CXL – Day three of the year MMXV

ahoyBurnt Harbor – Saturday January 3rd, 2015

Everyone here at Burnt Store makes a serious effort to be friendly and helpful. It really is much easier to be friendly than to work at being a bastard or a bitch. You could simply pass folks by without saying a word or making a gesture… that sends a message as well, you couldn’t care less.

We sat Hi. Today while riding one of the circus bikes I began to wonder as I do why do we say Hi? Is it short for hello? Think about how nasty phone conversations could be if we greeted people on the phone with WHAT? The googlizer suggests that the two competitors for inventing the phone Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. We all know Alexander Graham Bell and that Thomas Edison invented kites and lightning I think, the ‘key’ to telecommunication. It was in fact Thomas Edison who coined the phrase Hello as a phone greeting. Alexander Graham Bell promoted ‘Ahoy’.

We all think that the term Hello is likely an old term and greeting…not so. Hello was used as a term to get someones attention; Hello, what are you doing here? We’ve all heard Mike Coomes talk like that. The first documented use of Hello was in 1827, relatively new to the English language.

You have all heard someone use the AGB term ahoy. Montgomery Burns on the Simpsons answers his phone with ‘Ahoy hoy’

In fact, the first phone book ever published, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 (with 50 subscribers listed) told users to begin their conversations with “a firm and cheery ‘hulloa.'” (I’m guessing the extra “a” is silent.)

Effective today, I will begin answering the phone with a hale and hearty ‘AHOY’, depending on the rum concentration of the atmosphere that day I may or may not add a somewhat hearty ‘hoy’.

 

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