Hello

[1] Another early use was an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee,[2] which was reprinted that same year in The London Literary Gazette.

[4] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hollo,[1] which came from Old High German "halâ, holâ, emphatic imperative of halôn, holôn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman".

[5] It also connects the development of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in the French holà (roughly, 'whoa there!

In previous decades, hullo had been used as an exclamation of surprise (used early on by Charles Dickens in 1850)[12] and halloo was shouted at ferry boat operators by people who wanted to catch a ride.

[13] According to one account, halloo was the first word Edison yelled into his strip phonograph when he discovered recorded sound in 1877.

[19][20][21][22] Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).

[26] It is used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written in 1798: And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play

[27] 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".

This tradition was further popularised after being printed in an introductory chapter of the book The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie.