Goodbye

How to spell goodbye

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce goodbye

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does goodbye mean?

1. interjectionA word said when parting from someone or ending a conversation.
2. nounAn instance or act of saying farewell.

Goodbye in a sentence

• interjection

  She waved and called goodbye from the platform as the train pulled away.

• noun

  Their goodbye at the airport was brief because the flight was boarding.

• interjection

  He said a quiet goodbye to his colleagues on his last day at the office.

• noun

  She hated a long, drawn-out goodbye and preferred to leave quickly.

Where does goodbye come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Goodbye began life as the full blessing 'God be with you', a polite farewell common in English from the 1500s. Spoken quickly and often, the phrase contracted over time into forms such as 'godbwye' and 'god b'w'y', recorded as early as the late sixteenth century. The opening 'God be' was then reshaped to 'good', almost certainly by analogy with the cheerful parting greetings 'good day', 'good morning', and 'good night', which were already in everyday use. By the eighteenth century the spelling had settled toward 'goodbye', and the original religious meaning faded entirely from the speaker's mind. That hidden history explains why the word is spelled with two letters 'o' and a final silent 'e': the 'good' came from 'God' and the 'bye' from 'be with ye', a pairing few people would guess from the modern form.

How the word is built

• good- (altered from 'God', here 'God be')
• -bye (contraction of 'be with ye')