It’s so cold in my house tonight that I’ve donned my heavy woollen
jacket with the lambswool collar. It’s pretty cool – the jacket, that is. (The
vernacular can be the source of some confusion occasionally.) I’ve turned the
heaters up, but they’re night storage ones so I won’t get the benefit until
tomorrow.
I sometimes wish that
I could be
An android or an apple
tree
Instead I have to try
and see
If I can cope with being me.
Did you know that Thomas Edison is credited with having been the
first person to use the word ‘hello’ as a greeting?
The Woman in America
continues to monopolise my attention.
2 comments:
I didn't know that about Edison. What did people say before? Good day? Good evening?
I do know that if it weren't for Edison and greed we'd have free electricity thanks to Nicoli Tesla.
I suppose people used various greetings. Apparently, the term 'hullo' was already in use, but only as an exclamation meaning 'gosh' or 'what have we here?' (Basil Rathbone uses it all the time in the old Sherlock Holmes films.) What wasn't explained was whether the American term 'howdy' (a contraction, I assume, of 'how do you do') preceeded it. I suppose it probably did.
It seems that Edison liked it so much that he decided to use it as a greeting and is the first known person to have spelt it wih an 'e.'
And I didn't know that about Tesla. Sounds like the profit motive scored yet another victory.
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