# From whence and when did the term "Woo" as a term for crackpottery come to prominence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 19, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193 "2011-01-19T13:35:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/1 "2011-01-19T13:35:08Z")
I’ve seen the word “Woo” being used increasingly on the boards in reference to things that I’d consider as being “Crackpot” or “Pseudoscience” (Ancient Aliens, Vaccines being linked to autism, New Age Religions, etc) of late. Now, until the past few weeks, I’ve never heard the term in that context before; it’s always been in the sense of “Trying to win someone’s hand in marriage or bringing them around to your point of view” (_"Wooing Mrs. Smith’s daughter_" or “_The Silly Party has been trying to woo undecided voters with their promises of free chocolate on alternate Februaries_”), an exclamation made by drunk or excited people at parties/events, or a Hong Kong Action Movie director best known for several collaborations with Chow-Yun Fat (John Woo). So, two questions: Firstly, where did the term come from? And Secondly, when did it start becoming popular enough to become a term SDMB users would safely assume everyone is familiar with? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/2 "2011-01-19T13:44:43Z")
My WAG: Old sci-fi movies used the sound of a theremin to highlight creepy, supernatural scenes. “Woo” is an onamatopaeiaic approximation of a theremin to denote far out ideas. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/3 "2011-01-19T13:54:44Z")
I think it is an abbreviation of “woo-woo” (not that that explains much). It is used a lot on [ScienceBlogs](http://scienceblogs.com/), especially by [Orac](http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/). My WAG is that it is from the noise that ghosts are traditionally supposed to make, hence, superstitious nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/4 "2011-01-19T13:55:58Z")
I don’t think there’s any clear derivation, though the theremin doesn’t seem very likely. I see also that the term seems to be coined by skeptics who started calling things like astrology or hexagonal water “woo-woo science.” That was shortened fairly recently to “woo.” Why that term was chosen is not clear. It could come from the Three Stooges – Curley would often exclaim “woo woo woo woo” when running. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/5 "2011-01-19T14:00:51Z")
I can’t say when except that I too have seen its use in writing explode in the last 3 months alone. Initially as “woo-woo”, abbreviated to “woo”. From whence it comes? Here’s my best guess… I have no cite, but it’s a pretty damned good guess. In the early days of TV and cinema, the stock sound effect for a ghost was a slide whistle, which would sound a low, rising glissando vibrando as the ghost was rising up out of the grave (or whatever). Later, people would use a vocalization of that same sound for dramatic effect when telling a ghost story around the campfire (not a guess, you see this all the time, if you spend any time around kids and campfires). Over time, it was generalized to anything that was mindblowing or like, totally freaky, dude. Woo. You know? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/6 "2011-01-19T14:02:05Z")
“Whence…” not “From whence…”, since “whence” already includes the “from”, meaning “from where”. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![YamatoTwinkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cc9497/32.png) [@YamatoTwinkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YamatoTwinkie)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/7 "2011-01-19T14:06:36Z")
I thought the term was popularized by skeptic [James Randi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi), although it may have origins elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/8 "2011-01-19T14:10:36Z")
> [@Cosmic Relief](#): > > I can’t say when except that I too have seen its use in writing explode in the last 3 months alone. Initially as “woo-woo”, abbreviated to “woo”. > > From whence it comes? Here’s my best guess… > > […] I’d considered the various interpretations on “Theremin/Sci-Fi Movie Sound Effects” idea, which might explain the term itself (I like to imagine it being accompanied with Jazz Hands) but usually when a word suddenly becomes popular there’s usually something influential behind it- use in an episode of something like _The Simpsons_ or by someone like Stephen Colbert, for example. As far as I can tell, that hasn’t happened, though… people have apparently just decided that “Woo” is a perfectly cromulent word to describe crackpot or nutty theories with, hence me wondering “Why?” followed by “And when did this happen, anyway?” ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/9 "2011-01-19T14:15:15Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > “Whence…” not “From whence…”, since “whence” already includes the “from”, meaning “from where”. No. It is just the accusative form of ‘where’, and as such doesn’t really mean anything except that it is the object of a preposition. Since ‘where’ is generally only used with ‘from’ or ‘to’, those prepositions can be omitted, but it is not required to do so. \*“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” \*(King James Bible). Take the hypercorrection somewhere else. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/10 "2011-01-19T14:16:04Z")
I couldn’t even offer a guess as to the etymology but I can say that at a bookstore I worked at over 20 years ago we called the section with supernatural/paranormal, etc. books the “woo woo” section. That was the first time I had ever heard the word used that way. There were plenty of books of quackery and bad science and the like in the store but they did not get this designation. At the time it was reserved for occult/supernatural type books. I always just took it to mean something like “wooo, scary.” Searching for an etymology online via Google books, etc. is difficult because “woo” has been used to mean courting or romancing for hundreds of years. Its hard to separate the results to find early cites of this use. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/11 "2011-01-19T14:17:28Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > … usually when a word suddenly becomes popular there’s usually something influential behind it- use in an episode of something like _The Simpsons_ or by someone like Stephen Colbert, for example. No idea on that, although I’d like to know. All I know is it started showing up with a fury on this board in the past 3 months or so (maybe more, as I’m not that observant). ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/12 "2011-01-19T14:24:26Z")
