hurrah, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hurrah n.

also hoorah, hooray

[SE hurrah!]

1. (US, also hurrahing) a boisterous party, a ruckus, uproariousness.

1834		W.A. Caruthers Kentuckian in N.Y. I 36: I don’t somehow believe in all these little hurrahs the women kicks up just for pastime.
1887		Lantern (N.O) 27 Aug. 2: Willie Jeffreys was on a great hurrah some days ago and hardly able to work.
1913		Collier’s 13 Dec. 26/2: There was an old-fashioned ‘Hurrah’ to Western football this season [DA].
1923		DN V 211: What’s all the hoorah about?
1930		Western Dly Press 20 May 7/7: An old C.P. officer, when asked how he enjoyed the ‘hurrah party’ [said] ‘It would have been excellent [...] if we had bee a crowd of Greenwich schoolboys’.
1931		H.B. Parks ‘Southwestern Lore IX’ in Botkin (1944) 15–26: I’ll be beat if those pigs didn’t get to the house ahead of me – and the hurrahing I got!
1940		Sat. Eve. Post 3 Feb. 15/1: Talbot had raised a hooray at the cabin because Bud wouldn’t trade him a jug.
1953		Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 254: Molly raised a turrible hoorah when she seen Joe in the jailhouse.
1968		in DARE.

2. insincere, effusive talk.

1970

San Diego Sailor 28: [She] gave him the old one-two-three about how much she’d missed him and he must come oftener and a lot more of the same hoorah.

In compounds

hurrah boys (n.) (US)

1. a supporter, a fan.

1836

Congressional Globe 17 Feb. Appendix 115: [Some have declared] that his election had been brought about by the ‘hurrah boys’, and those who knew just enough to shout ‘hurrah for Jackson!’.

2. college students [the ritualized college cheers popular among students].

1928

Daily Express 4 Dec. 10/3: ‘Hurrah boys’ are college students .

hurrah clothes (n.) [i.e. the wearing of such clothes to events at which one may applaud]

(orig. US) one’s best clothes, one’s ‘Sunday suit’.

1902		Ade Girl Proposition 3: It always annoys a Young Woman who has put on $1200 worth of Hurrah Clothes to have a lot of Strange Men do the Waldorf-Astoria Inspection.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 215: He made his way to Eltham in his hurrah clothes.

hurrah joint (n.)

(US) a noisy, uproarious place, e.g. a nightclub.

1938

M. Rand ‘Clip-Joint Chisellers’ in Ten Story Gang Aug. 🌐 Crooked taxi drivers who took a cut on all victims steered by them to the hurrah joint.

In phrases

on the hurrah

(Aus.) in a rush, at speed, chivvying.

1893		Independent (Footscray, Vic.) 7 Jan. 2/8: Come, hurrah, boys — who’s next.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 86: HURRAH: navvy a boss or ganger always shouting at and rushing his men at work is said to work his men on the ‘hurrah.’.