The sarcastic meaning of "Hello" is traced to "Back to the Future": "Hello, hello? Anybody home? Hey! Think, McFly. Think."

In the Oxford English Dictionary:





Why am I researching the word "hello" at 4 in the morning? I started out writing something — it will be up next soon — about Trump's press conference, which I wanted to call "hairy." But I wasn't sure "hairy" really is used and understood anymore — "hairy," not in the sense of covered with hair (though with Trump that alternative meaning distracts us), but in the sense of difficult, rough, wild, frightening. It was common slang years ago, enough that The New Yorker had a cartoon in 1971 with the caption "And do you, Elizabeth, take this man, John, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, until the going gets hairy?"

To check for currency, I looked up "hairy" in the Urban Dictionary, and one thing I found was "Hey do you have the hairies on that?," which got me clicking through to "hey," one of the great English language words that you use all the time but don't think too much about. Years ago — back in the 50s and 60s — many adults would correct you if you thought you could get their attention with "Hey." Often they'd deploy the corny riposte "Hay is for horses." I think these were the same adults who would tell you "A kid is a baby goat" if you were crass enough to refer to a human child as a "kid."

Hey, kids...



... I wanted to track down the origin of "hey." "Hey" is such an old word that the OED's oldest use is unreadable: "Hei! hwuch wis read of se icudd keiser!" (a1225). Unreadable, except that we get the meaning of "Hei!" Even 200 years later, it's hard to understand. This is a line in a Christmas carol: "Hey, hey, hey, hey, The borrys hed is armyd gay." I'm just going to guess that there's some excitement about the presentation of a boar's head.

Anyway, "hey" got me thinking about "hi" — a great word that I'll do a separate post about sometime — and then "hello." I thought "hello" had been invented for speaking on the phone, but "hello" — the interjection defined by its use ("Used to attract attention") — goes back to 1826 in the Norwich (Conn.) Courier: "Hello, Jim! I'll tell you what: I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd like to cut up something or other." And then in 1833, "Sketches & Eccentricities Col. David Crockett":
"I seed a white man walking off with my plate. I says, ‘Hello, mister, bring back my plate.’"

The first telephone-related "hello" comes in 1877 from Thomas Edison: "I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think?" I think you are wrong, Mr. Edison. We need a bell!

Did you know that it was Thomas A. Watson, not the man with the name Bell, who invented the bell for the telephone:

It is impossible to say exactly how vital Watson’s role was in the invention of the phone, but he was certainly far more than a mere assistant. During the seven years he worked for Bell, he secured sixty patents in his own name, including one for the distinctive ringing bell that was for decades an invariable part of every phone call made. Remarkably, before this, the only way to know if someone was trying to get through to you was to pick up the phone from time to time and see if anyone was there.

That's from Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life." I don't know if you had to pick up the phone. It seems as though Edison's idea was that the phone would be left off the hook — if the hook was even part of the phone — and if you were calling you'd say "hello!" and if the person on the other end was within 10 or 20 feet, you'd get their attention, just as if you were there in person trying to get their attention with a "hey!" And why not "hey"? Apparently, "hello!" carries farther.

When shouting from a mountaintop or into a cave — or into a hollow skull — you always choose "hello":