Meaning
What does Henlo mean?
Henlo refers to a popular online snowclone, depicting animals staring at a screen, getting bullied by a person, that starts the conversation with “Henlo (animal)”.
The term itself is an intentionally misspelled version of the word Hello and it is related to Doge slang like Chonky or Sploot, as well as the character Cheems who is often depicted as mispronouncing words, by inserting the sound “m” ie.: Cheemsburbger.
Origin
What's the origin of Henlo?
The first image, containing “Henlo” was uploaded to Sizzle in September 2016, depicting an iguana staring at a Steam chat on a computer screen, being told to “go eat a fly ugly”.
In October that year, the image appeared on various other websites, including Facebook and Instagram.
Spread & Usage
How did Henlo spread?
The “Henlo” format gained prominence by November 2016, with variations featuring numerous other animals appearing on Facebook as well as the r/dankmemes subreddit.
Its popularity exploded in early 2017, with variations appearing on countless social media and humor sites, like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and 9GAG.
“Henlo” was first defined on Urban Dictionary on April 17th, 2017, with numerous other definitions to follow.
External resources
- Linguaholic.com – “Henlo”: Here’s What It Really Means and Where It Comes From
- 7esl.com – Henlo
- Urbandictionary.com – Henlo