What the Hey?!?!?!

I've used this phrase a couple of times recently in lieu of other choice words and am getting annoyed with it. I don't even understand what it means. So, I decided to look up the phrase and see what it's origins and meanings were and how it came to be...

“What the Hey” - Originally “What the Hay” - (read all the way through...very interesting)

Traced back to the Celtic farmers before Christ was born, “what the hey” was originally know as “what the Hay”. Hay was an important crop to the Celtic farmers and was regarded as one of their most precious resources. It served many uses from feeding their livestock to even being used as ingredients in their prepared food for themselves, to being used as thatch mixture for their dwellings. Celtic farmers would even go so far as to booby-trap their land and dwellings to protect this precious commodity. Disputes over hay were even said to be one of the causes of the first invasions of Rome, by the Celts around 400BC.

Celtic farmers and warriors would often barter and trade using hay instead of other materials, like weaponry, rocks or jewels. This became common practice in their way of life and depending on how rainy of a season they had, the hay would be various lengths due to growth. The longer the hay shoots, the more valuable the pieces were. The Celtic men would often ask each other about the length of their hay shoots to determine how much would be traded on any given day.

After the initial invasion of Rome, the Celtic and Roman cultures began to intermingle as well as their languages. Due to certain barriers of speech, the initial questioning of the length of someone's hay became shorter so that the Roman population could be involved in conversation. The Romans used many Celtic farmers and former warriors as hired help in their lands and were very accommodating to the Celtic lifestyle. In order to placate much of what was being spoken, the Roman's learned to ask about the length of hay. They would ask, “VVHAUT LEINGT HEI”, which came across to the Celts as simply “what's the hay”.

After several centuries, hay became less of a commodity and whey became the prevalent grain type. Farmers from several cultures would still ask “what the hey” only now, they referred to whey. This became such common practice in the mid 16th & 17th centuries, that people would simply stop and say “hey” to the barley merchants as they passed by to know how much their whey stock was worth.

Eventually the word “hey” became to be used as a personable greeting in simply passing one another by on the street and is still used today.

Wow...crazy, huh? Yes, I made every bit of that up. ;) hahahahaha Not bad for a 15 minute break, eh?