ha la
n.— «ha la—alexis p. and linda y.—boston, ma—1993—an expression for surprise. hawaiian pidgin for oh my gosh or no way! me: my cell phone bill was $200 this month. them: ha laaaa!» —“i want to have a word with you” by Souris Me, We Aug. 24, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Ophelia in Johnson City, Tennessee, wonders about the exclamation her great-grandmother often used when something surprised her: Cat bristle! That may be her own version of a minced oath, although it fits with the idea of how a cat’s tail might look...