I’ve run into words like this many times. Words like wow, that are SUCH a part of modern life that we think of them as modern. New. Definitely not used by people in eras past. (Wow, in case you missed my post about it way back in 2012 or my revisit in 2020, dates from the 1510s.)

Hey is another word that might sound modern to your ears. It is, after all, almost treated as a slang greeting these days, informal in the extreme, right?

That may be true…but in fact, hey is an incredibly old word, tracing its roots all the way back to Latin! Various spellings of this same word are in evidence in England as early as 1200. It was often used as an interjection meant to get someone’s attention, a shout of encouragement for hunting dogs, and also a challenge or rebuttal. (Like when someone bumps into you, and you say, “Hey! Watch it!”

Many languages have very similar one-syllable sounds that do this work, often very similar to our sound and spelling. Icelandic, for instance, uses this as their primary casual greeting (spelled differently), so you’ll see it in The Christmas Book Flood, which releases tomorrow. 😉

Now, a quick peek at that Latin root. Latin actually had two versions of the word to denote two different feelings. Hei was an interjection that had a sorrowful tone, while heia was used to express joy. I kinda love that.

Word Nerds Merch!