Hello

Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.[1]

"Hiya" redirects here. For other uses, see Hiya (disambiguation).
"Hello!" redirects here. For the British magazine, see Hello! (magazine).
For other uses, see Hello (disambiguation).

Early uses

Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications in the US as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the Norwich Courier of Norwich, Connecticut.[1] Another early use was an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee,[2] which was reprinted that same year in The London Literary Gazette.[3] The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.[4]

Etymology

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hollo,[1] which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman".[5] It also connects the development of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in the French holà (roughly, 'whoa there!', from French là 'there').[6] As in addition to hello, halloo,[7] hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels.[8][9][10]

Telephone

The use of hello as a telephone greeting has been credited to Thomas Edison; according to one source, he expressed his surprise with a misheard Hullo.[11] Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting.[12][13] However, in 1877, Edison wrote to T. B. A. David, president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburgh:

Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think? Edison - P.S. first cost of sender & receiver to manufacture is only $7.00.[14]

By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' because of the association between the greeting and the telephone.[13][15]

Hullo

Hello might be derived from an older spelling variant, hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello",[16] and which was originally used as an exclamation to call attention, an expression of surprise, or a greeting. Hullo is found in publications as early as 1803.[17] The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello.[18][19][20][21][22]

Hallo and hollo
"Hallo" redirects here. For other uses, see Hallo (disambiguation).

Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).[23] The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted:[24]

If I fly, Marcius,/Halloo me like a hare.

— Coriolanus (I.viii.7), William Shakespeare

Fowler's has it that "hallo" is first recorded "as a shout to call attention" in 1864.[25] It is used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written in 1798:

And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play

Came to the mariners' hollo!

In many Germanic languages, including German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Afrikaans, "hallo" literally translates into English as "hello". In the case of Dutch, it was used as early as 1797 in a letter from Willem Bilderdijk to his sister-in-law as a remark of astonishment.[26]

Webster's dictionary from 1913 traces the etymology of holloa to the Old English halow and suggests: "Perhaps from ah + lo; compare Anglo Saxon ealā".

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, hallo is a modification of the obsolete holla (stop!), perhaps from Old French hola (ho, ho! + la, there, from Latin illac, that way).[27]

The Old English verb, hǽlan (1. wv/t1b 1 to heal, cure, save; greet, salute; gehǽl! Hosanna!), may be the ultimate origin of the word.[28] Hǽlan is likely a cognate of German Heil (meaning complete for things and healthy for beings) and other similar words of Germanic origin. Bill Bryson asserts in his book Mother Tongue that "hello" comes from Old English hál béo þu ("Hale be thou", or "whole be thou", meaning a wish for good health; cf. "goodbye" which is a contraction of "God be with ye").

"Hello, World" computer program
Main article: "Hello, World!" program

Students learning a new computer programming language will often begin by writing a "Hello, World!" program, which does nothing but issue the message "Hello, world" to the user (such as by displaying it on a screen). It has been used since the earliest programs, in many computer languages. This tradition was further popularised after being printed in an introductory chapter of the book The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie.[29] The book had reused an example taken from a 1974 memo by Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories.[30]

See also

References
  1. "hello". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. (Anonymous). The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. p. 144.
  3. "The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee". The London Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. No. 883: 21 December 1833. p. 803.
  4. Origin of the word.
  5. "hallo". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  6. "holla". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  7. Butler, Mann, A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Wilcox, Dickerman & Co., 1834, p. 106.
  8. Merriam-Webster: Hollo
  9. Merriam-Webster: Hullo
  10. Merriam-Webster: Hillo
  11. Allen Koenigsberg. "The First "Hello!": Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone – Part 2". Antique Phonograph Magazine. Vol. VIII no. 6. Archived from the original on 16 November 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-13.
  12. Allen Koenigsberg (1999). "All Things Considered". National Public Radio. Archived from the original on 2009-03-09. Retrieved 2006-09-13.
  13. "Online Etymology Dictionary". etymonline.com. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
  14. Allen Koenigsberg. "The First "Hello!": Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone – Part 2". Archived from the original on 21 August 2006. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
  15. Grimes, William (5 March 1992). "Great 'Hello' Mystery Is Solved". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-10-25.
  16. "hullo - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 25 April 2007. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  17. The Sporting Magazine. London (1803). Volume 23, p. 12.
  18. "Hullo From Orkney". Forum.downsizer.net. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  19. Piers Beckley (23 April 2008). "Writersroom Blog: Hullo again. Did you miss me?". BBC. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  20. Barton, Laura (23 February 2005). "Paris for a day". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  21. "Ashes: England v Australia - day one as it happened | Andy Bull and Rob Smyth". The Guardian. London. 16 July 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  22. "Semi-final clash excites fans". BBC Sport. 14 April 2005. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  23. "Hello". Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
  24. "Hollo". Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved 2016-02-07.
  25. The New Fowler's, revised third edition by R. W. Burchfield, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860263-4, p. 356.
  26. Bilderdijk, Willem Liefde en ballingschap. Brieven 1795-1797 (ed. Marita Mathijsen). Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam/Antwerp 1997
  27. "Hello". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Retrieved 2006-09-01.
  28. OEME Dictionaries
  29. Kernighan, Brian W.; Ritchie, Dennis M. (1978). The C Programming Language (1st ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-110163-3.
  30. Kernighan, Brian (1974). "Programming in C: A Tutorial" (PDF). Bell Labs. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
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