sooey

sooey pronunciation

/SOO-ee/

Meaning

Sooey is what you holler when the hogs need to come to the trough, the pen, or the truck. It carries across a pasture better than a polite "here, pig." Folks stretch it out and stack it: sooey, sooey, sooey. Outside the farmyard you still hear it as a joke yell, and Arkansas football fans turned it into a stadium roar.

How folks use it

• “Sooey! Get on up here before that slop cools off.”
• “He leaned on the fence and yelled sooey till the sows came running.”

Origin and etymology

U.S. farm talk, written down by the 1890s. Likely tied to sow (the female pig) or the old su- root that shows up in swine and related words; some people also point at Latin sus. Exact path is uncertain. What is clear: rural Southern hog raisers used it as a real call long before it showed up in cheerleader chants.

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