To halloo is to shout to attract attention, especially in hunting. Halloo across the field, gave a halloo, hallooing to the dogs.
It is a hunting call, used to tell the pack and the field that the quarry has been seen, and it survives in that world and almost nowhere else. It is the ancestor of hello, which spread only with the telephone. Note that the word imitates the shout.
1verbhallooTo shout to attract attention, especially in hunting.
“The huntsman hallooed loudly when he saw the fox break out of the woods.”
halloo is a shout.
Middle English hallow comes from Old French haloer, imitating a shout. Hello and hallo come from the same call.
Old French
haloer
Middle English
hallow — pursue, urge on
English, today
halloo
From Middle English hallow (“pursue, urge on”), from Old French haloer, which is imitative of the sound.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire