The Crossword Solver found answer to “One getting hailed on Broadway?”, 4 letters crossword clue. The Crossword Solver finds answers to American-style crosswords, British-style crosswords, general knowledge crosswords and cryptic crossword puzzles.
Answer : AHOY
Ahoy is a signal word used to call to a ship or boat. It’s derived from the Middle English cry, ‘Hoy!’. The word fell out of use at one time, but was revived when sailing became a popular sport. ‘Ahoy’ can also be used as a greeting, a warning, or a farewell. One or another variation on the word is found in several languages. In Czech and Slovak, ahoj is a common, colloquial greeting, while ‘hoi’ in Modern Dutch and Swiss German, ‘oi’ in Brazilian Portuguese and Italian, and ‘Ohøj’ in Danish are informal greetings equivalent to the English ‘hi’ or ‘hey’.
‘Ahoy’ originated in the seafaring world, where it was used as an interjection to catch the attention of crew members and as a general greeting. It is often used today by participants in playful imitations of pirate speak. Alexander Graham Bell initially suggested that the standard greeting when answering a telephone should be ‘ahoy’, but instead ‘hello’ (suggested by Thomas Edison) was adopted.
Ahoy is a combination of the call ‘hoy’ plus the sound ‘a’, presumably added to draw more attention to the cry. ‘Hoy!’ was a common call in England to drive cattle. The earliest known example is from William Langland, in whose 1393 epic poem, Piers the Ploughman, the word first appears in Middle English: ‘And holpen to erie þis half acre with ‘hoy! troly! lolly!’, which roughly translates to “And helped to plow this half acre with ‘hoy! troly! lolly!'”.
Seamen used the word “hoy” in the form of “hoay”. The Scottish poet William Falconer, author of a nautical dictionary, wrote 1769: “If the master intends to give any order to the people in the main-top, he calls, Main-top, hoay! To which they answer, Holloa!”, Two other dictionaries from 1805 list Falconers call as “hoay” and answer “holloa”.
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