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]
Bill Bryson asserts in his book Mother Tongue that "hello" is a contraction of the Old English phrase 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"). [11]
Before the telephone, greetings often included a name and a time of day, such as "Good morning, Doctor", but on the telephone, it isn't immediately known who is speaking or whether they share the same time zone. So greetings without time began to catch on. [12]
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. [13] Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting. [14] [15] 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. [13]
By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' because of the association between the greeting and the telephone. [15] [16]
A 1918 fiction novel uses the spelling "Halloa" in the context of telephone conversations. [17]
Hello might be derived from an older spelling variant, hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello", [18] 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. [19] The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello. [20] [21] [22] [23]
Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa). [24] The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted: [25] [26]
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. [27] 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" 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. [28]
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). [29]
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. [30] The book had reused an example taken from a 1974 memo by Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. [31]
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 circular definition is a type of definition that uses the term(s) being defined as part of the description or assumes that the term(s) being described are already known. There are several kinds of circular definition, and several ways of characterising the term: pragmatic, lexicographic and linguistic. Circular definitions are related to Circular reasoning in that they both involve a self-referential approach.
The word Yid, also known as the Y-word, is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang by European football fans, antisemites, and others. Its usage may be controversial in modern English language. It is not usually considered offensive when pronounced, the way Yiddish speakers say it, but some may deem the word offensive nonetheless. When pronounced by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet by antisemites along with, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), an American lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.
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.
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".
A contronym, contranym or autantonym is a word with two meanings that are opposite each other. For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This phenomenon is called enantiosemy, enantionymy, antilogy or autantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography.
"Hello! Ma Baby" is a Tin Pan Alley song written in 1899 by the songwriting team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson, known as "Howard and Emerson". Its subject is a man who has a girlfriend he knows only through the telephone. At the time, telephones were relatively novel, present in fewer than 10% of U.S. households, and this was the first well-known song to refer to the device. Additionally, the word "Hello" itself was primarily associated with telephone use after Edison's utterance—by 1889, "Hello Girl" was slang for a telephone operator—though it later became a general greeting for all situations.
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.
The English word antidisestablishmentarianism is notable for its unusual length of 28 letters and 11 syllables, and is one of the longest words in the English language. It has been cited as the longest word in the English language, although some dictionaries do not recognize it because of its low usage in everyday lexicon.
