Misplaced Pages

Hello

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ismellaprep (talk | contribs) at 14:39, 7 May 2007 (Telephone). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 14:39, 7 May 2007 by Ismellaprep (talk | contribs) (Telephone)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article may require cleanup to meet Misplaced Pages's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can. (April 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
For other uses, see Hello (disambiguation).

Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language and is synonymous with other greetings such as Hi or Hey. Hello was recorded in dictionaries in 1883.

KYLE Anderson is hot!!!!

OLOOOOOOOO

Many stories date the first use of hello (with that spelling) to around the time of the invention of the telephone in 1876. It was however used in print in Roughing It by Mark Twain in 1872 (written between 1870 and 1871), so its first use must have predated the telephone:

"A miner came out and said: 'Hello!'" I like to say hello

Earlier uses can be found back to 1849. It was listed in dictionaries by 1883.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Another source may be the phrase "Hail, Thou", as in the Bible; Luke 1:28 and Matthew 27:14.

The Germanic languages share an ancient morpheme that may be the origin of hello: English, hail; German, heil; Scandinavian, hell/heil; old Norse, heill. The core meaning may be something like "safe, healthy" and related to the English word "whole" (also to "holy", "whole" and "health"), i.e. physically sound. See also "hale and hearty".

===Telephone=== TYler abd Tim are n00bs!!! ghahaha! Make mah day jew! The word hello is also credited to Thomas Edison specifically as a way to greet someone when answering the telephone; according to one source due to expressing his surprise with a misheard Hullo. Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting. However, in 1877, Edison wrote to T.B.A. David, the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburg:

"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."

By 1889 central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' due to the association between the greeting and the telephone.

In Hungarian, Hallod? (pron. roughly as British hullo) means "Do you hear ?" and the answer is Hallom (pron. like hullom) for "I hear .". Another story suggests this as a source for the use of hello on the telephone: the Hungarian inventor Tivadar Puskas was in America when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Soon Puskas began work on a telephone exchange. According to Thomas Edison, "Tivadar Puskas was the first person to suggest the idea of a telephone exchange". Puskas' idea finally became a reality in 1877 in Boston. It was then that the word hallom, which later became hallo/hello was used for the first time in a telephone conversation when, on hearing the voice of the person at the other end of the line, an exultant Puskas shouted out in Hungarian "hallom" "I hear you".

Hullo

Hello may also be derived from Hullo. Hullo was in use before hello and was used as a greeting and also an expression of surprise. Charles Dickens uses it in Chapter 8 of Oliver Twist in 1838 when Oliver meets the Artful Dodger:

"Upon this, the boy crossed over; and walking close up to Oliver, said 'Hullo, my covey! What's the row?'"

It was in use in both senses by the time Tom Brown's Schooldays was published in 1857 (although the book was set in the 1830s so it may have been in use by then):

  • "'Hullo though,' says East, pulling up, and taking another look at Tom; 'this'll never do...'"
  • "Hullo, Brown! where do you come from?"

Though much less common than it used to be, the word hullo is still in use, mainly in British English.

Hallo

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 when the quarry was spotted:

"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 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).

Related to health

The origin of hello could be related to "health", as the most common greetings in many languages originate from the word "health". Examples include the French "salut", meaning "health"; the Latin "salvete", meaning "be in good health"; the Russian "zdorovo", meaning " healthy "; and the Mandarin Chinese "Ni hao ma?", meaning "are you well?"

Other English Dialects

  • English (America, Australia, UK) Hello
  • English (America, UK) Good day
  • English (America) Hi
  • English (Australia) G'day
  • English (Australia) Hiya
  • English (New Zealand) Gidday
  • English (Southern USA) Hi y'all
  • English (Australia) Hay gaan
  • English (Australia) Hezza gaan
  • English (Texas USA) Howdy
  • English (Lousiana USA) Where ya'at
  • English (old England) Gode dai
  • English (old England) Gode dei
  • English (old Britain) Ic grete þe

Trivia

Computers exchanging email with SMTP greet each other with a HELO command.

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ "Online Etymology Dictionary".
  2. "Roughing It". UVa Library.
  3. Foster, George G (1849). New York in Slices. New York: W. F. Burgess. pp. cc=moa, g=moagrp, xc=1, q1=hello, rgn=full%20text, idno=aja2254.0001.001, didno=aja2254.0001.001, view=image, seq=0122 p120. Retrieved 2006-08-15.
  4. 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.
  5. Allen Koenigsberg (1999). "All Things Considered". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2006-09-13.
  6. ^ "Hello". Merriam-Webster Online.
  7. "Hello". The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Retrieved 2006-09-01.
Categories: