"Hail fellow well met" is an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

idiom used when referring to a person whose behavior is hearty, friendly, and congenial, in the affirmative sense.

Etymology

The

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

(OED) gives a 1589 quotation for this phrase as a friendly greeting, and quotations for the related phrase "hail fellow", a greeting that apparently dates to

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

times. "Well met" appears to have been added to the phrase in the 16th century to intensify its friendliness, and derives from the concept of "good to meet you", and also from the meaning of "meet" as something literally the right size for a given situation.

Historic usage

In 1609 Thomas Dekker used the term in ''The Gull’s Hornbook'': "when at a new play you take up the twelve-penny room next the stage, (because the Lords and you may seem to be haile fellow wel-met) there draw forth this booke, read alowd, laugh alowd, and play the Antickes, that all the garlicke mouthd stinkards may cry out, Away with the fool." The expression appeared in Jonathan Swift's ''My Lady's Lamentation'' (1728). The phrase appears in a section entitled "Sad"—in the

Aeolus In Greek mythology, Aeolus or Aiolos (; grc, Αἴολος , ) is a name shared by three mythical characters. These three personages are often difficult to tell apart, and even the ancient mythographers appear to have been perplexed about which A ...

episode—in

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

's novel, ''Ulysses'' (1918), at the end of a description of the behaviour of newspaper men: "Funny the way the newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hailfellow well met the next moment." The early twentieth-century English novelist

W. Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...

frequently used the term in his novels and short stories, in particular when he describes male characters of a genial, sociable, and hard-drinking temperament (e.g., ''

Of Human Bondage ''Of Human Bondage'' is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although he stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography; though much in i ...

'', '' The Trembling of a Leaf'', and '' Then and Now'').

Contemporary usage

In contemporary language the phrase is used as shorthand for someone who is genial or hearty but with the implication of superficiality or ingratiation. We can see a contemporary use of the phrase in the highly acclaimed and popular BBC series Downton Abbey. In Episode 7 of Season 4 Mrs. Patmore, the cook, uses the phrase hail fellow well met to refer to Americans.

Linguistic observations

Kuiper uses the fact that this idiom is a phrase that is a part of the English lexicon (technically, a "phrasal lexical item"), and that there are different ways that the expression can be presented—for instance, as the common "hail-fellow-well-met," which appears as a modifier before the noun it modifies, ''versus'' the more original greeting form of "Hail fellow. Well met"; these variants are given as an example to explain how changes between the two (deformation), performed for the sake of artistry in writing (i.e., artistic deformation), can move alternative interpretations to the foreground (i.e., can create "

syntactic ambiguity Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure. Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of mean ...

"); that is, ambiguity can be foregrounded by artistic deformation, including, Kuiper notes, toward the end of creating humorous interpretations.

Notes

*Phrase appears i
Public Broadcasting Service program Frontline Episode: Gunned Down
(aired January 6, 2015), at time 20:42, said by J. Warren Cassidy, former NRA Executive V.P. *Phrase used by

Alan Partridge Alan Gordon Partridge is a comedy character portrayed by the English actor Steve Coogan. A parody of British television personalities, Partridge is a tactless and inept broadcaster with an inflated sense of celebrity. Since his debut in 1991, h ...

when greeting co-host "Sidekick" Simon Denton in episode 1 of ''

This Time with Alan Partridge ''This Time with Alan Partridge'' is a British sitcom first broadcast in 2019 on BBC One. It stars Steve Coogan as the inept broadcaster Alan Partridge in a spoof of current affairs programmes such as ''The One Show'' and '' Good Morning Brita ...

'' broadcast on BBC 1 on 25 February 2019. * Phrase used in ''Chess'' in the song “Difficult and Dangerous Times”, referring to a chess match as a “sweet hail-fellow-well-met affair”. * In Stephen King's books, the question "are we well met?" or its affirmation are often used. It is a particularly common phrase in The Dark Tower, which has many other archaisms. * In the first episode of the sixth season of '' Cheers'',

Frasier Crane Dr. Frasier Winslow Crane (born ) is a fictional character who is both a supporting character on the American television sitcom ''Cheers'' and the titular protagonist of its spin-off ''Frasier'', portrayed by Kelsey Grammer. The character debu ...

refers to Norm Peterson and Cliff Claven as "hail fellows well met." * Phrase used in the novel "Jubb," by

Keith Waterhouse Keith Spencer Waterhouse (6 February 1929 – 4 September 2009) was a British novelist and newspaper columnist and the writer of many television series. Biography Keith Waterhouse was born in Hunslet, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. H ...

, referring to getting knocked over by a dog. *Phrase used by Magnus Burnsides during the Balance arc of the McElroy family's "

The Adventure Zone ''The Adventure Zone'' is a weekly comedy and adventure actual play podcast based loosely upon the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game series, along with other role-playing games. The show is distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brother ...

" podcast. The Adventure Zone#Characters

References

External links

Meaning of "Hail fellow well met" at phrases.org.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hail Fellow Well Met English-language idioms