(The rare verb hale, meaning “drag” or “pull” in the sense of drawing a horse’s reins or a weapon, or to haul a net or an anchor, is cognate with haul and is distantly related to hail in the sense of “call.”) Meanwhile, the Catholic devotional salutation “Hail, Mary” inspired the colorful expression “Hail Mary pass” or “Hail Mary play” to describe a desperate gambit in football. The verb hail means not only “acclaim” but also “greet” or “summon.” It’s rarely used in the sense of greeting, but the expression “hail a taxi” (or “cab”), referring to summoning a vehicle for hire, is common. (The archaic salutation wassail, with a second syllable sharing the same etymology, stems from an Old Norse exhortation to be well modern usage refers to a hot alcoholic drink served from a bowl at a Christmas celebration, or to revelry in general.) This meaning stems from the Old Norse word heill, used for the same purpose but derived from that word’s original meaning, “healthy.” The homophone hale, rarely used outside of the expression “hale and hearty,” carries a connotation of good health persisting into old age. Hail is also used as an interjection to acclaim (“Hail to the chief!”) or salute (“Hail, fellow well met!”) someone, though it’s an archaic usage rarely applied anymore.
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When listing hail as one of the words used to describe precipitation recently, I thought about the other definitions of the word. The Multiple Meanings of “Hail” By Mark Nichol