It’s “Hear, Hear!” Rather Than “Here, Here!”

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m John Kunz. I’m from Duffield, Virginia.

Hi, John. Welcome to the show.

I guess I’ll put it this way. Here’s the picture.

There’s a bunch of Englishmen sitting at the pub, and they’re all raising their glasses or their mugs available to someone or something.

And they say, hear, hear. Hear, hear.

And why hear, hear? What does that mean?

So that’s the question.

Well, John, I guess the question is, how do you think they’re spelling hear, hear?

Well, no, I’ve been preparing for this call, and I was going to tell you, I forgot to tell you, I said, I don’t know if it’s H-E-R-E or H-E-A-R. I’m assuming it’s the first one, H-E-R-E.

H-E-R-E? No, actually, it’s the other one. It’s short for hear him, hear him.

And it’s an old expression that people would use to call attention to what somebody is saying.

You know, somebody’s saying something important, and people would say, hear him, hear him.

And it was used in the late 17th century in the British Parliament.

And by the 18th century, it was just shortened to here, here.

And, you know, if you ever watch those televised debates in the House of Commons, you know, you’ll hear people say here, here instead of applauding.

Because interestingly enough, applause is usually forbidden in the British Parliament.

And so they just say, yeah, yeah.

Actually, the rules of the British Parliament say members must not disturb a member who is speaking by hissing, chanting, clapping, booing, exclamations or other interruption.

But when not uttered until the end of a sentence, the cry of here, here offers no interruption of the speech.

So people will say here, here instead of applauding.

But if you’ve ever listened to Parliament, those guys are talking to each other.

Somebody will say something and everybody will go, oh, I don’t know.

They’ll be talking back, you know.

The other thing that came to mind, there was no PA systems back then.

There were no PA systems back then.

But you’re right about that noise that you hear in Parliament.

Sometimes people use hear, hear in a negative way, just making noise.

It’s an imperative that tells people to listen.

It’s not H-E-R-E.

Huh.

Okay.

It’s more of a command.

Yeah.

In fact, you’ll see that command in the King James Version of the Bible in 2 Samuel.

Yeah, a woman says, here, here, and then she goes on to say something to the people of the city.

Oh, well, that makes sense, too.

Okay, okay.

Well, I was wrong a couple of times.

No worries.

Yeah, no worries.

It’s all good.

John, thank you so much for talking to us.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks, sir.

Thanks, John.

Take care.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

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