• ElectricMachman
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    174 months ago

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

    • The Assman
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      404 months ago

      Most English speakers actually used “wazzup” like those Budweiser commercials

    • @[email protected]
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      34 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
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        24 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          34 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