lollapalooza

Some readers may recognize lollapalooza as the name of an American music festival, now held annually in Chicago. Actually, the word lollapalooza has been around since at least the 1890s, though etymologists aren't sure where it comes from. Occasionally, it has been used as a gambling term for a made-up hand used to trick an inexperienced player-but primarily the term is used in a way very similar to humdinger and doozy. It is spelled in a number of ways. Lallapalooza, lalapalooza, and lollapaloosa are among the variants, and in the past it was sometimes lalapaloozer. Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg may have contributed to the popularity of this term with "Lala Palooza," one of his cartoon characters from the 1930s.