ballyhoo
\BAL-ee-hoo\
noun
1. a clamorous and vigorous attempt to win customers or advance any cause; blatant advertising or publicity.
2. clamor or outcry.
Quotes
The invasion of ballyhoo commenced in the spring of 1931, when a purchase of somewhat spectacular nature—that of the strange objects and inexplicably preserved bodies found in crypts beneath the almost vanished and evilly famous ruins of Chateau Faussesflammes, in Averoigne, France—brought the museum prominently into the news columns.
-- H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, "Out of the Aeons," Weird Tales, April 1935
Origin
Ballyhoo is of uncertain origin. It gained prominence in the US as circus slang around 1900, but there is record of it being used to refer to an unseaworthy ship approximately 50 years earlier.
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