a is for awesome, b is for badass - a

Ahoy!

Ahoy may just be the greatest word ever in the history of words, and greatness.

Firstly, it’s nautical. And boats are damn cool. There is nothing quite like simply messing about in boats. Primarily because you get to say “Ahoy!” to everyone you meet.

So it’s the most awesome greeting ever, but it’s also a farewell – like how “ciao” is both “hello” and “goodbye”. It gets points for that. Awesome points.

But here’s where it really knocks ciao out of the water – and not just because of its superior sailing ability – it’s also a warning. How many words are that versatile? Try it with hello and see how you fare. It’ll probably be a lot like the time I tried to use hello in a non-greeting context.

It was 11:40 (it always is) and I tried to use hello as an exclamation of surprise. I was climbing a ladder to put a poster in a window. The window had a wide ledge which kept the pane itself out of my reach. The window ledge was sturdy, and would have no problem supporting my frame. Except it wasn’t. The large concrete tile was a lot looser than I was counting on and began to wobble disconcertingly.

Ooh, ‘ello.

I felt this expressed the grave, yet potentially comedic nature of my plight. But the only response it engendered was a confused “hey?” from the adjoining room. This was no use to me at all when the tile became even looser and wobbled so much I lost my footing and plummeted gracelessly to the ground.

Oof.

That was the noise I made upon impact with the floor. The concrete tile that followed me, using me to break its fall, knocked a sort of final grunt out of me, as I lay entwined with the inadequate ladder in a complicated embrace that was hard to explain to the work experience kids.

The point (what little there is of one) is that hello was an unsatisfactory outcry. Ahoy would have saved me, alerting the mystery stranger in the next room to my imminent floor-pounding danger. And it would have made him sound like a superhero when he burst in through the door to greet me with a booming voice.

Alexander Graham Bell actually suggested ahoy for the telephone greeting. Think about how awesome every phonecall would be. Even at work. Ahoy! I don’t think I’d bother with the rest of the conversation, because what’s going to top that? Then some loser called Thomas Edison came up with hello and that got popular. You may take offense to me calling Edison a loser, seeing as he did invent over a thousand things. Well, I say he should have spent his time inventing a couple more, and kept his nose out of telephone etiquette.

But there is hope. In Czech and Slovak  “Ahoj” is still in use as an informal greeting, making them pretty much the most badass living languages. Wikipedia states that ahoy is still “the only acceptable greeting on water”. Or anywhere, I’d like to add. Are you with me?

Suggested usage:

• Ahoy there shipmate!
• Ahoy! That ledge is woefully inadequate!
• Ahoy! Let me save you from your ladder entanglement. Did I mention I am exceptionally handsome and strong?

And finally, let us part with a cheerfully awesome

Ahoy!