Hey

How to spell hey

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hey

What does hey mean?

1. interjectionAn exclamation used to greet someone, attract attention, or express surprise.

Hey in a sentence

• She waved and called out hey to her colleague across the office.

• Hey everyone, the meeting has been moved to the second floor.

Where does hey come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hey is one of those words that began life as a spontaneous noise rather than a borrowing, and it has been written down in English since at least the 1200s. It belongs to a family of Germanic exclamations used to call out, challenge, or register surprise, and close cousins survive across the continent, including German 'hei' and Dutch 'hei' or 'he'. Because it imitates a natural cry, similar forms appear independently in many languages, which makes a precise single ancestor impossible to pin down. Over the centuries its tone softened from a sharp call for attention into the casual greeting that dominates modern usage. The spelling trap is small but real: hey sounds exactly like 'hay', the dried grass, so the meaning, not the sound, must tell a writer which one to choose.

How the word is built

• hey (a single unanalysable interjection; no prefix, root, or suffix)

Words that sound like hey

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• hay: Grass that has been cut and dried, used as food for horses, cattle, and other livestock.