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35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCAL3 source sections across 1 headword matching “Hey”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
heyEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
From Middle English hey, hei, also without h- in ey, from Old English *hē, ēa (interjection), attested as first element in hēlā, ēalā (“O!, alas!, oh!, lo!”). Cognate with Dutch hé, hei (“hi, hey”), German hei (“hey, wow”), Danish and Swedish hej (“hello, hey”), Faroese hey (“hey, hello”), Old Norse, Icelandic and Norwegian hei (“hey”), Polish hej (“hey, hello”), Romanian hei, Russian эй (ej, “hey”); see heigh. Probably a natural expression, as may be inferred from its presence with similar meaning in many other unrelated languages: for example, Burmese ဟေး (he:), Finnish hei, Unami hè, and Mandarin 哎 (āi), and various sound-alikes as Ancient Greek εἶα (eîa) and Latin eia, eho, Sanskrit हे (he). See also hello.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗heyEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From French haie (“hedge”), with reference to the weaving patterns used in hedgelaying. Doublet of hedge and quay.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗heyEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
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Mayhew–Skeat (1888)
1888; pinned HTML transcription updated October 28, 2024The query “hey” cannot be resolved without D1. No static search results are fabricated.
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