• waigl@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    1 month ago

    Funny thing: “Hello” was actually not a common greeting until that point.

    • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      10·
      1 month ago

      I’ve always been curious how people greeted each other before “hello”. Did we just say “good day” and variations thereof?

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 month ago

        Well, Howdy is a contraction of “How do you do?”, hence the somewhat rarer “Howdy do!”, and Goodbye is a contraction of “God Be With You!”

        • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          2·
          1 month ago

          I didn’t know that about ‘goodbye’! Words are fascinating, huh.

          I believe “hello” itself was more of an exclamation (like “hi”, in fact) and supposedly comes from the Dutch “hollo”. Some people in the UK still use it as such, in fact.

          • root_beer@midwest.socialEnglish
            3·
            1 month ago

            Adios and adieu also both refer to god; I’m sure other Romance languages say goodbye similarly but I don’t know Italian or Romanian or whatever