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; a hired thug
  • noun a rough or violent 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

[Origin unknown.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Attested since 1871. Many sources have been proposed, but none are certain. The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that it may derive from Bavarian German Haddalump ("ragamuffin").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word hoodlum.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • 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

  • Interesting!

    March 9, 2009