Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A gangster; a thug.
- noun A tough, often aggressive or violent youth.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A young hectoring street rowdy; one of a gang of ruffians; a lounging, good-for-nothing, quarrelsome fellow; a rough.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Colloq. U.S. A young rowdy; a rough, lawless fellow; colloquially, called also
hood .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a
gangster ; ahired thug - noun a
rough orviolent youth
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an aggressive and violent young criminal
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Just because a POS hoodlum is "hunting" doesn't make him or her an ethical sportsman that I want to stick together with.
If your not going to eat it , why would you shoot a animal? 2009
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Just because a POS hoodlum is "hunting" doesn't make him or her an ethical sportsman that I want to stick together with.
If your not going to eat it , why would you shoot a animal? 2009
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They have Edward looking like a hoodlum from the fifties or something.
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While Robin Hood has been romanticized in the movies and books, where do you think the word hoodlum came from?
15 Rule-Breakers that Make Perfect Role-Models for Today's Men | Manolith 2010
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May Sandel, another senior, readily acknowledges that she would've become a "hoodlum," as she puts it, had she not found this school.
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May Sandel, another senior, readily acknowledges that she would've become a "hoodlum," as she puts it, had she not found this school.
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The only people who use the word "hoodlum" these days are media pundits & talk radio hosts, like Beck or Limbaugh, to disparage young black/latino males.
School Board Chairwoman In Trouble For Telling It Like It Is | Manolith 2010
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He eventually evolved into what had to be the most self-righteous, straight-laced "hoodlum" prime time ever saw.
Pre-Shark Jaime J. Weinman 2006
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The word is very popular in Romanian and one Romanian dictionary I saw translates the English words "hoodlum" and "teddy-boy" as huligan plural huligani; def. article huliganii.
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They encourage the "hoodlum," and so far as they have any influence, give an implied sanction to much unrighteous legislation.
Oriental Religions and Christianity A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891 Frank F. Ellinwood
sionnach commented on the word hoodlum
hoodlum started as the name of a gang leader, Muldoon. A reporter reversed it to Noodlum, but the typesetter misread the reporter's handwriting and put it in the paper as "hoodlum".
April 12, 2008
sonofgroucho commented on the word hoodlum
Interesting!
March 9, 2009