Hello, Goodbye

Last Thursday, Merriam-Webster posted a single sentence on X: “‘Goodbye’ is an alteration of ‘God be with you.’” By Monday it had been seen more than 2.6 million times and liked over 86,000 times, which is a lot of attention for a word most of us say without thinking.

It is true, and the story is better than the tweet.

A gallon of godbwyes

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest evidence comes from 1575, in the letters of the scholar Gabriel Harvey, who answers a friend’s politeness with a grand piece of one-upmanship.

Over the next century the phrase wore down like a pebble, through spellings such as God be wy you, God b’uy and God buy. Then “God” quietly became “good”, probably by association with good day and good night. The prayer was still there. It was just wearing a disguise.

Spanish and French never bothered hiding it

The Real Academia Española traces adiós straight to a Dios, “to God”, and Merriam-Webster glosses the French adieu as “(I commit you) to God”. In Spain, adiós can even work as a hello: the RAE notes it is used when two people pass each other in the street without stopping to chat.

Not every farewell looks upwards. Au revoir means “till seeing again”, and hasta luego simply promises later. Then there is ciao, which the RAE and Merriam-Webster trace to a Venetian form of “slave”, once part of a courtly formula along the lines of “I am your servant”. Austrians and southern Germans do much the same with Servus. Spanish has borrowed the habit too, listing chao and chau as everyday synonyms of adiós.

Why this belongs in your lesson

Most Year 7s meet adiós and au revoir early on and never think about them again. Split the words open, though, and they turn into a story: a Dios, à Dieu, “till seeing again”, “your servant”. A student who can see Dios inside adiós has one more hook to hang it on, and a painless first lesson in how languages change.

So the next time a class files out shouting “¡Adiós!”, remember that, technically, they are commending you to God. After period five on a Friday, you may need it.