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Cheering is the uttering or making of sounds encouraging, stimulating or exciting to action, indicating approval or acclaiming or welcoming persons, announcements of events and the like. Applause is a special case using the hands only.
The word cheer meant originally face, countenance, expression, and came through the Old Fr. into Mid. Eng. in the 13th century from the Low Lat. cara, head; this is generally referred to the Gr. καρα;. Cara is used by the 6th-century poet Flavius Cresconius Corippus, Postquam venere verendam Caesilris ante caram (In Laud em Justini Minoris). Cheer was at first qualified with epithets, both of joy and gladness and of sorrow; compare She thanked Dyomede for ale ... his gode chere (Chaucer, Troylus) with If they sing ... tis with so dull a cheere (Shakespeare, Sonnets, xcvii.). An early transference in meaning was to hospitality or entertainment, and hence to food and drink, good cheer. The sense of a shout of encouragement or applause is a late use. Defoe (Captain Singleton) speaks of it as a sailor's word, and the meaning does not appear in Johnson.
Of the different words or rather sounds that are used in cheering, "hurrah", though now generally looked on as the typical British form of cheer, is found in various forms in German, Scandinavian, Russian (ura), French (houra). It is probably onomatopoeic in origin; some connect it with such words as hurry, whirl ; the meaning would then be haste, to encourage speed or onset in battle. The English hurrah was preceded by huzza, stated to be a sailors word, and generally connected with heeze, to hoist, probably being one of the cries that sailors use when hauling or hoisting. The German hoch, seen in full in Hoch lebe der Kaiser, &c., the French vive, Italian and Spanish viva, evviva, are cries rather of acclamation than encouragement. The Japanese shout banzai became familiar during the Russo-Japanese War. In reports of parliamentary and other debates the insertion of cheers at any point in a speech indicates that approval was shown. by members of the House by emphatic utterances of hear hear. Cheering may be tumultuous, or it may be conducted rhythmically by prearrangement, as in the case of the Hip-hip-hip by way of introduction to a simultaneous hurrah.
Chants in North American sports
Rhythmical cheering has been developed to its greatest extent in America in the college yells, which may be regarded as a development of the primitive war-cry; this custom has no real analogue at English schools and universities, but the New Zealand football team in 1907 familiarized English crowds at their matches with a similar sort of war-cry adopted from the Māoris. In American schools and colleges there is usually one cheer for the institution as a whole and others for the different classes.The oldest and simplest are those of the New England colleges. The original yells of Harvard and Yale are identical in form, being composed of rah (abbreviation of hurrah) nine times repeated, shouted in unison with the name of the university at the end. The Yale cheer is given faster than that of Harvard. Many institutions have several different yells, a favorite variation being the name of the college shouted nine times in a slow and prolonged manner. The best known of these variants is the Yale cheer, partly taken from The Frogs of Aristophanes, which runs thus:
The regular cheer of Princeton University is:
The railroad cheer is like the foregoing, but begun very slowly and broadly, and gradually accelerated to the end, which is enunciated as fast as possible. Many cheers are formed like that of Toronto University:
Another variety of yell is illustrated by that of the School of Practical Science of Toronto University:
The cheer of the United States Naval Academy is an imitation of a nautical syren.
The Amherst cheer is:
The Bryn Mawr cheer can only be uttered by seniors:
Besides the cheers of individual institutions there are some common to all, generally used to compliment some successful athlete or popular professor. One of the oldest examples of these personal cheers is:
...followed by a stamping on the floor in the same rhythm.
College yells are used particularly at athletic contests. In any large college there are several leaders, chosen by the students, who stand in front and call for the different songs and cheers, directing with their arms in the fashion of an orchestral conductor. This cheering and singing form one of the distinctive features of inter-collegiate and scholastic athletic contests in America.
Organised chants in North American sports are rarer then in their European counterparts, but some teams have their special routines. Common chants include "Let's go -team name-, let's go clap-clap clap-clap-clap; or in case of a single syllable nickname, "Go - team name- Go". Chants of "Bull-Shit" and "Ass-Hole" can be heard in some arenas/stadiums after calls unfriendly to the home squad. If the home team is leading a heavily favored team, or has defeated that team, the home fans will often mock the favored team with repeated choruses of "O-ver-ra-ted! clap-clap clap-clap-clap."
Most teams have a scoring song played on the PA system, and some professional American football teams sing a fight song after scores. The use of fight songs after a score is universal in college football. Since scoring in basketball is more frequent, and does not generally cause breaks in the game action, scoring songs are not employed in that sport. However, in college basketball, fight songs are universally played during prolonged breaks in game action (timeouts, halftime, and overtime breaks if any). Baseball fans traditionally sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in the middle of the 7th inning. After 9/11, many professional teams chose to use "God Bless America" during that break, either supplementing or replacing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".
