Today we chase down the story of how a long-ago custom survives into today as a synonym for hubbub.

Back in medieval Europe, the term hue and cry was applied to the legal practice of pursuing a criminal with cries and sounds of alarm. Back in those days, it was the duty of any person wronged or any person who discovered a felony to raise the hue and cry (hue came into English via a French interjection used chiefly to apprise others of danger). It was also the obligation of any neighbors to join in the pursuit and apprehension of the purported offender. All those joining in the pursuit were justified in arresting the person pursued (even if he turned out to be innocent). Should the person being chased resist capture—and if he bore apparent evidence of his guilt on his person—it was considered perfectly acceptable to kill him. If the suspect submitted to being arrested, he was turned over to the proper officials.

It took until the early 1800s before the various statutes relating to hue and cry were repealed, but by then the term's clamor of alarm or protest sense was already established. In fact, we can find evidence of that sense in Cervantes' Don Quixote, published in the early 1600s.