English

Interjection

hullo

1. (Britain) Alternative form of hello (Greeting.)
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “chapter II, XV, and XIX”, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:

     “Mr Wooster?” “Oh, hullo, Lady Wickham.”
     [...] “Hullo, Bobbie,” I said. “Hullo, Bertie,” she said. “Hullo, Upjohn,” I said. The correct response to this would have been “Hullo, Wooster”, but he blew up in his lines and merely made a noise like a wolf with its big toe caught in a trap.
     [...] But as I approached the [telephone] and unhooked the thing you unhook, I was far from being at my most nonchalant, and when I heard Upjohn are-you-there-ing at the other end my manly spirit definitely blew a fuse. For I could tell by his voice that he was in the testiest of moods. Not even when conferring with me at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, on the occasion when I put sherbet in the ink, had I sensed in him a more marked stirred-up-ness. “Hullo? Hullo? Hullo? Are you there? Will you kindly answer me? This is Mr Upjohn speaking.”

2. (Britain, dated) Alternative form of hello (expressing puzzlement or discovery)
   • 1939, Country Life (volume 85, page 290)

     "Hullo, there's a monkey's wedding," said my wife's niece, a girl of about twenty, born in South Africa […] She was looking out on the lawn, and it was one of those lovely April mornings with sunshine and rain alternating […]

Noun

hullo ‎(plural hullos or hulloes)

1. (Britain) Alternative form of hello

Verb

hullo ‎(third-person singular simple present hullos, present participle hulloing, simple past and past participle hulloed)

1. (Britain) Alternative form of hello