hey
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "hey", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "hey" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "hey" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hey is anEnglishintj. It means: An exclamation to get attention. Pronounced /heɪ/. It ranks #787 in English word frequency. Often confused with hi and ho.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hey |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Intj |
| IPA | /heɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #787 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hey is 3 letters long, classified as anintj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /heɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #787 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for hey in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hi", "ho", "HR", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hey, hei, also without h- in ey, from Old English *hē, ēa (interjection), attested as first element in hēlā, ēalā (“O!, alas!, oh!, lo!”). Cognate with Dutch hé, hei (“hi, hey”), German hei (“hey, wow”), Danish and Swedish hej (“hello, h… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is hey, spelled H-E-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An exclamation to get attention.
- 2A protest or reprimand.
- 3An expression of surprise.
- 4An informal greeting, similar to hi.
- 5A request for repetition or explanation; an expression of confusion.
- 6Used as a tag question, to emphasise what goes before or to request that the listener express an opinion about what has been said.
- 7A meaningless beat marker or extra, filler syllable in song lyrics.
Etymology
From Middle English hey, hei, also without h- in ey, from Old English *hē, ēa (interjection), attested as first element in hēlā, ēalā (“O!, alas!, oh!, lo!”). Cognate with Dutch hé, hei (“hi, hey”), German hei (“hey, wow”), Danish and Swedish hej (“hello, hey”), Faroese hey (“hey, hello”), Old Norse, Icelandic and Norwegian hei (“hey”), Polish hej (“hey, hello”), Romanian hei, Russian эй (ej, “hey”); see heigh. Probably a natural expression, as may be inferred from its presence with similar meaning in many other unrelated languages: for example, Burmese ဟေး (he:), Finnish hei, Unami hè, and Mandarin 哎 (āi), and various sound-alikes as Ancient Greek εἶα (eîa) and Latin eia, eho, Sanskrit हे (he). See also hello.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #787 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: