Hoosier (American). A nickname given to natives of Indiana. Bartlett cites from the Providence journal a story which has the appearance of being an after-manufacture to suit the name, deriving hoosier from "husher--from their primary capacity to still their opponents." He also asserts that the Kentuckians maintained that the nickname expresses the exclamation of an Indianian when he knocks at a door and exclaims "Who's yere?" However, the word originally was not hoosier at all, but hoosieroon, or hoosheroon, hoosier being an abbreviation of this. I can remember that in 1834, having read of hoosiers, and spoken of them a boy from the West corrected me, and said that the word was properly hoosieroon. This would indicate a Spanish origin. The source of Mr. Leland's error is plain. "Hoosieroon" was undoubtedly coined by Mr. Finley to designate a Hoosier child, and what the boy probably told Mr. Leland was that the name to apply properly to him would be Hoosieroon. But that alone would not dispose wholly of the Spanish suggestion, for "oon" or "on" is not only a Spanish ending, but is a Spanish diminutive indicating blood relation. In reality, however, Mr. Finley did not understand Spanish, and the ending was probably suggested to him by quadroon and octoron, which, of course, were in general use. There is no Spanish word that would give any suggestion of "hoosier." The only other language of continental Europe that could be looked to for its origin would be French, but there is no French word approaching it except, perhaps, "huche," which means a kneading trough, and there is no probability of derivation from that. In fact, "hoosier" carries Anglo-Saxon credentials. It is Anglo-Saxon in form and Anglo-Saxon in ring. If it came from any foreign language, it has been thoroughly anglicized. And in considering its derivation it is to be remembered that the Southerners have always had a remarkable faculty for creating new words and modifying old ones. Anyone who has noted the advent of "snollygoster" in the present generation, or has read Longstreet's elucidation of "fescue," "abisselfa," and "anpersant"[11] will readily concede that. And in this connection it is to be observed that the word "yahoo" has long been in use in Southern slang, in almost exactly the same sense as "hoosier," and the latter word may possibly have developed from its last syllable. We have a very common slang word in the North--"yap"--with the same signification, which may have come from the same source, though more probably from the provincial English "yap," to yelp or bark. "Yahoo" is commonly said to have been coined by Swift, but there is a possibility that it was in slang use in his day.