Thomas Edison on the telephone, using his “Telescribe” device to record telephone calls, c. 1915
28 December 2020
The use of hello as a greeting is a relatively new use of the word, dating to the mid nineteenth century and only becoming popular with the advent of the telephone, but the word has precursors that date back centuries.
Holla or hola, a cry meaning to stop or to cease an action, can be found as far back as 1523, when it appears in a translation of Jean Froissart’s Cronycles:
Whan they were come in to the place / there speares were delyuered them / and so ran eche at other / and myssed by reason of stryuinge of their horses. The seconde course they met and ataynted. Than therle of Buckyngham sayd / hola: cease for it is late.
And to hollow, an early form of to holler, meaning to yell, comes a few years later. From a medical text by Andrew Boorde from 1542:
Also they must abstayne from drynkynge of wyne, and vse not to drynke ale and beere the whiche is ouer stronge: vocyferacyon halowynge, cryeng, and hygh synging is not good for the hed.
And toward the end of that century, the word was being used as a cry to attract attention or to indicate that one should listen. Poet and dramatist John Lyly used the word in that sense in his 1589 tract Pappe with an Hatchet. The tract was part of an ongoing propaganda war between Puritans and supporters of the Church of England known today as the Marprelate Controversy. A Puritan using the punning pseudonym of Martin Marprelate published a series of ribald and mocking pamphlets attacking Anglican bishops. Lyly and others attempted to use the same tactics. Lyly wrote in his:
Hollow there, giue me the beard I wore yesterday. O beware of a gray beard, and a balde head: for if such a one doo but nod, it is right dudgin and deepe discretion.
But the hello spelling doesn’t appear until nineteenth century America. The Connecticut Norwich Courier of 18 October 1826 uses hello in the same fashion that Lyly used hollow several centuries earlier:
I guess I’ll play a trick on these plaguy Methodists. Hello, Jim! I tell you what: I’ve got a sharp knife and feel as if I’d like to cut up something or other: and now if you’ll git some of their harness. I vow I’ll make short work of it.
It is easy to see how this attention-grabbing word could slip over into a greeting, and this happens in a 28 May 1853 article in the New York Clipper:
Hello ole feller, how are yer?
Hello becomes associated with the telephone because the earliest models of the device did not have a bell to signal an incoming call, so some sort of attention-grabbing term was needed. Alexander Graham Bell was in favor of using ahoy, but that lost out to hello, which was favored by Thomas Edison, among others. Edison makes note of this in a 15 August 1877 letter to T.B.A. David, the official in charge of a demonstration of the technology in the city 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
Three days later, on 18 August 1877, the Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle records the word hello being used just this way:
The word “Hello” was called into the Fourth avenue box, and directly a still small voice answered at the ear, “Hello, what do you want?”
And after bells were added to telephones, people continued to open their telephone conversations with hello, and from there it worked its way into other modes of communication.
Sources:
Boorde, Andrew. Hereafter Foloweth a Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Helth Made in Mou[n]tpyllier. London: Robert Wyer for John Gowghe, 1542 chapter 33, sig. M.iii. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Edison, Thomas A. Letter to T.B.A. David, 15 August 1877. In Allen Koenigsberg. “The First ‘Hello!’: Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone—Part 2.” Antique Phonograph Monthly, 8.1, 1987.
Froissart, Jean. Here Begynneth the First Volum of Sir Iohan Froyssart of the Cronycles of Englande, Fraunce, Spayne, Portyngale, Scotlande, Bretayne, Flau[n]ders: and Other Places Adioynynge. John Bourchier, trans. London: Richard Paynson, 1523, fol. 241r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Lyly, John. Pappe with an Hatchet. London: John Anoke and John Astile, 1589, Cv. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. hello, int. and n.; second edition, 1989, holla, int. and n.
“Rightly Served.” Norwich Courier (Connecticut), 18 October 1826, 4. Newsbank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: unknown photographer, c. 1915. Public domain image.