Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an uproar, commotion.

1931		Punch 14 Oct. 402/1: The devil of a hoo-ha in the papers about increasing the demand for English-grown corn.
1937		J. Curtis There Ain’t No Justice 153: I thought from all the hoohah you were making that you were going to set me a regular teaser.
1947		N. Streatfeild Grass in Piccadilly 106: Is Freda in a hoo-ha?
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 59: There’d have been the most frantic hoo-hah if you’d been caught.
1960		A. Seymour One Day of the Year (1977) II ii: All the public hoo-ha —.
1973		A. Buckeridge Speaking of Jennings (1989) 8: There’d be a bit of a hoo-hah if you got caught doing it.
2002		J. Cameron Hell on Hoe Street 202: I [...] kind of wondered I could kip here a couple of days till the old hoo-ha dies down.
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 174: What’s all the hoo-ha?
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 56: ‘The Black Muslim hoo-haw’.

2. (orig. milit.) nonsense, rubbish, twaddle.

1961		J. Jacobs American Cities 5: Monopolistic shopping centers and monumental cultural centers cloak, under the public relations hoohaw, the subtraction of commerce, and of culture, too, from the intimate and casual life of cities.
1979		B. Gutcheon New Girls (1982) 44: It seemed like so much smug hoohah to me.
2000		Indep. Rev. 8 May 3: There should be so that we could get round all this hoo-ha about Kennedy every time we wanted to express the concept.
2010		J. Ellroy Hilliker Curse 14: I believed it then. I know it was hoo-ha now.

3. the male or female genitals.

1999		J. Cameron Brown Bread in Wengen [ebook] ‘Serious mash-up bring down heavy grief on your hoo-ha innit?’.
2019		pooshdotcom 22 Aug. 🌐 Keep your yoni healthy with these non-toxic feminine washes that won’t harm your hoo-ha. Shop our picks for keeping things fresh down there.
2024		Observer 14 Apr. 🌐 [headline] ‘My hoo haa is gonna be out’: US Olympians slam Nike for skimpy women’s track kit.

4. used as excl. to indicate a set-to, a commotion.

1972		D. Jenkins Semi-Tough 222: She said, ‘I would venture a guess that if there’s anything all of us hate in this world [...] it’s to come upon a pair of really great tits like these and not have a really nifty cunt to go along with them. Right?’ Elroy Blunt shouted something that sounded like whooo-ha.
1994		P. Blauner Casino Moon 135: ‘I used to dream every night about [...] kickin’ the shit out of some skinny-ass quarterback in the end zone. Joe Montana. I’d sit on his face. Who-haa!!’.