- Hoopie
lang term for West Virginians
"Hoopie" is a derogatory term for people from the northern panhandle of
West Virginia . The term is in common use in the Upper Ohio River Valley--northern West Virginia, easternOhio and southwesternPennsylvania .This bit of regional slang came into use in the area in and around
East Liverpool ,Ohio . In the 19th-century, East Liverpool was the site of a substantial amount ofpottery manufacture. In the days beforecardboard boxes andBubble Wrap , pottery was packed inwooden barrel s, with bundles ofstraw used as cushioning to reduce the chance of breakage during shipment.These barrels were built at local pottery
cooper shops. The coopers used splitsapling s to serve as thehoop s holding the barrelstave s in place. They did this by winding the sapling around the barrel and then weaving together the ends, or using a smallnail to hold the ends together.Iron hoops were expensive and therefore not widely used.People living in the back hills near East Liverpool would come to town carrying bundles of the split saplings, which they would sell to the cooper shops. They would then use the cash to buy things they could not make at home, such as
salt andgunpowder .Because the sellers were often poor, ragged and illiterate hill folk, the townspeople looked down on them and derogatorily referred to them as "hoopies" because they brought the hoops into town. The term became entrenched in the area and remains in use to this day, along with its corollaries, "
hillbilly " and "hilljack." Its use is still so widespread that if an East Liverpool pottery worker were going to visit family in the northwestern panhandle ofWest Virginia , he might say, "I'm going back to hoopie."lang term for a type of truck
Hoopie is the name given to a straight truck used in the trucking industry. Hoopies sometimes have a
lift gate and/or refrigeration units attached to the "box" of the truck. Hoopies are used frequently for residential deliveries, or for deliveries in which the streets are very narrow or lack parking.In rural northwestern Pennsylvania, a "hoopie" is a vehicle made from a car or truck chassis, and homemade seats. Not street-legal, it is driven only on trails in the woods.
In Michigan, African-Americans sometimes refer to a junky car as a "hooptie".
References
* [http://www.word-detective.com/0806C.html Origins of hoopie as a slang term]
[http://www.reedtransport.net/images/equipment_straight_Truck.jpg] Example
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