hoodlum

First attested in a December 1866[1] Daily Alta California article, which mentions "the 'Hoodlum Gang' of juvenile thieves".[2] Several possible origins have been proposed. It may derive from a Germanic word like Swabian hudelum (“disorderly”)[1][3] or Bavarian Haderlump (“ragamuffin”).[4]

Herbert Asbury's book The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (1933, A. A. Knopf, New York) says the word originated in San Francisco from a particular street gang's call to unemployed Irishmen to "huddle 'em" (to beat up Chinese migrants), after which San Francisco newspapers took to calling street gangs "hoodlums".

• IPA^(key): /ˈhuːdləm/, /ˈhʊdləm/
• Hyphenation: hood‧lum

hoodlum (plural hoodlums)

1. A gangster; a hired thug.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:criminal

2. A rough or violent youth.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:troublemaker

• A nonstandard, jocular plural hoodla (treating the word like a Latin noun) also exists.

• “Frederick Bee History Project”, in (Please provide the title of the work)‎, accessed October 4, 2014