hey 
(h
)
KEY INTERJECTION: - Used to attract attention or to express surprise, appreciation, wonder, or pleasure.
Regional Note: Traditionally,
hey was just an exclamation. Sometimes it expressed delight, sometimes a warning. Nowadays we find it used for emphasis as well, especially in the expression
but hey. It is also a greeting. It is a short, colloquial version of
How are you? and thus close kin to the informal salutation
hi, which it seems to be replacing in many situations. Until recently, this greeting had a distinctly Southern flavor. The national survey conducted in the 1960s by the
Dictionary of American Regional English found
hey as a greeting restricted chiefly to Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. The friendly
hey has since spread throughout the United States.
