normal" people. than the leader of a group cries "hip hip" and the others cry back "hurra". (every german school kid knows that^^) and than something like a tournament begins.

and "hurra" alone is still a normal word in germany and means -great- or more cynic -not so great- -bullshit-. also the italiens use that word "urra". it's likely a german lean word. some people think that it's so old that it directs from the old germanic battle cry. "thor help". (thor was the highest germanic god). in germanic. "thor aie" "thor hilf". like "hurtig". for fast. but i don't think so.

Hurra...

Huah
I was in the U.S. Army Reserve with Active duty time (including Afghanistan) and until recently thought that HOOAH was spelled HUAH. I know I saw it somewhere spelled as Huah, on a shirt or something in the PX maybe? Anyone know if huah is entirely mispelled or was that an earlier version of Hooah or something. Funny thing was that while in basic training and AIT we were not trained to say hooah at all but were instead trained to say kill and used it the same as hooah. I went in the Army in 1995 and got out (honorably discharged) in 2004; miss it and might go back once I finish my master degree, hoooah. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.133.42.16 (talk) 05:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

From [] Surely this cant be a coincidence. --121.216.214.119 (talk) 13:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Late in the US Civil War, Confederate Army troops in the Virginia theater of war claimed that Union soldiers of the Army of The Potomac charging their positions would utter a battle cry which sounded either like "huzzah" or "hurrah" (Huzzah coming from a British cry). Confederate troops said that they found the battle cry unnerving, mostly because it revealed the size of the oncoming Union forces, which usually well outnumbered the defending Confederates, and that battle was soon to be had.

I think this article should be expanded with some legitimate sources - not about.com, which is basically a blog. --Awiseman 15:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Um...how the hell did Vietnamese get into this? 'Yes' in Vietnamese is 'da,' 'U' is more of a 'yeah, yeah, I heard' way of saying yes, not exactly the most polite thing in the world. Not 'U-ah'.
 * I reverted the Vietnamese as it's speculation and uncited. Littleman TAMU 00:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

From some time spent with the TRANSCOM Command First Sergeant, Chief Robert Dandridge: were we told at the USAF First Sergeant Academy in 2004, that "Huah!" actually belongs to the Air Force! It is apparently something we invented during the Korean War. Forward Air Controllers in the relatively new Air Force shortened the radio response, "Heard, Understood, Acknowledged" to H.U.A., pronounced "hooah." The Army folks who also worked in close quarters with these fledgling Air Force types adopted the phrase and it came to be both the question and the answer in those situations -- "Do you hear-understand-acknowledge?" "Yes, I hear-understand-acknowledge." "HUA?" "HUA."

isnt tit likely that it originates in the european hurra or hurray?--Tresckow 08:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The urban legend I was told as a young soldier in the Army in the 1980's was it was derived from the US Army Rangers on D-Day, when told they were to scale the cliffs at Normandy the reply was "Who Us?" which morphed into "Hooah"Weweedmaniii (talk) 01:20, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Use of Hooah
The section where it says: "'Hooah' can also be used as a question, usually as a tag question, as in 'We're going to win this war, hooah?' The most appropriate response to the question 'hooah?' is the exclamation 'hooah!'" doesn't require a citation. I am not even sure such a citation is even possible. This information is obviously correct to those who use term (such as myself). Meinsla 04:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree there doesn't need to be a specific citation for that, but your general point is rather dangerous. Wikipedia is an encylopedia for the general reader. "Obviously correct to those who use [it]" is therefore not good enough. 217.33.74.203 12:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, Hooah can be used as question. Though in general Wikipedia is garbage when it comes to documenting such nuances as there will always be one dick, that will contest it if it wasnt published in Newsweek or something. Lot of no life users on here, that think this is an actual Encyclopedia instead of an information repository. 174.62.207.65 (talk) 18:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Hoorah
Why does Hoorah redirect here? It is the U.S. Navy equivalent to the Army Hooah. Shouldn't it deserve it's own article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Meinsla (talk • contribs) 17:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

2007-02-7 Automated pywikipediabot message
--CopyToWiktionaryBot 02:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

A little history
I was in the Army from 1975 to 1978 and never heard the term, so its origin is later than that. The thing to shout in those days was "Airborne!" I think hooah may have come from the USMC oorah, which has been around a while. -Everyguy 02:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think Airborne still say "Airborne". When I visited West Point for SLS, I got to talk to some of soldiers in 82nd Airborne. They were there for survival swimming tests and we also got to do some military training with them. After being at West Point for like a week, all the high school students in the group (including me) naturally answered "Hooah" after one of the soldier finished giving us directions on how to fire a M119 howitzer. However, he was kind of taken back by the hooah and said something about hooah being the name a nasty energy bar (personally, I love Hooah bars). He told us to say "Airborne"...so we did.  Jumping cheese   Cont @ct 05:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hooah was well established in the US army by 1995 with the Indian Chief story as the supposed origin. Yes, that is OR based on my experience, but someone trying to research this should look before then. Oh, and "heard-understood-acknowledged"... what? Where is that in any older FMs? It's either roger or Wilco (disambiguation) Gront (talk) 20:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Sound Clips
Just a thought, this article could use a sound clip or two to help readers to understand how it is said. Additionally, it might be worthwhile to include a few clips illustrating the different intonations according to the situation. --yonkeltron 00:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

-- In the 1960s cadets at Texas A&M used a "whoah" sound with the emphasis on the "ah" sound. The "hwo" was merely the forming of the mouth before the somewhat high-pitched ""wha" sound was made, with the sound descending in pitch during the "a" sound. Sometime later, the Aggie cry became "whoop," but I have never been able to find out why.  I do know that, in the '60s. there were orders issued before reviews that there would be "no whoahs" during the formations.  Whether that killed it or not, I don't know.  The "whoop" is now used by civilian students as well as cadets, and apparently has the blessing of the school. Sound clips would be great for this discussion!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.64.214.50 (talk) 21:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Airp
I heard (I think it was an AFA article) that for a while the Air Force said "airp", short for air power. Do they still do? Jigen III (talk) 23:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

When I was in (Reagan Administration), we said AR-OOH. It could have been our own thing as Security Police, but I'm fairly sure I heard Red Hats (firing range officials) use it too as well as Prime BEEF (construction) guys. 108.161.29.68 (talk) 19:06, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

its really HUA
I was curious about this while I was a Soldier(89-06) and asked about it from guys that have been active since, just after, the Korean War. (Yes, there are guys who have been serving since the early 1960's and still active.) Hoo-ah is really an acronym for HUA. HUA is Head Up A**. No one has really used it publicly (or as far as I've heard) until the late 1990's.

The story that I got from a retired Special Forces guy from Vietnam era, was that it was a misunderstanding during the Korean war. The misunderstanding was that during the din of battle, a commander asked a squad leader to take a hill. The squad leader said 'who...us?" and the commander thought it was hua. The commander thought it was motivation and passed it on. The motivation was passed on, in small doses, and over time it became adopted as motivational speech.

Soldiers have made it "head up a**" and leaders have made it motivational and re-spelled it. There are too dam* many (tdm) three letter acronyms (tla). Jeshaha (talk) 03:58, 12 November 2011 (UTC)jeshaha

How recent is the term?
I served in the U.S. Army '67 to '73 in the infantry and never heard this term used ever in any context. I suspect it might have initially been used as a motivational tool by cadre in basic training (after I left the Army) and was deliberately spread throughout the Army when it was deemed useful. It doesn't have the ring of anything that G.I.s would cook up themselves; but, rather, was promoted by the establishment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.102.115.252 (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Vidushi
Jaldi 103.248.208.66 (talk) 09:10, 12 December 2022 (UTC)