The danger of using QI as a source

[Brian Clegg]

I'm always interested in the source of words, and was interested to see the Bloomsbury science imprint Sigma tweet this:

Hello? Before 1877 this phrase had no meaning. #Onthisday Thomas Edison created the greeting 'hello' as an alternative to 'ahoy, ahoy'.
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I had previously heard this on QI and thought it, yes, quite interesting, but seeing in when at the computer inclined me to a spot of fact checking. Dipping into the ever-wonderful online version of the OED I discovered the earliest referenced use was 1826 (' Hello, Jim! I'll tell you what: I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd like to cut up something or other.' if you want to know.) and there were a good half dozen examples from both the UK and the US pre-dating Edison.

So it makes a great story, but it's just not true. I don't know where Sigma got the story from, but I do wonder if they had fallen for the mistake of using QI as a source...

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Q1. Pah.

 

[Karen Gray]

There's a few things on QI that pop up and are completely wrong, I suppose if they have fallen into the QI trap then it just shows that they haven't been doing their homework

 

[Paul Whybrow]

One of the most commonly-believed bits of knowledge is that peeing on jellyfish stings stops the pain. It appears on old episodes of Q.I., and is also featured in Friends where a whole episode was built around this myth.

If you really want to know what to do when stung, see this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-23502032

I think that such incorrect old wives' tales fall into the category of 'when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.'

 

[Graham H Miller]

I *think* that "Hello!" was an expression of alarm or surprise and it was Eddison who adopted it as a greeting. Which may explain the confusion

 

[Brian Clegg]

I *think* that "Hello!" was an expression of alarm or surprise and it was Eddison who adopted it as a greeting. Which may explain the confusion

No confusion. The 1826 reference, as I mention above, was 'Hello, Jim! I'll tell you what: I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd like to cut up something or other,' and pretty well all the pre-Edison references in the OED are greetings.

 

[Jennifer Stone]

Doesn't QI stand for Quota of Ignorance? I thought the whole show was based on misconceptions and old wives tales, but then i haven't really watched it.

 

[Bernard Stacey]

In a recent episode they did acknowledge that a lare proportion of their facts become out of date (not quite the same thing as the OP, I know) as a result of new research, and that panelists' answers may well have been correct when judged by these newer data.
They did a retrospective recount and Alan Davies received an extra 1700 or so points for all his previous 'bloopers'!

 

[Meerkat]

I had always heard (like, since I was a child) that Edison invented the expression Hello.