Goodbye and farewell
SAYING goodbye isn’t the simple formulaic action it seems. Though formulas do come to mind, even they have varying tones and purposes, and express different kinds of speaker.
Commonplace
Most often, we say goodbye as a routine formality, to people we’ll see again next day. Likewise, checkout chicks end the shopping transaction by a seeya later, or just seeya. Or some say catchyalater or catchya. Blokes say cheers, and they once said cheerio — not meaning the foodstuff; not meaning anything. Like hallo, these words are phatic communion, merely recognising the occasion.
Variation
And yet, the formulas aren’t the same in use. Plainly, young people use newer phrases, picked up from movies they’ve seen or the texting habit. Oldsters persist with what they said when young. Males and females differ. Civilians, sailors, soldiers, and city slickers all vary. More curiously, the same person will vary the formula according to the company listening, or to which one moves away first. This may well be instinctive, interpersonal. (Memo: Listen to oneself in future, till you get tired of it.)
Characterisation
Do our goodbyes individualise us more than we recognise? Some of us enjoy signing off with facetious embellishment, like (formerly) turning tata or goodbye into tattybye. Take comedians, on radio or in music hall or more modern media. Because they must exploit their brief moment of our attention, they tend to have a clear, known exit line, just as they do on entry. Both are cues for their lifeblood, applause. TTFN (short for tata for now) was wartime slang, and became the catchphrase of Mrs Mopp the cleaner, on the ITMA radio programme. Such exit lines arise out of social living, where conversation needs to mark its end, and (alas) some people just must get the last word. Hence the jokey abbreviations, the lengthening and shortening of a general phrase into facetious individuality. Keep the ears flapping, readers, and please report!
More seriously
The FN of TTFN means, We’ll meet again. Which is thought to be a good thing; normality, continuing. More important, while these phrases fade, goodbye has endured, even despite its ancient origin God be (with) ye. Ye, not you, shows how old the phrase of notional blessing is.
Very serious
Goodbye points to the latent fundamental, that a goodbye may be final. At times we know this: one of us is mortally ill, or at least will not be coming this way again. In this spirit we say goodbye in earnest to a place, a workplace, an activity, a companionship. And if we recognise this, we formalise it, and say or think farewell.
Catullus says farewell
Because the Romans often seem a ponderous and selfimportant lot, with what pleasure learners of Latin discover Catullus! He sounds youthful: he died young (30). He wrote a love poem asking his lady to ‘‘give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred’’, Da mi basia mille, deinde centum.
Then he says it again. And again. Students keep a scoreboard. The iteration is not boring, but refreshing. It has rhythm. Catullus (like Sappho in Greek, or many a ballad or folksong) conveys intensity by understatement, and especially when farewelling. So when his older brother dies, he bids him this goodbye: Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale:
‘‘And for ever, my brother, hail and farewell’’. The simplicity and finality lift the moment: they give it full due.