Ahoy (greeting)
The earliest known example is from William Langland, in whose 1393 epic poem, Piers the Ploughman, the word first appears in Middle English: 'And holpen to erie þis half acre with 'hoy!
As part of a group of words consisting of ahî, ay and ahei, which express pain, desire and admiration, ahiu can be found before exclamative or optative sentences and in emphatic greetings.
Ahui, together with aheia, ahi and ahu, belongs to a group of words that express incommensurable joy, esteem and similar positive attitudes.
In most languages it can be used as an interjection, whilst in others it takes the form of a verb (e. g. English - "to ahoy", German - "ahoi sagen")[2] or a noun (e. g. Swedish - "ohoj", German - "das Ahoi") It is not known how the word spread in harbour towns or on ships with an international crew, especially as similar sounding interjections in a neighbouring language may have either interfered with or promoted the adoption.
The expression ahoy was probably first heard in public in 1789 in the lyrics of a sea shanty, a worksong sung by able seamen, when the English composer Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) performed his musical The Oddities in London.
The Grimm brothers’ Dictionary of German (Deutsches Wörterbuch) did not recognize the word at the time; it did not appear in the first volume, published in 1852, with entries up to the keyword "allverein".
The standard work "Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache" by Friedrich Kluge lists ahoi as a separate entry since the 1999 edition.
German light fiction was printed so badly in the first half of the 19th century that even today good recognition software still produces a great number of errors, so that records are not found.
In 1835 and 1836 the anonymous translator of the two-volume story Trelawney's Abentheuer in Ostindien, which was published by sailor and later author Edward John Trelawny in 1832, who kept ahoy as a loanword.
In her short story Die Armenierin, the Saxon writer Charlotte Eleonore Wilhelmine von Gersdorff inserted this word several times in a specialist context, both as an invocation and to express encouragement.
In his novel Morton oder die große Tour, which was published for the first time in Zürich in 1835, a big crowd of excited people in Piccadilly Circus in London is summoned with the exclamation "Gare!
One such example of an off sea usage can be found in Smollet's novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751 in which commodore Trunnion utters " Ho, the house, Ahoy!".
In 1844, The German author Heinrich Smidt used the term "Ahoy" in parts of a pre-print version of his novel titled Michael de Ruiter.Pictures of Holland's Marine which was published in 1846 in the Magazine for the Literature from Abroad of which he was the editor.
The Pop song Schön ist die Liebe im Hafen with the final line of the chorus "Auch nicht mit Fürsten und Grafen / Tauschen wir Jungens, ahoi!"
In the German and Austrian Marines, before World War I, the boats which approached a warship lain at anchor were called using the expression "Boot ahoi!
From 1940 to 1943 the Phänomen-Werke Gustav Hiller company manufactured 125cc motor scooters for the German Wehrmacht in Zittau, under the name Phänomen Ahoi.
The expression originated among the Nebeltruppe, a Wehrmacht brigade group from 1935, whose job it was to create a chemical fog over a battlefield before destroying the target areas with mass fire.
It is possible that this is a combination of two interjections, as in Middle English, though eha might come from the typical Ore Mountain form eh "ein, inne", as ee halten "an-, ein-, innehalten".
This is indicated by the amount of evidence found in English and the lack thereof in Dutch, as well as criticism of the idea that in the Early Modern Period a word could be formed from a simple expression for a ship.
The sources for earlier uses of the term are lacking, because ahoi did not get its own lemma in the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal (WNT), even though this comprehensive dictionary includes interjections.
In 1908 author George Frans Haspels wrote "met donderend ahoei", "with thundering ahoy", referring to the forces of a storm that hit the coast.
In 1837 the Danish novelist Andreas Nikolai de Saint-Aubain, who published under the pseudonym Carl Bernhard, used the phrase "‚Ahoi, en Sejler!‘ raabte Matrosen fra Mærset".
[45] In the same year Saint-Aubin's German translation "‚Ahoi, ein Segler!‘, rief der Matrose vom Mers", is an example of early evidence in the German-speaking world.
The Swedish author Emilie Flygare-Carlén wrote in 1842: "Örnungen reddes till en ny färd på den klarnade böljan; manskabet skrek sitt muntra ‚å-hoj!‘"[46] The German translator of 1843 avoided the use of å-hoj and formulated it as such: "The young eagle was prepared for a new journey through the clear waves; the crew let out its cheerful shout of Hiaho.
The following are folk explanations [53] for why ahoj is used in this part of Central Europe: The international call which is sometimes accredited to a Bohemian sailor in the 17th century has since been proven to be wrong.
The spread of ahoj mainly dates back to the 1920s, when Czech adolescents and students populised canoeing on the South Moravian and Bohemian rivers.
The Czech Sokol movement with its preference for traditional gymnastics did not fit the adolenscent's spirit of optimism and progress, which cultivated an internationally and trendily* perceived sport with its own greeting.
They positioned their form of ahoj from sailors, which possibly coming from the lower parts of Germany, against Sokol's nazdar, Czech for hail.
In Slovakia ahoj-derivates are used in variety of different scenarios, such as the diminutive "ahojček", as a toast "ahojka", to a greater extent the plural-form "ahojte", as well as the grammatically correct we-form "ahojme sa".
In Theresienstadt concentration camp Czech-speaking Jews called jokingly non-believing inmates, who had assimilated to the Czech society, Ahojista, (English - "ahoy-ers").
