The cry or yell of American Indians and other savage peoples on rushing into battle.
1761. Foote, Liar, I. Wks. 1799, I. 286. Will you permit him, Madam, just to give you … a short specimen of their warhoop.
1763. W. Roberts, First Discov. Florida, 6. Horrible bellowings and clamours, not unlike the war-hoop of the Indians of the Six Nations.
1775. Adair, Amer. Ind., 250. Their mortal crime consisted in sounding the war-whoop, and [etc.]. Ibid., 394. He put up the shrill war whoo whoop, as his last salute.
1791. J. Long, Voy. Indian Interpreter, 21. The Savages immediately rushed from their ambush, and setting up the war-hoop, fell upon the enemy, scalped seven of them, and took five prisoners, whom we painted like ourselves.
1837. R. M. Bird, Nick of the Woods, I. 91. ‘A fight!’ replied Captain Stackpole, uttering a war-whoop.
1850. J. B. Clutterbuck, Pt. Phillip in 1849, 59. When the favorable opportunity for attack has arrived, the war-whoop resounds through hill and dale.
1865. Parkman, Pioneers of France, vi. (1876), 76. The war-whoop rose, and a tempest of stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French.
1875. Higginson, Hist. United States, xvi. 147. The children lay awake afterwards, listening for the Indian’s war-whoop.
b. transf. and fig.
1798. Coleridge, Fears in Solit., 89. Secure from actual warfare, we have loved To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
1807. Byron, Lett. to Miss Pigot, 11 Aug. My nice mamma would … raise the accustomed maternal warwhoop.
1817. Moore, Lalla Rookh, Fire-worshippers, III. 116. But hark!—that war-whoop on the deck.
1828. D’Israeli, Chas. I., II. 92. In the early speeches … the name of the unhappy favourite no longer served as the war-whoop of a party.
1851. Longf., Life (1891), II. 212. If they are not forthcoming, I shall raise such a war-whoop that it will frighten him.
1876. ‘Mark Twain,’ Tom Sawyer, xv. Then they set up a war-whoop of applause, and said it was ‘splendid!’
