hully-gully

adj. haphazard, disorganized, inconsistent, loosey-goosey. Also adverb, willy-nilly, pell-mell, helter-skelter, and noun, hustle and bustle, hurly-burly, hullabaloo. Subjects: English, Sports & Recreation, Colloquial

Editorial Note: This term is common in basketball and other sports, especially in Oklahoma and Texas. Etymological Note: The most likely origin is the guessing game hull-gull, also called hul-gul, huh-guh, ho-go, hulligull, and hully-gully (according to DARE). In the game, one player holds marbles or other small objects in the hands and repeats “hull gull, hand full” or a similar expression. Another player guesses how many are being held. If guessing right, the guesser gets to keep all the marbles. If guessing wrong, the guesser owes marbles to the holder. This game is also probably the origin of the name of the hully-gully dance style that appeared at least as early as December 10, 1961, when it was introduced on the Ed Sullivan show.

1 Comment | Cites | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Citations: [1953 Nonpareil (Council Bluffs, Iowa) (July 9) “Burdick Vies ni [sic] Riverside Races” p. 10: Bud Burdick of Omaha will be one of Thursday night’s top entries in the modified stock car racing program.…Thursday’s card…will be highlighted by the “hully gully” finale.] 1957 Odessa American (Texas) (Nov. 21) “Spread Makes Mustangs Top Bowl Prospects” (in Dallas) p. 31: He’s really hully-gully. He goes straight back to pass and runs up the middle; he starts to his left and runs right…I don’t know what we could do about him if we played SMU again tomorrow. 1957 Bob Herdien Lima News (Ohio) (Dec. 25) p. 26: An end to zone defenses would mean an end to “stalling” tactics, but after all—it’s the kind of basketball you’d like to see. Do you want hully-gully play, wtih [sic] lots of scoring? Or do you prefer “pattern” basketball? Or ball-control basketball? 1959 Rick Pezdirtz Lima News (Ohio) (Dec. 7) “Toledo’s Mighty Mite Slays T-Birds, 62-47” p. 15: The little guy whipped through three quick goals and six straight charity tosses for a fast 12-point finish. He tallied half those points in the last 23 seconds as the game turned into a hully-gully slopfest. 1962 Galveston News (Texas) (July 25) “‘Hully-Gully’ Pass Legal By Inches” (in Austin) p. 21: That “hully-gully” pass play TCU pulled last year to tumble previously unbeaten Texas was legal by inches, a football rules authority said Tuesday.…Any number of forward handoffs are legal in the backfield so long as the ball is passed from hand-to-hand and not pitched or thrown. 1967 Jerry Shnay Chicago Tribune (Feb. 23) “Officials Await Tournaments with Excitement” p. IND12: Some comedian might wish for such an improvement, but it is hard to imagine the hully-gully brand of basketball played these days without someone to stop the infighting. 1973 Dan Rather Los Angeles Times (Dec. 30) “Why TV Gave a Lackluster Show in Unraveling Watergate Mystery” p. D1: None of us had the sense, the luck or the courage early enough to remove ourselves from the hully-gully of hour-by-hour daily coverage of our usual run of stories to concentrate—gamble might be the better word—upon the Watergate story actually being what we suspected it could be. 1982 Jerry McConnell Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) (June 11) “Byers Tesitfies On TV ‘Effect’”: Coats asked if the NCAA couldn’t protect attendance by passing a bylaw to limit appearances, yet removing itelf as the single selling agent and allowing conferences and independents to negotiate their own TV contracts. “No, I don’t agree,” said Byers. “That’s called hully gully. That (proposal) was before the (TV) committee in the 1960s. It’s been estimated that would increase by about 45 percent the amount of televised football going into any given market.” 1983 Dave Pego Oklahoma City Times (Oklahoma) (Jan. 17) “Norman coach tired of squad’s casual look at game”: They’re either going to shape up or not play. We’ve just got to quit playing hully-gully. Sometimes, our teams looks like it belongs in a Sunday afternoon church league. 1985 Blackie Sherrod Dallas Morning News (Texas) (Apr. 5) “Sutton Got Ball Rolling In The SWC” p. 1B: There was no hully-gully in Sutton’s teams. The Razorbacks played good solid, spirited defense, a gene from Sutton’s training under Henry Iba at Oklahoma A&M;. 1996 Edward Bunker Dog Eat Dog (Aug.) p. 41 @ (Aug. 15, 1997): It was a lot safer, too, because the scores were planned, not hully-gully where you might run into any kind of surprise. Indeed, Diesel was sent to San Quentin after he tried to rob a Sacramento poker room in his own. 2004 Michael Hall (Jan.) “The Duke of Dunbar” @ Best American Sports Writing 2005 (Oct. 5, 2005) Mike Lupica p. 240: Terrell played the style Hughes had learned from Adams: run, pass, lob, dunk, press, crash the boards. Some called it hully-gully ball, or playground ball. “We were playing today’s game back in the sixties.…We were doing the alley-oop lob pass to six-foot-two guys in 1964. Every fourth or fifth trip down the floor was a dunk.” 2005 Jerry Hill @ Tempe, Arizona (Cox News Service) (Mar. 28) “Nipping at Tar Heels”: What Baylor (30-3) has to avoid is the kind of “hully-gully” game that turns into a turnover fest. 2006 Doug Crise Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock) (Mar. 9) “Hutchcraft’s coaching system finds shooters and success” p. 30: They’d call it ball-hogging or trigger-happy basketball or a simple lack of patience. John Hutchcraft calls it a practice drill.…He’s heard words like “hully-gully” and “hogball” to describe how basketball is played at the rural Faulkner County school.” *2006 Tom Waddell Bearkat Men’s Basketball (Huntsville, Texas) (Apr. 15) “Chemistry helping Bearkats to success in 2006”: In junior college I could drive to the basket and get layups, and now I’ve got to do a floater or pass the ball off to a big man. Sometimes junior college ball got a little hully gully, and Division I basketball is bigger and a little more organized. 2006 Dave Matter Columbia Daily Tribune (Missouri) (Apr. 19) “Are you experienced?”: You take a kid nowadays and throw him a ball in a vacant lot, they’re not going to line up in and run wishbone.…They’re going to junk it around the yard a little bit, kind of hully-gully style. That’s what I call this offense: It’s an organized hully-gully deal.

Posted 25 Apr 06 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

Also popularised by the Beach Boys:

http://www.lyricstime.com /beach-boys-hully-gully-l yrics.html

from the album _Beach Boys Party_ 1965
Capitol, cat # 7243 5 31641 2

by rex 26 Apr 06, 1132 GMT