• German: Klamauk

Verb

1. To sensationalise or make grand claims.
   • 1933 — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat (7 May)

     Industry has picked up, railroads are carrying more freight, farm prices are better, but I am not going to indulge in issuing proclamations of over-enthusiastic assurance. We cannot ballyhoo ourselves back to prosperity.

Translations

Related terms

• ballyhooed

The ballyhoo or bally, Hemiramphus brasiliensis, is a baitfish of the halfbeak family (Hemiramphidae). It is similar to the Balao halfbeak (Hemiramphus balao). Ballyhoo are frequently used as cut bait and for trolling purposes by saltwater sportsmen. A big variety of fish love ballyhoo. It is one of the greatest known fish to catch Sailfish on.

Ballyhoo is also used in colloquial American English to refer to brashness or flamboyance. The term Ballyhoo is used to indicate that one is using any means necessary to inflate an object or idea to a status to which it does not rise. This references the bait fish in that selling ballyhoo requires deceitful advertising.

Ballyhoo! is also the name of a Rock Reggae fusion band based in Maryland.

References

PR, advertise, aggrandize, aggrandizement, amplification, amplify, bark, big talk, bill, blowing up, blurb, boost, bright light, build up, bulletin, burlesque, caricature, carry too far, celebrity, circularize, common knowledge, cry, cry up, currency, daylight, dilatation, dilation, draw the longbow, eclat, enhancement, enlargement, establish, exaggerate, exaggerating, exaggeration, excess, exorbitance, expansion, exposure, extravagance, extreme, fame, famousness, give a write-up, give publicity, glare, go to extremes, grandiloquence, heightening, herald, hoopla, huckstering, hue and cry, hyperbole, hyperbolism, hyperbolize, inflation, inordinacy, lay it on, limelight, magnification, magnify, make much of, maximum dissemination, notoriety, overcharge, overdo, overdraw, overemphasis, overestimate, overestimation, overkill, overpraise, overreach, overreact, oversell, overspeak, overstate, overstatement, overstress, patter, pile it on, pitch, placard, plug, post, post bills, post up, press notice, press-agent, prodigality, profuseness, promote, public eye, public knowledge, public relations, public report, publicity, publicity story, publicize, publicness, puff, puffery, puffing up, reclame, report, sales pitch, sales talk, sell, sensationalism, spiel, spotlight, stretch, stretch the truth, stretching, superlative, talk big, talk in superlatives, tall talk, tout, touting, travesty, trumpet, write up, write-up