Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. [1]
Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. [1]
Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. 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]
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]
Before the telephone, verbal greetings often involved a time of day, such as "good morning". When the telephone began connecting people in different time zones, greetings without time gained popularity. [11]
Thomas Edison is credited with popularizing hullo as a telephone greeting. In previous decades, hullo had been used as an exclamation of surprise (used early on by Charles Dickens in 1850) [12] and halloo was shouted at ferry boat operators by people who wanted to catch a ride. [13] According to one account, halloo was the first word Edison yelled into his strip phonograph when he discovered recorded sound in 1877. [12] Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he answered calls by saying " ahoy ahoy", borrowing the term used on ships. [13] [14] There is no evidence the greeting caught on. [13] Edison suggested Hello! on August 15, 1877 in a letter to the president of Pittsburgh's Central District and Printing Telegraph Company, T. B. A. David:
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. [12]
The first name tags to include Hello may have 1880 at Niagara Falls, which was the site of the first telephone operators convention. By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as "hello-girls" because of the association between the greeting and the telephone. [14] [15]
A 1918 fiction novel uses the spelling "Halloa" in the context of telephone conversations. [16]
Hello might be derived from an older spelling variant, hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello", [17] 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. [18] The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello. [19] [20] [21] [22]
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] [25]
If I fly, Marcius,/Halloo me like a hare.
Fowler's has it that "hallo" is first recorded "as a shout to call attention" in 1864. [26] 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 playCame to the mariners' hollo!
In many Germanic languages, including German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Afrikaans, "hallo" directly 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. [27]
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). [28]
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, and 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]
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.
A thesaurus, sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings, sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:
...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed
Jargon or technical language is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a particular occupation, but any ingroup can have jargon. The key characteristic that distinguishes jargon from the rest of a language is its specialized vocabulary, which includes terms and definitions of words that are unique to the context, and terms used in a narrower and more exact sense than when used in colloquial language. This can lead outgroups to misunderstand communication attempts. Jargon is sometimes understood as a form of technical slang and then distinguished from the official terminology used in a particular field of activity.
A gimmick is a novel device or idea designed primarily to attract attention or increase appeal, often with little intrinsic value. When applied to retail marketing, it is a unique or quirky feature designed to make a product or service "stand out" from its competitors. Product gimmicks are sometimes considered mere novelties, and tangential to the product's functioning. Gimmicks are occasionally viewed negatively, but some seemingly trivial gimmicks of the past have evolved into useful, permanent features. In video games, the term is also sometimes used to describe unusual features or playstyles, especially if they are unnecessary or obnoxious.
This is a list of British words not widely used in the United States. In Commonwealth of Nations, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Australia, some of the British terms listed are used, although another usage is often preferred.
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an American company that publishes reference books and is mostly known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.
Yo is a slang interjection, commonly associated with North American English. It was popularized by the Italian-American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s.
Owing to the dominance of the Google search engine, to google has become a transitive verb. The neologism commonly refers to searching for information on the World Wide Web, typically using the Google search engine. The American Dialect Society chose it as the "most useful word of 2002". It was added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006, and to the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006.
Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier". Such words designed to indicate large quantities can be called "indefinite hyperbolic numerals".
Huzzah is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), "apparently a mere exclamation". The dictionary does not mention any specific derivation. Whatever its origins, it has seen occasional literary use since at least the time of Shakespeare, as the first use was in 1573, according to Merriam-Webster.
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This feature is also called enantiosemy, enantionymy, antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British or Commonwealth English date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.
Irregardless is a word sometimes used in place of regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since the early twentieth century, though the word appeared in print as early as 1795. The word is mostly known for being controversial and often proscribed, and is often mentioned in discussions on prescriptive and descriptive lexicography.
In the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a niece or nephew is a child of an individual's sibling or sibling-in-law. A niece is female and a nephew is male, and they would call their parents' siblings aunt or uncle. The gender-neutral term nibling has been used in place of the common terms, especially in specialist literature.
Ahoy is a signal word used to call to a ship or boat. It is derived from the Middle English cry, 'Hoy!'. The word fell out of use at one time, but was revived when sailing became a popular sport. 'Ahoy' can also be used as a greeting, a warning, or a farewell.
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:
