Word.ws English Dictionary

hail

/heɪl/

hail noun: balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.

hail: balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm
Image: Rbreidbrown, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hail (countable and uncountable, plural hails)

  1. (uncountable) Balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.
  2. (countable) An occurrence of this type of precipitation; a hailstorm.
  3. (broadly, countable) A rapid, intense barrage by a large number of projectiles or other objects.
    • Their lack of good intelligence also meant that they vastly overestimated the size of their foes for far too long, hails of armor-piercing shells doing comparatively little damage compared to the high explosive that they should have been using.2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 40:01 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2022
    Synonyms:
    downpouring

Verb (1)

hail (third-person singular simple present hails, present participle hailing, simple past and past participle hailed)

  1. (impersonal) To have hailstones fall from the sky.
    • They say it's going to hail tomorrow.
  2. (intransitive) To send or release hail.
    • The cloud would hail down furiously within a few minutes.
  3. To pour down in rapid succession.

Adjective

hail (comparative hailer, superlative hailest)

  1. (obsolete) Healthy, whole, safe.

Verb (2)

hail (third-person singular simple present hails, present participle hailing, simple past and past participle hailed)

  1. (transitive) To greet; give salutation to; salute.
    • […] Farewel happy Fields / Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail / Infernal world, and thou profoundeſt Hell / Receive they new Poſſeſſor: […]1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  2. (transitive) To name; to designate; to call.
    • Such a Son as all men hail'd me happy;1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 28
    • He was hailed as a hero.
  3. (transitive) To call out loudly in order to gain the attention of.
    • Hail a taxi.
    • 'Cause I've got one hand in my pocket / And the other one is hailin' a taxi cab1995, Alanis Morissette, “Hand In My Pocket”, in Jagged Little Pill
    1. (Australia, UK, broadly, transitive) To indicate, from a designated stop or otherwise, to the driver of a public transport vehicle that one wishes to board and travel on the vehicle, usually using hand signals such as waving.
      • In Melbourne, you would usually have to hail a tram when you are travelling late at night and there are no other passengers waiting at your stop.
  4. (transitive) To signal in order to initiate communication with.
  5. (transitive) In the game of uppies and downies, to throw (the ball) repeatedly up and down at the goal location, in order to score a point.
  6. (from) to originate (from), be native (to) or be based (in)

Interjection

hail

  1. (archaic, poetic) An exclamation of respectful or reverent salutation, or, occasionally, of familiar greeting.
    • Hail, brave friend.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • Hail (Hail) / What's the matter with your head? Yeah / Hail (Hail) / What's the matter with your mind / And your sign and-a, oh-oh-oh / Hail (Hail) / Nothing the matter with your head, baby, find it / Come on and find it / Hail1974 January, Lolly Vegas, “Come and Get Your Love”, in Wovoka, performed by Redbone, track 6

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Hail

Hail

  1. A province of Saudi Arabia
  2. A city in Hail, Saudi Arabia

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Hail

Hail (plural Hails)

