Howdy

How to spell howdy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce howdy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does howdy mean?

1. interjectionAn informal, friendly greeting meaning hello, associated especially with the American South and West.

Howdy in a sentence

• The ranch hand tipped his hat and offered a cheerful howdy to the visitors.

• Every email from the Texas office opened with a friendly howdy before getting down to business.

Where does howdy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Howdy is a worn-down contraction of the old greeting 'how do ye' or 'how d'ye do', which itself was shorthand for 'how do you do', an enquiry after a person's health or wellbeing. The verb 'do' here carried the now-faded sense of 'fare' or 'get on', so the full phrase literally asked how someone was faring. The squeezed spelling 'howdy' is recorded from the early 1700s and travelled with English speakers into the American frontier, where it became strongly associated with the rural South and the cowboys of the West. The folksy 'd' for 'do ye' and the casual '-y' ending are exactly why the spelling looks so relaxed: it captures the sound of the phrase collapsing in fast, friendly speech. Today it survives mainly as a cheerful, informal hello rather than a genuine question about health.

How the word is built

• contraction of the phrase 'how do ye' (how do you do); no separable prefix or suffix