This Holiday Has Never Been Hollow

A certain kerfuffle that’s been in the news has focused some attention on two words whose conflation has always perplexed me. It stems from a gripe I have about American English speakers.

I’m referring to “hallowed” versus “hollowed.” Apparently a major paper used the latter rather than the former in a report on the news event. It’s a typo that a spellcheck tool wouldn’t catch (a good proofreader would, but that’s a topic for another day), so I’m not that bothered by it. What bothers me is that mispronunciation of “hallowed” has encouraged confusion between the two words.

Many of the people I know pronounce “Halloween” as “holloween.” The Online Etymology Dictionary reveals that both “hollow” and “hallow” are quite old and come from Proto-Germanic, but otherwise there’s no connection between them.

“To hallow” means to consecrate or make holy/sacred; a “hallow” is a saint or other holy person; and “hallowed” is the adjective form of the word. As the entry previously linked states, the earliest predecessor of “Halloween/Hallowe’en” traces back to the 1300s. It was the last day of the year in the Celtic calendar; the next day was called “Hallow Day,” although today it is usually labeled “All Saint’s Day.” (“Hallowtide” refers to the first week of November. The root “tide” is also interesting. It means a span or interval of time; those who are fond of older English are likely familiar with “eventide,” which most of us call “evening.”) Only “hallowed” and “Halloween” are in use now, with the latter being much more common than the former.

I suspect two factors contribute to Americans’ confusion between “hallow” and “hollow”: fewer people read regularly these days, and those who do tend to read less printed material than people used to; and many Americans are notoriously lazy about their pronunciation.

That might be in part because younger generations aren’t taught how to pronounce all of English’s phonemes and/or any phonics. (I taught my children proper pronunciation, and when they started doing voice chats online, many of their friends thought they were British—not because we have any UK accent, but just because they pronounce most words correctly and enunciate clearly.) A more enduring element is that Americans tend to speak quickly, which results in sloppy speech. As many linguists’ YouTube channels have documented, American movies provide ample data.

I’d like to hope that the attention given to the two words will reverse this mispronunciation trend, but I think it’s too late for that. A common knock-on effect of less reading is a smaller vocabulary, and with “hallowed” being an infrequently used word, many people simply don’t know it exists and so can’t link it to the popular American holiday.