> [@Cosmic Relief](#): > > No. It is just the accusative form of ‘where’, and as such doesn’t really mean anything except that it is the object of a preposition. Since ‘where’ is generally only used with ‘from’ or ‘to’, those prepositions can be omitted, but it is not required to do so. \*“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” \*(King James Bible). Take the hypercorrection somewhere else. I’ll take my hypercorrection where I like, thank you very much. It is not _particularly_ the accusative form of where. I see that KJV cite trotted out al the time, but that appears to be an exception: the vast majority of examples use it exactly as I have described. [Merriam Webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whence), [Oxford English Dictionary](http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0948240#m_en_gb0948240), etc. Regardless of the above tiff, the “and where” in the title is even more redundant. Woo! ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/13 "2011-01-19T14:30:37Z")
Spending way too much time on this than I ought, I did (1) a [Google ngram chart](http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=woo&year_start=2000&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3) that showed a very distinct rise in usage around 2004. A very lazy google search on ‘woo-woo crackpot’ shows most of the results in 2010, with a cluster of hits in 2004, 2005, 2006. I’m guessing it’s been out there for a while in fairly obscure circles, then the skeptic boards started running with it around 2004, increasing steadily until it hit some larger tipping point this year. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/14 "2011-01-19T14:47:34Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > … but usually when a word suddenly becomes popular there’s usually something influential behind it- use in an episode of something like _The Simpsons_ or by someone like Stephen Colbert, for example. Or it may be that you’re experiencing an instance of [the Recency Illusion,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_illusion) and you just started noticing something that’s been around for some time now. I must say, I haven’t noticed any great recent increase in “woo” on these boards, and I know for sure it’s been used in that sense here for several years, but there are a lot of threads at any one time, and I can’t claim to have read them all, let alone done any sort of statistical analysis, so who knows? ETA: I see **Cosmic Relief** has, though, so that gives us something to go on. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/15 "2011-01-19T14:49:36Z")
No idea when it first made it’s appearance on this board, but the term has been around for a while now. I remember a physics prof who used to use it pretty regularly and that was over 20 years ago. My guess is it goes back much further than that. He used to call it The Woo, but it’s the same thing…it meant any psudo-science. I always thought it derived from the noises of pleasure that the credulous would make when confronted with the latest example of psudo-science that captivates their imagination. As in ‘Woo! Those crystals can cure my erectile dysfunction AND make my teeth brighter! WOO! WOOWOOOWOOO!’ I suppose it might be the noise a supposed ghost makes…that never occurred to me before. ETA: Sadly you can’t do a search on ‘woo’ as the word is ‘too short or too common’. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Ronald\_C.Semone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/cc9497/32.png) [@Ronald\_C.Semone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ronald_C.Semone)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/16 "2011-01-19T15:10:03Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > Or it may be that you’re experiencing an instance of [the Recency Illusion,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_illusion) and you just started noticing something that’s been around for some time now. > > I must say, I haven’t noticed any great recent increase in “woo” on these boards, and I know for sure it’s been used in that sense here for several years, but there are a lot of threads at any one time, and I can’t claim to have read them all, let alone done any sort of statistical analysis, so who knows? > > ETA: I see **Cosmic Relief** has, though, so that gives us something to go on. I don’t think it is just the recency illusion. I do not recall ever seeing the word before a month or so ago when I encountered it on one of the other SDMB. I had no idea what it meant. It wasn’t until I saw it used several times over the next few weeks that I could garner its meaning from the contexts. I have not yet seen it in a newspaper; when I do, the word officially joins oxymoron. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/17 "2011-01-19T15:54:56Z")
Here is a pretty early cite from [The Washington Post, Jan. 1997](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/flauradern.htm): “When she was growing up in new age California, everybody was into “woo-woo,” Dern’s term for any and all spiritual alternatives to conventional religion.” ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/18 "2011-01-19T16:08:28Z")
I founds some other mentions from the early 90s in Google News Archives. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/19 "2011-01-19T16:11:42Z")
> [@Ronald\_C.Semone](#): > > I don’t think it is just the recency illusion. I do not recall ever seeing the word before a month or so ago when I encountered it on one of the other SDMB. I had no idea what it meant. It wasn’t until I saw it used several times over the next few weeks that I could garner its meaning from the contexts. I have not yet seen it in a newspaper; when I do, the word officially joins oxymoron. Well, that’s the whole point of the recency illusion, though – that you can’t really make an accurate assessment based on your own impressions. “Woo” might well have been used around here recently a lot more than formerly, but it doesn’t seem that way to me because I’ve known the word for several years now, and I see it all over – but then that’s the sort of thing I read about, so I would. I know that my first thought on reading the OP was of [this thread from 2007,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=418863&highlight=%22haunted+staff%22) and I remember that the word wasn’t new to me then – though it clearly was to several others, and there was a discussion about it’s meaning and origin similar to the one we’ve had here. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193/20 "2011-01-19T16:23:08Z")
1986 Carol M. Ostrom Seattle Times (Wash.) (June 20) “In The Spirit—New Age Adherents Follow A Personal Path” p. E1: Of course, not everyone who thinks that science doesn’t tell all would think it’s reasonable to believe, as Gibson does, that one can program crystals with thought energy. But Gibson says there is ample evidence—both scientific and subjective—that crystals can help in healing and transformation. “You can say it’s woo-woo,” she says with a laugh. “But it works. I go with what works.” [Link](http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/woo_woo/) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-whence-and-when-did-the-term-woo-as-a-term-for-crackpottery-come-to-prominence/568193.md?page=2)