• Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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    7 months 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.org
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      7 months 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.social
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        7 months 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