Word.ws English Dictionary

tohu-bohu

Syllables: to·hu·bo·hu/ˌtəʊ.huːˈbəʊ.huː/

tohu-bohu noun: chaos, disorder, confusion.

Noun

tohu-bohu (uncountable)

  1. Chaos, disorder, confusion.
    • Yet a judge may […] be required to dive, at a moment's notice, into the tohu-bohu of inquiries, which have never yet emerged from the stage of chaos...1875, W. E. [William Ewart] Gladstone, The Church of England and Ritualism
    • […] / The decorative manias we obey / Die in grimaces round us every day, / Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice / Which utters an absurd command — Rejoice.1940, W. H. Auden, In Sickness and in Health

Forms of tohu-bohu

alternative formtohubohu

Origin of tohu-bohu

From Biblical Hebrew תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, from תֹּהוּ (tóhu, “nothingness, void”) + בֹּהוּ (bóhu, “emptiness, desolation”).

Questions about tohu-bohu

What does tohu-bohu mean?
Tohu-bohu means chaos, disorder, confusion.
What part of speech is tohu-bohu?
Tohu-bohu is a noun.
How do you pronounce tohu-bohu?
Tohu-bohu is pronounced /ˌtəʊ.huːˈbəʊ.huː/ (UK).

Words near tohu-bohu in the dictionary

  1. toho
  2. Tohomé
  3. Tohono O'odham
  4. Tohopekaliga
  5. tohorah
  6. tohu-bohu
  7. tohubohu
  8. tohunga
  9. tohungaism
  10. tohungas
  11. tohutō

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tohu-bohu (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tohu-bohu.wav.

Cite this entry: “tohu-bohu.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tohu-bohu. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.