hoodie: noun. 1: a hooded sweatshirt. 2: a teenage thug, usually found wearing a hooded sweatshirt. (Etymology: from hood as in a "covering")

By a curious etymological coincidence, American gangsters have long been referred to as "hoods", a contraction of "hoodlum". But this has nothing to do with covering the head. The word "hoodlum" first originated in print in San Francisco in the 1870s, also referring to criminal or antisocial gangs. However, no-one really knows the origin of the term. The most sensible explanation is that it comes from the Bavarian German huddellump, meaning "ragamuffin". I prefer the story that it is Muldoon backwards, after the leader of the original gang, but a printer's error changed noodlum into hoodlum.

quote:

hoodlum Look up hoodlum at Dictionary.com
1871, Amer.Eng. (first in ref. to San Francisco) "young street rowdy, loafer," later (1877) "young criminal, gangster," of unknown origin, though newspapers have printed myriad stories concocted to account for it. A guess perhaps better than average is that it is from Ger. dial. (Bavarian) Huddellump "ragamuffin."