In High School Basketball games, if the score was a blow-out and approaching the end of regulation, fans of the winning team would chant "This Game's Over" or "This One's Over." If the losing team makes a play, and that teams fans chant for that, fans of the winning team will start chanting "Scoreboard," indicating that even after the one play, the other team is losing.
Some routines for specific teams include:
- Vancouver Canucks fans are known for taking over from the singer of the national anthems during O Canada.
- Denver Broncos fans shout "IN-COM-PLETE" after opponent's incomplete passes.
- Montreal Canadiens fans shout "Olé, Olé Olé Olé, Olé, Olé!" like many European football teams.
- University of Kansas basketball fans often repeatedly shout their traditional yell "Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk, K-U" during home games.
- Kansas State University football crowds join in on the final words when the press box announcer reports that the result of a play is "a Kansas State first down" or "a Kansas State touchdown," a practice that is spreading to fans of other teams.
- Kansas City Chiefs fans shout 'We're gonna beat the hell out of you! You, you, you-you-you!' during the playing of "Rock and Roll (Part 2)" by Gary Glitter, aka "The 'Hey' song" that follows a home team touchdown. This is punctuated by much of the crowd pointing at the opposing bench in a thrusting motion at each mention of the word 'you'. When the The Star-Spangled Banner is performed prior to the coin toss, most of the crowd, rather than singing the final word in the phrase "home of the brave", shout out 'Chiefs'. Similarly, at the University of California, Berkeley the fans will change the words in The Star-Spangled Banner from "the rockets' red glare" to "the rockets' BLUE glare" because their archrival Stanford wears red.
- After a football win by West Virginia University, the players, backed by the school's marching band, lead the crowd in the state's de facto anthem, "Take Me Home, Country Roads".
- Pittsburgh Steelers fans often chant 'Here we go Stee-lers, here we go! (clap) (clap)' at Steeler games, other professional and high school sporting events, or at just about any time.
- University of Pittsburgh students have taken to replacing the normal words to the school fight song (Go Pitt Go!) with 'Penn State Sucks', regardless of who the actual oppenent is at the time.
- Virginia Tech fans chant "Stick it in" when the football team enters the Red Zone (20 yards from the end zone)
In Mexico, three major chants are well known: the Siquitibum or Chiquitibum, used to cheer Mexican athletes or teams at whichever competition they appear; the Goya, representative of all the teams of UNAM, but arguably created by the supporters of the university's American Football team; and the Welum or Güelum, the chant sung by UNAM's traditional rival IPN, and which has become popular institute-wide in a similar fashion.
The oldest football massed cheer recorded at football games in the United States was called "The Rocket" in the 1880s (earlier?). The crowd cried in unison: "Ssssss... boom! ah!" which was eventually converted to "Sis Boom Bah! Rah rah rah!" memorialized by The Beach Boys' "Be true to Your School" (1963):
- So be true to your school
- (Rah rah rah rah sis boom bah)
- Just like you would to your girl or guy
- (Rah rah rah rah sis boom bah)
The phrase "Sis Boom Bah! Rah rah rah!" popped up earlier in the classic college song "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream" (by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, and Robert Kin, 1927), the world's best known Ice Cream song:
- I scream, you scream,
- We all scream for Ice Cream.
- Rah! Rah! Rah!
- Tuesdays, Mondays
- We all scream for Sundaes.
- SISS! BOOM! BAH!
Rugby union
Chants are less extensive in rugby union but the Oggy Oggy Oggy chant first became popular on the terraces at Welsh rugby union matches. England supporters sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", a song long popular in rugby union clubs since the words lend themselves readily to a sequence of lewd hand gestures. The Welsh sing "Cwm Rhondda", which is the tune of the hymn "Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer", as well as the chorus of Max Boyce's "Hymns and Arias". The Fields of Athenry is often sung at matches by supporters of the Irish rugby union team. The New Zealand team (the All Blacks) are known for engaging in a ritual Māori haka before international matches. The Fiji team performs the cibi; the Samoa team the siva tau; and the Tonga team the sipa tau. The Pacific Islanders rugby union team, a joint Fiji/Samoa/Tonga representative team that played for the first time in 2004, uses a specially composed chant combining elements of each nation's traditional chant.The Australian Rugby Union has made a concerted effort to promote the singing of Waltzing Matilda since 1999, frequently featuring singer John Williamson at home matches to lead the crowd. As singing is not a part of Australian sporting culture, this "tradition" may well fade without active support from administration.
Cricket
Chants are also used in Cricket, the Barmy Army has a collection of songs and chants such as 'You all live in a convict colony' sung to the tune of 'Yellow Submarine'. It is done to remind Australian cricket fans of their supposed criminal past. The hymn Jerusalem became the song of choice for the England cricket team during the 2005 Ashes series, and Michael Vaughan encouraged the whole country to sing the song before the last Test Match at The OvalReferences
See also
"Cheering"