In the hood
"SO -- HOODIES, the `hood, hoodlums?" inquired a friend last week, fresh from a discussion of the words in question. The consensus so far, she reported, was that hoodie, short for hooded sweatshirt, and 'hood, for neighborhood, had no etymological connection. But was there a link between hoodies and the hoodlums who sometimes wear them as they go about their nefarious business? And did Robin Hood have a role in the story?
I went after hoodie first, since it's the newest and hottest coinage of the bunch. Slangmeister Jonathon Green dates it to the 1980s, describing the sweatshirt -- in Cassell's Dictionary of Slang -- as a "semi-uniform" for young people, "especially those involved in rap." By the time it appears in the Lexis news database, in a 1992 Globe film review, the writer takes for granted that readers will know the word: "I have a 15-year-old son, thoroughly immersed in hip-hop culture, who wears a hoodie."
There's no evidence that the `hood, short for neighborhood, had anything to do with hoodie: English lets us create such diminutives at will (as every baby with a blankie could attest). You just take an old word (1300 years old, in the case of the hood on your head), and add the familiarizing ie ending. Presto: Boots are booties, handkerchiefs hankies, your hooded shirt a hoodie (or hoody, if you prefer).
Still, it's possible a sneaky synergy was at work in hoodie's birth. Hooded sweatshirts were nothing new, but their adoption as part of a baggy-pants, big-sneakers urban uniform was. At the same time, the `hood, current since the 1960s, was enjoying a hip-hop resurgence. Did the `hood give hoodie an uncredited boost? Even its coiner may not know for sure.
As for Robin Hood, he's a red herring, hoodwise; whether or not he existed (or wore a hood on chilly nights in Sherwood Forest), his Hood is a last name, not outlaw-gang headgear. New England's Hood family, though, indubitably exist, and they just missed coining hoodie; instead the dairy company gave us Hoodsies, the single-serving ice cream cups that are local legends in their own right.
Hoodsies have survived for 57 years; hoodie, which is moving faster, may not make it that far. Both the word and the garment were quickly snapped up by mass culture, notably in the form of the strangely popular Juicy Couture sweatsuit, with its snug, belly-baring hoodie top. But now, just a few years later, there's a selection of hoodies in
Luckily there are other names: Our neighbors to the north call the sweatshirt a "kangaroo jacket," in honor of the pockets. And Saskatchewan province, as Isabel Gibson wrote in last week's Maclean's, goes its neighbors one better: There the hoodie is a "bunny hug." Cute enough for Cameron Diaz!
Like the hood of hoodie, the 'hood in neighborhood has ancient roots. In Middle English, it was a separate word meaning "person, state, quality"; attached to nouns, it gave us concepts like babyhood and sainthood, even as it faded into mere suffixhood -- only to be reborn as the `hood in the `60s. This new 'hood still has the flavor of urban slang for most readers -- it hasn't shown up in Penney's maternity department -- but it's familiar enough for use in playful headlines, like the one The Christian Science Monitor put on its story last year about the red planet's close approach to Earth: "Mars in the `hood." (The 'hood doesn't really need its apostrophe these days; I'm using it just to help us keep our hoods straight.)
As for hoodlum, it's a tougher nut. Not because it's old -- the word first appeared in San Francisco in the 1870s -- but because there are too many bogus etymologies. The most entertaining is that a journalist changed a gang name from Muldoon to Noodlum, and a typo (or an editor) made it Hoodlums. The most likely, though, is that hoodlum derives from a German dialect word, Hodalump (among other spellings), meaning ragamuffin. Hoodlum's short form, hood, is almost as old as the original and much more versatile: A hood can be anything from a serious gangster to a teenage rebel with a heart of gold (think Travolta in "Grease").
So the hood of hoodlum, of neighborhood, and of hoodie are barely related -- three hoods from the same `hood, but with only a Germanic heritage in common. Strange but true, like so many etymological revelations.
E-mail freeman@globe.com. For a month's worth of The Word, visit www.boston.com/ideas/freeman.
