Word.ws English Dictionary

ahoy-hoy

ahoy-hoy interjection: a greeting.

Interjection

  1. (archaic) A greeting.

Origin of ahoy-hoy

From ahoy. In the 1870s, Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell did much development for the newly invented telephone. Bell's preferred salutation, ahoy-hoy was derived from the nautical term ahoy. A modern resurgence in the popularity of the term has resulted from its use by The Simpsons character Montgomery Burns, who answered the telephone with this word. The use of the archaic "ahoy-hoy", instead of the standard "hello", is a running joke referring to Mr. Burns's very advanced age.

Questions about ahoy-hoy

What does ahoy-hoy mean?
Ahoy-hoy means a greeting.
What part of speech is ahoy-hoy?
Ahoy-hoy is an interjection.

Words near ahoy-hoy in the dictionary

  1. Ahousaht
  2. Ahousahts
  3. Ahousat
  4. Ahousats
  5. ahoy
  6. ahoy-hoy
  7. ahoyed
  8. ahoying
  9. ahoys
  10. AHP
  11. AHPs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ahoy-hoy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ahoy-hoy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ahoy-hoy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.