  1. A surname.

hail meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

hail in Hindi

balls of ice
ओला olā, ओलावृष्टि olāvŕṣṭi
greeting!
जय jay

hail in Urdu

balls of ice
ژالَہ źāla

hail in Bengali

balls of ice
শিলাবৃষ্টি śilabriśṭi

hail in Telugu

hail!
నమః namaḥ
hail, hailstone
ఘనోపలము ghanōpalamu
More languagesFewer languages
hail in Malayalam
വിളിച്ചുകൂവുക, കൂക്കിവിളിക്കുക, വിളിച്ചു ശദ്ധ്ര ആകർഷിക്കുക, അകലെനിന്ന് ഉറക്കെ വിളിക്കുക
hail in Kannada
ಮುಗಿಲ್ಗಲ್ಲು, ಆಲಿಕಲ್ಲು, ಆಣೆಕಲ್ಲು, ಆಣಿಕಲ್ಲು
hail in Punjabi
ਚੰਦਰਾ candrā, ਜੈ jai, ਅਹਿਣ ahiṇ, اہن ahiṇ
hail in Gujarati
કરા karā, જય jay
hail in Sanskrit
जय jaya
hail in Nepali
हेल, जयजयकार
hail in Pashto
ږلۍ ẓalǝy, ږړۍ ẓaṛǝy, ګلۍ galǝy
hail in Tagalog
graniso, tawag, bati, saludo
hail in Arabic
بَرَد barad, مطر تلج máṭar talg, برد barad, السلام عليك
hail in Malay
hujan batu
hail in Indonesian
hujan es, hujan batu
hail in Persian
ژَالَه žāla, تَگَرْگ tagarg
hail in Thai
เห็บ hèp, เรียก rîiak
hail in Vietnamese
mưa đá, gọi, hoan hô, hoan nghênh
hail in Myanmar
မိုးသီး mui:si:

Examples of hail in a sentence

  • We were pooped within hailing of the quay and were nearly sunk.
  • My niece speaks French but she hails from Hampshire.
  • Thankfully the hail slacked off after a few minutes.

All 40 example sentences with hail

Synonyms of hail

Forms of hail

Noun
pluralhails
Verb
third-person singular presenthails
present participlehailing
past participlehailed
pasthailed
Adjective
comparativehailer
superlativehailest
Proper noun
pluralHails

Past tense of hail: hailed

Plural of hail: hails

Origin of hail

From Middle English hayl, haul, from Old English hæġl, hæġel, hagol (“hail”), from Proto-West Germanic *hagl, from Proto-Germanic *haglaz, of uncertain origin. Either from Proto-Indo-European *kagʰlos (“pebble”); or alternatively from *ḱoḱló-, a reduplication of *ḱel- (“cold”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Hail (“hail”), West Frisian heil (“hail”), Low German Hagel (“hail”), German Hagel (“hail”), Dutch and Swedish hagel (“hail”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Icelandic hagl (“hail”). Compare also Old Norse héla (“frost”). Doublet of haglaz, if the second etymology (“cold”) is correct. Root-cognates outside of Germanic include Ancient Greek κάχληξ (kákhlēx, “pebble”), or alternatively Sanskrit शिशिर (śíśira, “cool, cold”), possibly also Lithuanian šešėlis (“shade, shadow”), depending on the etymology.

From Middle English haylen, haulien, hawelien, from Old English hagolian, hagalian (“to hail”), from Proto-West Germanic *haglōn, from Proto-Germanic *haglōną (“to hail”), from the noun (see above). Cognate with Saterland Frisian hailje (“to hail”), West Frisian heilje (“to hail”), Dutch hagelen (“to hail”), German Low German hageln (“to hail”), German hageln (“to hail”), Danish hagle (“to hail”), Swedish hagla (“to hail”), Norwegian Nynorsk hagle, hagla (“to hail”), Faroese hegla (“to hail”), Icelandic hagla (“to hail”).

From Middle English heyl (“healthy, sound”), from Old Norse heill, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz (“whole, entire, healthy”). The verb is from Middle English heilen, itself from the adjective. Doublet of whole, hale, and heil.

Words formed from hail

Phrases with hail

5 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with hail

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hail

What does hail mean?
Hail means balls or pieces of ice falling as precipitation, often in connection with a thunderstorm.
What is hail in Hindi?
Hail in Hindi is ओला (olā), ओलावृष्टि (olāvŕṣṭi), जय (jay). See Hail meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is hail?
Hail can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or an interjection.
How do you pronounce hail?
Hail is pronounced /heɪl/.
What is the plural of hail?
The plural of hail is hails.

Words near hail in the dictionary

  1. haikulike
  2. haikus
  3. Haikwan
  4. Haikwan tael
  5. Haikwan taels
  6. hail
  7. hail and ride
  8. hail down
  9. hail fellow well met
  10. hail fellows well met
  11. hail from

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hail (page history and authors); Hail (page history and authors); ఘనోపలము (Telugu) (page history and authors); hail (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); hail (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); اہن (Punjabi) (page history and authors); કરા (Gujarati) (page history and authors); hail (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hail.ogg.

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