hail
pronunciation
How to pronounce hail in British English:
UK [heɪl]
How to pronounce hail in American English:
US [heɪl]
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- Noun:
- precipitation of ice pellets when there are strong rising air currents
- enthusiastic greeting
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- Verb:
- praise vociferously
- be a native of
- call for
- greet enthusiastically or joyfully
- precipitate as small ice particles
Word Origin
- hail
- hail: Not surprisingly, hail ‘frozen rain’ [OE] and hail ‘call out’ [12] are quite unrelated. The former, together with its German and Dutch relative hagel, comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *hagalaz, which is related ultimately to Greek kákhlēx ‘pebble’. The verb hail is closely related to hale and whole. It comes from the noun hail, which in turn was a nominal use of the now obsolete adjective hail ‘healthy’ (preserved in wassail, literally ‘be healthy’). This was borrowed from heill, the Old Norse counterpart of English whole.=> hale, wassail, whole
- hail (interj.)
- salutation in greeting, c. 1200, from Old Norse heill "health, prosperity, good luck," or a similar Scandinavian source, and in part from Old English shortening of wæs hæil "be healthy" (see health; and compare wassail). The interj. hail is thus an abbreviated sentence expressing a wish, 'be whole,' i. e., be in good health, and equiv. to L. salve, plural salvete, or ave, plural avete .... [Century Dictionary]
- hail (n.)
- "frozen rain, pellets of ice falling in showers," Old English hægl, hagol (Mercian hegel) "hail, hailstorm," also the name of the rune for H, from Proto-Germanic *haglaz (cognates: Old Frisian heil, Old Saxon, Old High German hagal, Old Norse hagl, German Hagel "hail"), probably from PIE *kaghlo- "pebble" (cognates: Greek kakhlex "round pebble").
- hail (v.1)
- "to greet or address with 'hail!,'" also "to drink toasts," c. 1200, heilen; to call to from a distance," 1560s (in this sense originally nautical), from hail (interj.). Related: Hailed; hailing. Hail fellow well met is from 1580s as a descriptive adjective, from a familiar greeting; hail fellow (adj.) "overly familiar" is from 1570s. Hail Mary (c. 1300) is the angelic salutation (Latin ave Maria) in Luke i:58, used as a devotional recitation. As a desperation play in U.S. football, attested by 1940. To hail from is 1841, originally nautical. "Hail, Columbia," the popular patriotic song, also was a euphemism for "hell" in American English slang from c. 1850-1910.
- hail (v.2)
- Old English hagalian "to fall as hail," from root of hail (n.). Related: Hailed; hailing. Figurative use from mid-15c.
Example
- 1. The weather forecast says there 's a hail tonight .
- 2. So , all hail australia , the best stock market of the last century .
- 3. All hail the great browser war !
- 4. Admirers hail it as an architectural wonder .
- 5. Led by china , most governments in asia will probably hail the vote as a landmark .