antonym (n): a word of opposite meaning
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Don't say "Hello"...

By sheer accident, I came across a quote that had me looking up some telephonic history. It turns out that Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone (originally the "harmonic telegraph") originally proposed people answer the phone by saying "Hoy Hoy!", said to be derived from the maritime greeting "Ahoy!". It was Thomas Edison, his sometime rival inventor, who proposed the word "Hello". Indeed, it wasn't until around 20 years ago when a historian uncovered the first written record of the word "hello", in a letter written by Edison in 1877.

So I propose that we all take a leaf out of Monty Burns' book, and answer the phone with Bell's original "Hoy hoy!". Who knows - it might catch on second time around?

By gavinb at 02/28/2005 - 13:06 | gavinb's blog | add new comment | 4630 reads

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Hoy Hoy

I think I'll try using 'hoy hoy' in future.

Especially with AAPT 'Tell it like it is' - they could not join two ends of a copper cable together - I've been trying to assist them in getting my bundle of phone and broadband services transferred to AAPT, since 12th Dec 2005 when I agreed to transfer from Optus to their 'homechat' and ADSL Broadband. But every hour I spend talking to them seems to leed to another 2 hours of stuff ups I have to try and sort out with them. Just unimaginable. If anything can go wrong with AAPT's delivery of service, it certainly will. I've spent over 40 hours trying to sort matters out over just about any issue you can think of.

Telstra, on the other hand, - they need five people to organise a technician's visit, and their systems for organising visits have failed me twice. I'm still sitting here today... waiting. They started to transfer me from Optus to Telstra 2 months ago. Or Optus,SingTel - a Singapore government company who have no moral standards on hanging, but only on profits. I promised I would drop their service maybe 5 months ago, I think. I've spent 3 months haggling with all three phone companies over a range of issues. I've had my winge.

The old Bell Telephone Company would be far more organised and responsive than any of the above, when it comes to getting something done.

Anyway, we are all very warmly pleased and excited about your upcoming wedding. Congrats.

We just got the invitation.

I've had fun experimenting with html tags..but lost the lot when I tried copying a jpg image to this comment field. So I won't fiddle as much this time.

Just say 'hoy hoy'

Where is the link to the wedding page?

Cheers

Arnold

By Arnold (not verified) at Fri, 03/31/2006 - 12:25 | reply

bloody fascinating

yep dude, gotta love word history ... well I do. I only found you site looking for what is a word that misconfigure isn't.

Malconfigure doesn't exist. I am am loath to use the long-hand "incorrectly configured". The quest goes on. Good luck with you questing and thankyou for the giggle-laugh.

By Anonymous at Thu, 03/03/2005 - 11:02 | reply