What is "gilhooley"?

Question

Reading Ellery Queen's The Murderer is a Fox, I came across this passage:-

When Fox asked me on the phone to deliver a bottle of 100 aspirins, I said: "Say, Mr Fox, what do you do with that stuff - eat it?" You know, cracking wise. But he gets sore and wants to know what "right" I have talking to him "that way", and a lot more gilhooley like that.

I can guess from the context what it means (something similar to codswallop, I'd say). But I can't find out anything about the word. Green's Dictionary of Slang doesn't have it, and the only definitions I can find on-line are proper names. Can anyone confirm what it means, and offer an etymology? Or is it just a nonce word?

Answer 1

Looks like a variant on hooey, which the OED defines as:

Humbug, nonsense.

It’s marked as slang that was originally from the U.S. Also so labelled is phooey, which is given to mean:

An expression of strong disagreement with or disapproval of something said. Also as sb., applied to the thing said: nonsense, ‘baloney’.

Both terms’ first citations are from the 1920s.

1924 P. Marks Plastic Age 100 — My prof’s full of hooey. He doesn’t know a C theme from an A one.

1929 Sun (Baltimore) 11 July 11/1 — Girls are described as weenies, janes, dames and broads. A mad-man is phooey, crackers or blooey.

Of hooey it says “Origin unknown”.