Entry · catalog no. 0007
holla
/ ˈhɑlə /HAH-luh
verb · U.S. Black communities, Southern-rooted · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
To make contact with somebody: call, message, come through, say something. Carries no urgency and no formality — it is an open line, not a summons. Most often heard as an instruction (holler at me) or a sign-off (holla).
“Holler at me when you touch down and I'll come scoop you.”
2.
To approach somebody with romantic or sexual interest, usually the speaker approaching another person in public.
“He tried to holla at her outside the store and got nowhere.”
Origin & Attribution
The word descends from the field holler — the call-and-response cries Black laborers used in Southern fields, documented from the nineteenth century and recorded by folklorists in the twentieth. It survived in Black and Southern speech as a general verb for calling out, then narrowed in the late twentieth century to mean get in touch, and by the 1990s to approach with interest. Most mainstream awareness dates from Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" in 2004, which is eleven years downstream of the earliest recorded citation and more than a century downstream of the practice. The Appalachian holler meaning a mountain hollow is an unrelated word from hollow.
19th c.
Field hollers: Black call-and-response work cries, later documented by folklorists
1993
2Pac, "Holler If Ya Hear Me" — the call sense fixed on record
1999
TLC, "No Scrubs" — the approach sense carried to the pop charts
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
U.S. Black communities, Southern-rooted · 1990s
Spoken by
Black Southern speakers; carried nationally by hip-hop and R&B
$HOLLAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded33 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
80/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1993
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
"Holler If Ya Hear Me" — 2Pac, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z..., Interscope, 1993
audio · song
■
"No Scrubs" — TLC, FanMail, LaFace/Arista, 1999
audio · song
■
+ Cite a sourceDictionary.com slang entry, holler, 2018 — traces the term to field hollers
text · cited
See also