
Hello is a
salutation
A salutation is a greeting used in a Letter (message), letter or other communication. Salutations can be formal or informal. The most common form of salutation in an English letter includes the recipient's given name or title. For each style of ...
or
greeting
Greeting is an act of communication in which human beings intentionally make their presence known to each other, to show attention to, and to suggest a type of relationship (usually cordial) or social status (formal or informal) between individ ...
in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.
Early uses
''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
Norwich ( ) is a city in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The Yantic River, Yantic, Shetucket River, Shetucket, and Quinebaug Rivers flow into the city and form its harbor, from which the Thames River (Connecticut), Thames River f ...
.
Another early use was an 1833 American book called ''The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee'', which was reprinted that same year in ''
The London Literary Gazette''. The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.
Etymology
According to the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'', ''hello'' is an alteration of ''hallo'', ''hollo'',
which came from
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...
"''halâ'', ''holâ'', emphatic imperative of ''halôn'', ''holôn'' to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman". 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'). As in addition to ''hello'', ''halloo'', ''hallo'', ''hollo'', ''hullo'' and (rarely) ''hillo'' also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels.
Telephone
Before the telephone, verbal greetings often involved a time of day, such as "good morning". When the telephone began connecting people in different
time zone
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...
s, greetings without time gained popularity.
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
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
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
in 1850)
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
A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...
when he discovered recorded sound in 1877.
Shortly after
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (; born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born Canadian Americans, Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He als ...
invented the telephone, he answered calls by saying "''
ahoy ahoy''", borrowing the term used on ships.
There is no evidence the greeting caught on.
Edison suggested ''Hello!'' on August 15, 1877, in a letter to the president of
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
's Central District and Printing Telegraph Company, T. B. A. David:
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.
[
A 1918 novel uses the spelling "Halloa" in the context of telephone conversations.
]
Hullo, hallo, and other spellings
''Hello'' might be derived from an older spelling variant, ''hullo'', which the American Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an list of companies of the United States by state, American company that publishes reference work, reference books and is mostly known for Webster's Dictionary, its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary pub ...
dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello", 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. The word ''hullo'' is still in use, with the meaning ''hello''.
''Hello'' is alternatively thought to come from the word ''hallo'' (1840) via ''hollo'' (also ''holla'', ''holloa'', ''halloo'', ''halloa''). The definition of ''hollo'' is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt
Hunting is the Human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body for meat and useful animal products (fur/hide (sk ...
when the quarry was spotted:
Fowler's has it that "hallo" is first recorded "as a shout to call attention" in 1864. It is used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...
's famous poem ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere''), written by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of '' Lyrical Ballads'', is a poem that recounts th ...
'' written in 1798:
In many Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...
, including German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...
, "''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
Willem Bilderdijk (; 7 September 1756 – 18 December 1831) was a Dutch poet, historian, lawyer, and linguist.
Life
Willem Bilderdijk was born on 7 September 1756 in Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic.Joris van Eijnatten,Bilderdijk, W., ''Bio- en bi ...
to his sister-in-law as a remark of astonishment.
Webster's dictionary
''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...
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
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, p ...
'', ''hallo'' is a modification of the obsolete ''holla'' (''stop!''), perhaps from Old French ''hola'' (''ho'', ho! + ''la'', there, from Latin ''illac'', that way).
"Hello, World" computer program
Students learning a new computer programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs.
Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...
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
''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the C programming langu ...
'' by Brian Kernighan
Brian Wilson Kernighan (; born January 30, 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist.
He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known ...
and Dennis Ritchie
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thomp ...
. The book had reused an example taken from a 1974 memo by Kernighan at Bell Laboratories
Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...
.
See also
*Aloha
''Aloha'' ( , Hawaiian: �ˈlohə is the Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy, that is commonly used as a greeting. It has a deeper cultural and spiritual significance to native Hawaiians, for whom the term is use ...
*As-salamu alaykum
''As-salamu alaykum'' (, ), also written ''salamun alaykum'' and typically rendered in English as ''salam alaykum'', is a greeting in Arabic that means 'Peace be upon you'. The (, meaning 'peace') has become a religious salutation for Muslims ...
*Ciao
( , ) is an informal salutation in the Italian language that is used for both " hello" and "goodbye".
Originally from the Venetian language, it has entered the vocabulary of English and of many other languages around the world. Its dual mea ...
* Kia ora
*Namaste
''Namaste'' (, Devanagari: नमस्ते), sometimes called ''namaskār'' and ''namaskāram'', is a customary Hindu manner of respectfully greeting and honouring a person or group, used at any time of day. It is used worldwide among the ...
*Shalom
''Shalom'' ( ''šālōm'') is a Hebrew word meaning ''peace'' and can be used idiomatically to mean ''hello'' and ''goodbye''.
As it does in English, it can refer to either peace between two entities (especially between a person and God or b ...
* World Hello Day
References
Further reading
Hello! Hello!
an article from 1880 in the ''San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and has been published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst and the flagship of the He ...
'' discussing use of the word on the telephone
External links
{{Wiktionary, hello, hi, hey, hiya
Hello in more than 800 languages
OED online entry for ''hollo''
(Subscription)
* Merriam-Webster Dictionary
''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...
hollo
hullo
Greeting words and phrases
English words