Hello

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. Another early use was an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee,(Anonymous). [https://books.google.com/books?id=RZsOAAAAYAAJ&dq=hello&pg=PA144 The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee.] New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. p. 144. which was reprinted that same year in The London Literary Gazette.[https://books.google.com/books?id=NVsZAAAAMAAJ&dq=hello&pg=RA1-PA803 "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. The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hello] Origin of the word.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hollo, which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman".{{cite OED|term=hallo|id=83588}} 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').{{cite OED|term=holla|id=87735}} As in addition to hello, halloo,Butler, Mann, [https://archive.org/details/historyofcommonw00butl A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky], Wilcox, Dickerman & Co., 1834, p. 106. hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels.{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hollo|title=Definition of HOLLO|website=www.merriam-webster.com|date=23 September 2024 }}{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hullo|title=Definition of HULLO|website=www.merriam-webster.com}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hillo|title=Definition of HILLO|website=www.merriam-webster.com}}

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.{{Cite book |last=McCulloch |first=Gretchen |title=Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language |date=23 July 2019 |publisher=Riverhead |isbn=978-0735210936 |pages=201–202}}

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){{cite magazine|url=http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507 |title=The First "Hello!": Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone – Part 2 |author=Allen Koenigsberg |magazine=Antique Phonograph Magazine |volume=VIII |issue=6 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061116211033/http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507 |archive-date=16 November 2006 |url-status=dead }} and halloo was shouted at ferry boat operators by people who wanted to catch a ride. According to one account, halloo was the first word Edison yelled into his strip phonograph when he discovered recorded sound in 1877. Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he answered calls by saying "ahoy ahoy", borrowing the term used on ships.{{cite web|url=http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~klong/papers/hello.txt|title=All Things Considered|author=Allen Koenigsberg|publisher=National Public Radio|access-date=13 September 2006|year=1999|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090309094200/http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~klong/papers/hello.txt|archive-date=9 March 2009}}{{Cite web |url= http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=hello&searchmode=none |title=Online Etymology Dictionary |work=etymonline.com

|access-date=28 September 2010}} There is no evidence the greeting caught on. 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:

{{blockquote|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.}}

The first name tags to include Hello may have been in 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.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/garden/great-hello-mystery-is-solved.html|title=Great 'Hello' Mystery Is Solved|last=Grimes|first=William|date=5 March 1992|work=The New York Times|access-date=25 October 2017|issn=0362-4331}}

A 1918 novel uses the spelling "Halloa" in the context of telephone conversations.{{Cite book |last=Dehan |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3FAMAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22halloa%22&pg=PA500 |title=That which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day |date=1918 |publisher=G. P. Putnam |isbn=978-1-5332-9337-4 |language=en}}

{{Redirect|Hallo}}

Hello might be derived from an older spelling variant, hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello",{{cite web |date=25 April 2007 |title=hullo – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hullo |access-date=26 September 2009 |publisher=Merriam-webster.com}} 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.[https://books.google.com/books?id=27sCAAAAYAAJ&dq=hullo&pg=PA12 The Sporting Magazine.] London (1803). Volume 23, p. 12. The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello.{{cite web |title=Hullo From Orkney |url=http://forum.downsizer.net/archive/hullo-from-orkney__o_t__t_36387.html |access-date=26 September 2009 |publisher=Forum.downsizer.net}}{{cite web |author=Piers Beckley |date=23 April 2008 |title=Writersroom Blog: Hullo again. Did you miss me? |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/2008/04/hullo_again.shtml |access-date=26 September 2009 |publisher=BBC}}{{cite news |date=16 July 2009 |title=Ashes: England v Australia – day one as it happened | Andy Bull and Rob Smyth |work=The Guardian |location=London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/jul/16/ashes-england-australia-live-report |access-date=26 September 2009}}{{cite news |date=14 April 2005 |title=Semi-final clash excites fans |publisher=BBC Sport |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/4444713.stm |access-date=26 September 2009}}

Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).{{cite web|url=http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/hello|title=Hello|publisher=Merriam-Webster Online|access-date=7 February 2016}} The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted:{{cite web|url=http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/hollo|title=Hollo|publisher=Merriam-Webster Online|access-date=7 February 2016}}{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iSg_AQAAMAAJ&dq=%22halloa%22&pg=PA127 |title=Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes |date=1907 |publisher=Vinton |pages=127 |language=en}}

{{blockquote|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.The New Fowler's, revised third edition by R. W. Burchfield, Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-860263-4}}, p. 356. It is used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written in 1798:

{{blockquote|

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" 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.Bilderdijk, Willem [http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/bild002lief01_01/bild002lief01_01_0107.php?q=hallo Liefde en ballingschap. Brieven 1795–1797] (ed. Marita Mathijsen). Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam/Antwerp 1997

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).{{cite web|url=http://www.bartelby.com/61/60/H0136000.html|title=Hello|publisher= The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.|year=2000|access-date=1 September 2006}}

{{Main|"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, 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.{{cite book | last = Kernighan | first = Brian W. | author-link = Brian W. Kernighan | author2 = Ritchie, Dennis M. | title = The C Programming Language | edition = 1st | publisher = Prentice Hall | date = 1978 | location = Englewood Cliffs, NJ | isbn = 0-13-110163-3 | author-link2 = Dennis M. Ritchie | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/cprogramminglang00kern }} The book had reused an example taken from a 1974 memo by Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories.{{cite web|url=https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/ctut.pdf|title=Programming in C: A Tutorial|last=Kernighan|first=Brian|year=1974|publisher=Bell Labs|access-date=9 January 2019}}

• Aloha
• As-salamu alaykum
• Ciao
• Kia ora
• Namaste
• Shalom
• World Hello Day

{{Reflist}}

{{Wiktionary|hello|hi|hey|hiya}}

• [http://users.elite.net/runner/jennifers/hello1.htm Hello in more than 800 languages]
• [http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50107205?query_type=word&queryword=hollo&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=MJDi-YER2WO-12323&hilite=50107205 OED online entry for hollo] (Subscription)
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hollo hollo], [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hullo hullo]

Category:Greeting words and phrases

Category:English words