For an old North American colloquial word that started showing up in the 1800s, “foofaraw” has a surprisingly robust entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. “Foofaraw” originated in the western US, and at first meant fussy, vain, or gaudy. It was carried back to England and appeared in “Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine” in 1848: “Them white gals are too much like picturs, and a deal too ‘fofarraw’ (fanfaron).” In spite of the title, by the way, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was published in London. I guess they thought they needed a foofaraw title.
Later on, “foofaraw” took on a slightly different meaning: frivolous accessories. It was used that way in the 1948 book “Old Man Crow’s Boy:” “By then he..had formed the habit of trading furs..to Tatum at the store for fuforaw for his family, as well as supplies and traps.” It was also used to mean a commotion or uproar, much like a “brouhaha” (that one is from England, and was borrowed from the same word in French.
“Foofaraw,” like any number of informal words, has quite a number of alternative spellings and, probably, pronunciations. The number of syllables seems to vary from three (“foofaraw,” “foofaral,” “foo-foo-rah”) to two (“froufraw,” “frufraw”). and the first syllable seems to sometimes rhyme with “too,” sometimes with “duh,” and sometimes with “so.” But remember that parenthetical comment in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine? It was “fanfaron”, which meant the same thing — and is a much older word, borrowed from either French (“fanfaron”) or Spanish “fanfarrón).
It seems that “foofaraw” might be derived from “fanfaron,” which was in use as early as the 1600s. One of the ways “fanfaron” was used was to describe someone who’s boastful or who brags. Mateo Alemán, in his book “The Rogue; or, The Life of Guzman de Alfarache,” wrote “They should not play the Fanfarrones.” When James Mabbe translated it into English in 1622, that might have marked the word’s entry into English.
“Foofaraw” is still in occasional use, and today it mostly means an uproar or commotion. You know, the sort of thing you get if bunch of fanfarons go loudly voustering about, all over-adorned in tawdry fegary.
