Ahoy (greeting)

Ahoy (/əˈhɔɪ/) ( listen ) is a signal word used to call to a ship or boat, stemming from the Middle English cry, 'Hoy!'. The word had fallen into obsolescence before rising from obscurity as the sport of sailing rose in popularity. 'Ahoy' can also be used as a greeting, a warning, or a farewell.

The word can be found with similar pronunciation and writing in several other languages. In Slovak and Czech also, ahoj is a common, colloquial greeting, while 'Hoi' is used in Modern Dutch as an informal greeting equivalent to the English 'hi' or 'hey'. 'Ohøj' is used in Danish almost identically to the aforementioned usages. It stems from the sea-faring world, used as an interjection to catch the attention of other crew members, and as a general greeting. It can sometimes also be found on land spoken as a general greeting, again, especially in a maritime context.

Alexander Graham Bell originally suggested 'ahoy' be adopted as the standard greeting when answering a telephone, before 'hello' (suggested by Thomas Edison) became common.

Ahoy is a combination of the call 'hoy' plus the sound 'a', presumably added to draw more attention to the cry. 'Hoy!' was a common call in England to drive cattle. 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! troly! lolly!', which roughly translates to "And helped to plow this half acre with 'hoy! troly! lolly!'".

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