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Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. Its meaning is synonymous with other greetings such as Hi or Hey. Hello was recorded in dictionaries by 1883. Many different languages use an equivalent expression which sounds similar often either starting with an h or having a l sound. Examples would be Russian алло (pronounced as allo), Spanish hola, and Thai haloo. While some languages imported the English word to use it as a greeting upon answering the telephone, several others have their own specific origin for the word, as with Portuguese olá, Spanish hola, German hallo and Hungarian hallom.
First use 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!'" Earlier uses can be found back to 1849.• It was listed in dictionaries by 1883.• The word was extensively used by the 1860s. Two early uses of hello can be found as far back as 1826.• Etymology There are many different theories to the origins of the word. It may be a contraction of archaic English "whole be thou".• 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 phoneme that may be the origin of hello: English, hail; German, heil; Scandinavian, hei; old Norse, heill. The core meaning may be something like "safe, healthy" and related to the English word "whole", i.e. physically sound. Telephone 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.• In Hungarian, Hallod? (pron. roughly as British hullo) means "Do you hear it/what I am saying?" and the answer is Hallom (pron. like hullom) for "I hear it/what you are saying.". Another story suggests this a 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 1857e (although the book was set in the 1830s so it may have been in use by then): Hallo Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo(1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa,halloo,halloa).• "If I fly, Marcius,Halloo me like a hare." - Coriolanus ActI.Scene VIII, 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" such as, in French "salutaire" meaning "healthy", in Russian "zdorovo" meaning "in a healthy way" and in Mandarin Chinese "Ni hao ma?" meaning "are you well?". | ||||||||
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