| 词源 |
hoodlum. A youthful ruffian and a gangster. The word hood- lum may derive from the Bavarian hodalump meaning the same. But there is no concrete proof of this and there are several other theories, these also unproved. All we really know is that hoodlum, first recorded in San Francisco in 1871, is now stan- dard English. One source (Weekley) even calls the word “a per- verted backspelling of Muldoon.” |