Hoodlum

A street rough, originally a product of San Francisco, but now common in New York and most cities of the American Union. The origin of the term was thus accounted for by The Congregationalist , 26th September 1877: “A newspaper man in San Francisco, in attempting to coin a word to designate a gang of young street Arabs under the beck of one named ‘Muldoon,’ hit upon the idea of dubbing them Noodlums --that is, simply reversing the leader’s name. In writing the word the strokes of the N did not correspond in height, and the compositor, taking the N for an H , printed it Hoodlum . ‘Hoodlum’ it is, and probably ever will be.”