hooliganism

thumb|Hooligans at a football match of FC Spartak Moscow|Spartak Moscow in November 2010 Hooliganism is the act of disruptive, obnoxious, violent or unlawful behavior such as rioting, bullying and vandalism, in connection with crowded events, such as speeches or sporting events. A hooligan is a person who engages in illicit reckless behaviors and is a public nuisance.

==Etymology == There are several theories regarding the origin of the word hooliganism, which is a derivative of the word hooligan. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary states that the word may have originated from the surname of a rowdy Irish family in a music hall song of the 1890s. Clarence Rook, in his 1899 book Hooligan Nights, wrote that the word came from Patrick Hoolihan (or Hooligan), an Irish bouncer and thief who lived in London. In 2015, the BBC Scotland TV programme The Secret Life of Midges noted that the English commander-in-chief during the Jacobite rising of 1745, General Wade, misheard the local Scots Gaelic word for midge—meanbh-chuileag—and coined the word hooligan to describe his fury and frustration at the way the tiny biting creatures made the lives of him and his soldiers a misery; this derivation may be apocryphal.