blow a hoolie v. phr. (of weather) to storm; to forcefully gust, blow, and rain. Editorial Note: The stand-alone hoolie ‘a severe storm’ is rare outside of the blow a hoolie construction. It is sometimes spelled hooley. Etymological Note: Perhaps connected to hooley defined by Jonathon Green’s Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang as “a rip-roaring party” and marked as originally Irish, though the sense has a history in the US as well. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A listener who grew up in Newfoundland remembers her grandfather declaring the fog was thick as burgoo. Turns out burgoo was sailors’ slang for a gray, gelatinous oatmeal—exactly the right image for an impenetrable Newfoundland fog. The word appears...
Advice about college essays from the winner of a top prize for children’s literature: Kelly Barnhill encourages teens to write about experiences that are uniquely their own, from a point of view that is theirs and no one else’s. Plus, why do we say...
i first used the term in 1986, conversationally. i don’t know if i made it up or had heard it elsewhere; but i suspect the former.
My late friend said it to me during the 1980’s, always about high winds, he was from Thurso in Scotland and I assumed it was Scots.
The original phrase I first heard was “blowing a hooligan (of a wind)” whilst sailing in mid eighties. Latterly I more often have heard the shortened “blowing a hoolie”.