Hello! Hello!
SANTINI GOVINDAN
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The word is common enough. But how did people begin to use it?
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Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam.
Greeting : Say hi!
We use the word ‘hello’ many times a day. Have you wondered why we use this particular word, rather than any other?
Well, there are many interesting theories about the origin of the word. Some say that is an abbreviated form of an old English greeting that people used in olden times when they met — “Whole be thou”. Another theory says that over the ages, the biblical greeting “Hail thou” gradually turned into hello.
The French language got the word “holla” meaning “stop there”. The German language also had a greeting “heil” which meant “good health”. In the Hungarian language the word “Hallod” means “Do you hear what I am saying? The reply to this is “Hallom” which means “I hear what you are saying.”
The Oxford English Dictionary says that hullo and hello and its other derivatives probably come from the verb “hallow”, an old English word meaning, “to shout in encouragement”. The word was first recorded in English dictionaries in 1883. But Charles Dicken’s character — the artful dodger, greeted Oliver with a hullo! in Oliver Twist, published in 1838!
When the telephone was invented in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell suggested that the words ‘Ahoy! Ahoy!’ be used to start a conversation! In 1877, Thomas Edison suggested that the word ‘hello’ be used as the initial greeting in a phone call. This was accepted and eventually mentioned in the manuals that were issued with early telephones. In the initial days of the telephone, female operators in the U.S. were called “hello girls”.
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