Hello

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

"Hello" is frequently used to begin a conversation

Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is attested in writing as early as the 1860s.[1]
Contents [hide] 1 First use 2 Etymology o o o o 2.1 Telephone 2.2 Hullo 2.3 Hallo and hollo 2.4 Cognates

3 "Hello, World" computer program 4 The Apple DOS HELLO program 5 Perception of "Hello" in other nations 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

First use
Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications as early as 1833. These include 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,[5] which came from Old High German "hal, hol, emphatic imperative of haln, holnto fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman."[6] It also connects the development of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in the French hol(roughly, 'whoa there!', from French l 'there').[7] As in addition to hello, halloo,[8] hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels.[citation needed]

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.[9]Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting.[10][11] However, in 1877, Edison wrote to T.B.A. David, the 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.[12] By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' due to the association between the greeting and the telephone.[11]

Hullo
Hello may be derived from hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as a "chiefly British variant of hello,"[13] 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.[14] The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello.[15][16][17][18][19]

Hallo and hollo

Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).[13] The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted:[13] Fowler's has it that "hallo" is first recorded "as a shout to call attention" in 1864.[20] 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! Hallo is also German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Afrikaans for Hello. If I fly, Marcius,/Halloo me like a hare. Coriolanus (I.viii.7), William Shakespeare

Webster's dictionary from 1913 traces the etymology of holloa to the Old English halow and suggests: "Perhaps from ah + lo; compare Anglo Saxon eal." 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).[21] The Old English verb, hlan (1. wv/t1b 1 to heal, cure, save; greet, salute; gehl! Hosanna!), may be the ultimate origin of the word.[22] Hlan is likely a cognate of German Heil and other similar words of Germanic origin. Bill Bryson asserts in his book Mother Tongue that "hello" comes from Old English hl bo u ("Hale be thou", or "whole be thou", meaning a wish for good health).

Cognates
This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. (March 2009) The word "hello" is found in many other languages. It is often only used when answering the telephone, or as an informal greeting. Language Cognate Usage

Afrikaans

hallo

general greeting

Albanian

alo

when answering the telephone

Arabic

when answering the telephone

Assamese

hllo

when answering the telephone

Bengali

hlo

when answering the telephone

Bulgarian

(alo)

when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting

Catalan

hola!

friendly (informal) greeting

Croatian

halo?

when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting

Czech

Hal?

when answering the telephone

Danish

hallo!

when answering the telephone

Dutch

hallo!

general greeting, normally not used for answering the telephone.

Esperanto

ha lo?

when answering the telephone

Estonian

hallo; halloo

when answering the telephone

Finnish

haloo?

when answering the telephone

French

all?

when answering the telephone

German

Hallo?, Hallo!

when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting

Gujarati

(hal)

when answering the telephone

hell! Hungarian hall!

friendly (informal) greeting

when answering the telephone

Hebrew

(hallo)

when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting

Hindi

(hal)

when answering the telephone

Icelandic

Hall

when answering the telephone

Irish

Heileo

Rarely used

Japanese

(har)

friendly (informal) greeting

Kannada

halloa

when answering the telephone

Khmer

all

when answering the telephone

Lithuanian

alio?

when answering the telephone

Macedonian (alo)

when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting

Marathi

hello

when answering the telephone

Norwegian hallo!

general greeting

Oriya

(hl/hl) when answering the telephone

Persian

ola

when answering the telephone

Polish

halo

when answering the telephone

Portuguese al?

when answering the telephone (Brazil only)

Romanian

alo

when answering the telephone

Russian

(allo),

when answering the telephone

Serbian

/halo

when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting

hola! Spanish al?

friendly (informal) greeting

(Latin America) when answering the telephone

Swedish

hall!

Tagalog

helo!

Thai

(hn l)

when answering the telephone

Turkish

alo!

when answering the telephone

Ukrainian

when answering the telephone

Vietnamese a l!

when answering the telephone

"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 outputs that greeting to a display screen or printer. The widespread use of this tradition arose from an introductory chapter of the book The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie, which reused the following example taken from earlier memos by Brian Kernighan at Bell Labs: int main() { printf("hello, world"); }

The Apple DOS HELLO program

A diskette formatted to boot Apple DOS 3.x on the Apple II series of computers will look for a BASIC program to run automatically after the operating system has booted. By default, the name of the program is HELLO, and is specified as a parameter of the INIT command used to format a floppy disk. For the HELLO program to work, it has to be created in the same language (Integer BASIC or Applesoft BASIC) that is present in the language ROM of the system the disk is being booted on.

Perception of "Hello" in other nations

In some other nations, especially the ones that had little contact with foreigners at the time, Westerners were often viewed as people who constantly said "hello" and little else. Chinese novelist Jung Chang describes this view as follows: In my mind... foreigners said 'hello' all the time, with an odd intonation.... When boys played 'guerrilla warfare,' which was their version of cowboys and Indians, the enemy side would have thorns glued onto their noses and say 'hello' all the time. Chang, Jung[23]

See also

Aloha As-Salamu Alaykum Ciao Kia ora Namaste Shalom World Hello Day

References
1. Jump up^ "Hello" Origins http://dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2012-10-23. 2. Jump up^ (Anonymous). The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. p. 144. 3. Jump up^ "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: December 21, 1833. p. 803. 4. Jump up^ [1] Origin of the word. 5. Jump up^ "Hello." Oxford English Dictionary Online. Second Edition, 1989. Oxford University Press. Accessed 09 Sep 2008. 6. Jump up^ "Hallo." OED Online. Second Edition, 1989. Oxford University Press. Accessed 09 Sep 2008. 7. Jump up^ "holla, int. and n.". OED Online. Retrieved October 4, 2008. 8. Jump up^ Butler, Mann, A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Wilcox, Dickerman & Co., 1834, p. 106. 9. Jump up^ Allen Koenigsberg. "The First "Hello!": Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone Part 2". Antique Phonograph Magazine, Vol.VIII No.6. Retrieved 2006-09-13. 10. Jump up^ Allen Koenigsberg (1999). "All Things Considered". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2006-09-13. 11. ^ Jump up to:
a b

"Online Etymology Dictionary". etymonline.com.

Retrieved 28 September 2010. 12. Jump up^ Allen Koenigsberg. "The First "Hello!": Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone Part 2". Retrieved 1 August 2012. 13. ^ Jump up to:
a b c

"hullo - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online

Dictionary". Merriam-webster.com. 2007-04-25. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 14. Jump up^ The Sporting Magazine. London (1803). Volume 23, p. 12.

15. Jump up^ phpBB + phpBB Search Engine Indexer. "Hullo From Orkney". Forum.downsizer.net. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 16. Jump up^ Piers Beckley (2008-04-23). "Writersroom Blog: Hullo again. Did you miss me?". BBC. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 17. Jump up^ Barton, Laura (2005-02-23). "Paris for a day | Technology". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 18. Jump up^ "Ashes: England v Australia - day one as it happened | Andy Bull and Rob Smyth | Sport | guardian.co.uk". London: Guardian. 2009-07-16. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 19. Jump up^ "BBC SPORT | Football | Europe | Semi-final clash excites fans". BBC News. 2005-04-14. Retrieved 2009-09-26. 20. Jump up^ The New Fowler's, revised third edition by R. W. Burchfield, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860263-4, p. 356. 21. Jump up^ "Hello". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Retrieved 2006-09-01. 22. Jump up^ OEME Dictionaries 23. Jump up^ Chang, Jung (1991). Wild Swans. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 247.

External links
Look up hello, hi, hey, orhiya in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Hello in more than 800 languages OED online entry for hollo (Subscription) Merriam-Webster Dictionary: hollo, hullo How to Say Hello Around the World - slideshow by Life magazine

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Greeting words and phrases English words

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