hooligan

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a violent or destructive troublemaker, especially one acting as part of a group

   Police arrested several hooligans who had smashed shop windows after the match.

2. 2
   noun

   a person who engages in violence or disorder connected with a sports team, especially football

   The club banned a known hooligan from entering the stadium.

Simplified etymology

Hooligan appeared in newspaper reports of police-court cases in 1898. It may derive from the surname of a fictional rowdy Irish family in an 1890s music-hall song or from a comic Irish character named Hooligan in the magazine Funny Folks; the precise source is uncertain.

First recorded in late nineteenth-century British English. Its origin is uncertain; it may have been influenced by the Irish surname Houlihan or by a fictional rowdy family in popular entertainment.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary