For quite a while (Since I started lurking, actually) I have noticed the term woo woo thrown around. I know what it means (Someone who believes in conspiracies, normally applied to the extreme ones, such as those who believe in the Zetas.) But I was wondering where the term came from. Wikipedia was no help ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woo_Woo ), And it seems that I am not the only one to wonder. So here it is, where did the term woo woo come from? And why does everyone use it?[/url]

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Posted elsewhere, but it may be helpful to know that I ran across the term a good ten years ago (maybe a lot more) as refering to people who more or less sleepwalk their way thru life. You know, dull, boring, small-minded folks.

Also of note is that a similar term (wuffo) is used by skydivers to describe people outside the sport that hold ridiculous, erroneous, or exxagerated beliefs about skydiving.

Funny coincidence, I ran into someone at the dropzone last night who is bith a woo-woo and a wuffo. He was a friend of one of my jumping comrades who stuck around after dark (also known as beer:30) and so they were straightening him out on his wuffo beliefs. Later, around the pool table, he started spouting off some really wrong stuff about Mars. I did not have the energy, and even though he was doing this in an extremely irritating authoritarian tone, I just let it go. Besides, I'll probably never see him again.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

A woof-woof? Is he, perhaps, a were-dog of some description?

I always thought woo-woo was imitative. One of the whistle sounds kids make when they are pretending to be choochoo trains. Basically it fits, folks who should know better behaving like kids without a lick of sense making silly noises.

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By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

I always thought it might be descended from the term "yahoo" in Gulliver's Travels. The Yahoos were anthrapoids who were mesmerized by small shiny objects and gave them too much consideraton.

Or perhaps it is the sound one makes when they do the screwy-in-the-head gesture. Or maybe it is a less audible sound of the cuckoo clock one makes below the hearing of an obnoxious orator.

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"Oh no no no I'm a rocket man Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone." -- Sir Elton John

J Pax

I thought it may have come from the sound people make on tv when someone says something wierd. Kinda like "Wooo ewww Woooo".

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

My guess would be the weird electronic noises old sci-fi movies used to put in when the aliens appeared, or something. Think 'Forbidden Planet' or the old Dr. Who theme. Kind of 'Woo-ooh' - Here come the flying saucers!

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"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov

On the contrary, I found that entry enlightening. The use of a potent alcoholic beverage's name to describe people with such potently stupid ideas makes sense, no?

(Witness Penn & Teller on a certain Apollo hoax proponent: "If that's water... then why is it labeled with a 'V'?")

Similar to an answer above: onomatapoeia.

Imagine somebody just told you he can speak to spirits. Now put your hands to the right and left of your head at about eye level, palms turned inward, make a slightly shivering motion with your hands, and say "woooo" in a kind of sing-song "looney tunes" voice ironically imitating the "sound" of a ghost.

(Feel free to roll your eyes while saying "woooo.")

Now you know where "woo woo" comes from.

CAUTION: Never do this directly in front of someone who has just claimed an ability of communicating with spirits: he might hit you.

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Ach, mein Sinn, wo willst du endlich hin, wo soll ich mich erquicken? Bleib' ich hier, oder wünsch' ich mir Berg und Hügel auf den Rücken?
Bei der Welt ist gar kein Rat, und im Herzen steh'n die Schmerzen meiner Missetat, weil der Knecht den Herrn verleugnet hat.

I like the comparison to the eerie music that gets queued for eerie effect in eerie shows. I'm thinking Dark Shadows. Possibly also the theme to original Star Trek.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

D'oh... Doctor Who theme music! You know, the really bizarro theremin stuff... #-o

I just found it on page 280 of John Horgan's book The End of Science: "Finally, there is the concluding section of my book, which veers into theology and mysticism, or what one acquaintance calls 'the woo-woo stuff.'" In the afterword, written January 1997.

June's thread: Woowoo etymology
2004's thread: Origin of term "woowoo"?
A previous BABBling thread has apparently been deleted.

That's my understanding, as I experienced while talking with people at various CONs in the 80s. When someone starting cranking out the nonsense, one of us in the know would say, "woooo," which invariably spooled the woo-woo up, then another of us would say "woooo!" like we actually believed and were somehow enthralled by the woo-woo's comments.