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Hello may also be derived from Hullo. Hullo was in use before hello and was used as a greeting and also an expression of surprise. Charles Dickens uses it in Chapter 8 of Oliver Twist in 1838 when Oliver meets the Artful Dodger. Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).[10] The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted. Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. Hello was recorded in dictionaries in 1883. Many stories date the first use of hello (with that spelling) to around the time of the invention of the telephone in 1876. It was, however, used in print in Roughing It by Mark Twain in 1872 (written between 1870 and 1871),[2] so its first use must have predated the telephone:

A miner came out and said: ‘Hello!’

Earlier uses can be found back to 1849[3] and 1846:

We meet the boys here, and it is “Hello, George,” or “Hello, Jim.” We slap the judge of the Supreme Court on the back with a “Hello, Joe, how are you?”[4]
—Charles Edwards Lester

It was listed in dictionaries by 1883.[1]

The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.

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