"H" Word Origins

Hitomi

Japanese

Borrowed from Japanese ひとみ (Hitomi), a given name with numerous possible original kanji.

hitter

Origin

From hit + -er (agent noun suffix) or -er (measurement suffix).

Hittite

Hebrew · 1900

From Biblical Hebrew for the Hittites, which traces to the Hittites' own name for their land, Hatti. Confusingly, the term was applied in the early 20th century to the Indo-European-speaking Anatolian civilization now called Hittite, even though it was originally mixed up with a related but separate people, the Hattians.

hive

Old English

From Old English hyf, going back to a very old root meaning a curved or hollowed-out vessel — related to words like "cup" and "coupe". The computing sense (a section of the registry) was chosen later purely as a bee-themed pun.

hives

Origin

Origin uncertain; possibly related to "heave", though the sound change is hard to explain.

hiya

Origin · 1940

A shortened, casual form of "how are you?", blended with "hi"; first recorded in American English in the 1940s.

HJ

English

An abbreviation of handjob, formed on the same pattern as BJ for blowjob.

hm

Japanese

(Pokémon): Phono-semantic matching of Japanese ひでんマシン (Hiden Mashin, “Secret Machine”).

hmg

Origin

By initialism.

hmm

Origin

Related to "hum" — the sound of a closed-mouth murmur.

hmong

Origin

From White Hmong Hmoob.

HMU

English

An initialism of the phrase hit me up.

ho

Old English

From Old English hō, an interjection related to Old Norse "hó", a shepherd's call. The slang noun sense is a clipped, informal pronunciation of "whore".

hoa

Chinese

The interjection is an old variant spelling of "ho." The ethnic-group sense comes from Vietnamese Hoa, itself borrowed from Chinese 華 (huá), meaning "Chinese."

hoagie

Italian

Origin uncertain; one popular theory links it to Hog Island, a Philadelphia shipyard where Italian immigrant workers were said to have made these sandwiches for their lunch.

hoar

Origin

From Middle English hor, hore, from Old English hār (“hoar, hoary, grey, old”), from Proto-West Germanic *hair, from Proto-Germanic *hairaz (“grey”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₃- (“grey, dark”). Cognate with German hehr (“noble, sublime”), Herr (“sir, gentleman”), Scottish Gaelic ciar (“dusky”), and Russian се́рый (séryj, “grey”).

hoard

Old English

From Old English hord ("treasure, stored-up wealth"), from a Germanic root ultimately meaning "something hidden".

hoarder

Old English

From hoard plus the agent suffix -er, going back to Old English hordere, meaning a keeper of stores or treasure.

hoarding

Origin

From hoard plus -ing.

hoarse

Old English

From Old English hās, related to Old Norse forms with the same meaning.

hoarsely

Middle English

From Middle English hosely; equivalent to hoarse + -ly.

hoary

Origin

Possibly from Middle English *hori (suggested by horilocket (“hoary-locked, having hoary locks or curls”)), equivalent to hoar + -y. Alternatively, Middle English horilocket may represent Middle English hor (“hoar, hoary”) + ilocket (“locked”) rather than hori (“hoary”) + locket (“locked”).

hoax

Origin

Likely a shortened form of "hocus", itself probably tied to "hocus-pocus", the classic magician's phrase.

hoaxer

Origin

From hoax + -er.

hob

Origin

Related to hub, but the ultimate origin of both words is obscure.

Hobbes

Origin

From a medieval diminutive of the given name Robert plus the patronymic suffix -s.

hobbit

Old English · 1930

Invented by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s for his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; he later joked it might come from an imagined Old English word meaning "hole-dweller".

hobble

Middle English

From Middle English hobblen, related to Middle Dutch hobbelen, of similar meaning.

Hobbs

Origin

From a medieval diminutive of the given name Robert plus the patronymic suffix -s.

hobby

Origin

Shortened from "hobby-horse", originally meaning a small pony, which came to mean a toy riding-horse, and eventually a favorite pastime — the link being an activity that, like a toy horse, "goes nowhere".

hobbyist

Origin

From hobby + -ist.

hobgoblin

Origin

From hob (“elf”, from Hob, a variant of Rob, short for Robin Goodfellow, an elf in Germanic folklore) + goblin.

hobnob

Origin

From hob and nob, hob or nob (“a phrase spoken when making a toast, possibly meaning ‘give and take’; to take turns toasting or buying rounds of drinks”) (archaic), from dialectal hab nab (“to have or have not, in the sense of an invitation to have a drink”), from Old English habban (“to have, possess”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to grab, seize”)) + nabban (“to not have”) (from ne (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *né (“not”)) + habban).

hobo

Origin

Origin unknown; possibly a contraction of "ho, boy" or linked to an old dialect word for a country bumpkin.

Hoboken

Dutch

Borrowed from Dutch Hoboken, from Middle Dutch words meaning "high beeches."

Hobson

Origin

From a medieval diminutive of the given name Robert plus -son.

hock

German

The "pawn" sense traces to a clipping of "hockamore", itself from German; the wine sense comes from Hochheim, a German wine-producing town.

hocket

Origin

From French hoquet (“hiccup”).

hockey

Origin · 1500

First recorded in the 16th century; origin uncertain, but possibly linked to "hook", referring to the curved shape of the stick.

hocus

Origin

A shortened form of "hocus-pocus", the traditional magician's phrase used before a trick.

hodad

Origin

Originally Californian surfer slang from the 1960s. Perhaps from the greeting Ho! Dad, though no evidence for this derivation is known. The suggestion that it derives from Western Hemisphere Spanish jodido (“fucked, difficult, annoying”) similarly lacks evidence; also the vowel change from -did to -dad is unexplained.

Hodge

French

From a Middle English diminutive of the given name Roger. The substitution of H for R is common in English words derived from Norman French.

hodgepodge

Origin

From Middle English hochepoche, a variation of hochepot, from Old French hochepot, from Middle Dutch hutspot (“beef or mutton cut into small pieces and mixed and boiled together in a pot”), from hotsen, hutsen (“to shake; jog; jolt”) + pot (“pot”), equivalent to hotch + pot. Compare German Low German Hüttspott (“hodgepodge”).

Hodges

Origin

From Hodge, a pet form of the given name Roger, plus the patronymic suffix -s.

Hodgins

Origin

From Hodgin, a diminutive of the given name Roger, plus the patronymic suffix -s.

hodgkin

Origin

From Hodge, a Middle English diminutive of the given name Roger + -kin.

hodiern

Origin

Borrowed from Latin hodiernus, from hodie (“today”).

hodja

Persian

Borrowed via Ottoman Turkish from a Persian word ultimately from Sanskrit, meaning "teacher" — related to the word "Hoxha" as a surname.