Hail fellow well met

[Richard Chambers]

The last time "hail fellow well met" was discussed on AUE was in 1999, in a
very short thread which petered out almost before it began. Skitt (the same
one as now?) quoted a dictionary as follows-
---------------------
THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE BY E. COBHAM BREWER
FROM THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 1894

Hail-fellow-well-met (A). One on easy, familiar terms. (See Jockey .)
---------------------

To me, this is an incorrect definition. Plain wrong. A hail-fellow-well-met
character is someone who turns up at a party driving an open-top sports car,
comes into the room, slaps an acquaintance on the back in an over-intimate
way, and says "Hi, Harry, I haven't seen you for at least a couple of years!
How're you doing? You look brown, just back from your holidays? Where ya
been?" Just as Harry are about to launch into a description of his holiday
in Majorca, our character spots Mike at the other end of the room. "Oh,
there's Mike. Must go and talk to him!" And that's the last Harry will see
of him at that party. Mike doesn't see much more of him than Harry did,
because he then spots Frank. And so it goes on.

Hail-fellow-well-met (adjective) is therefore a quality of extroversion
combined with a tendency to make many shallow friendships, and a certain
amount of popularity-seeking. Also, the personality trait includes a dash of
insincerity.

The term seems to me, instinctively, to be 100% BrE. I don't know quite why
my instinct tells me that the term is exclusive to Britain, and not used in
USA, but it does. So I have two questions:-
1. What special charateristics does the adjective "hail-fellow-well-met"
have, that might cause my instinct to hypothesise that this is exclusively
British?
2. Is my instinct correct in this intuition?

Richard Chambers Leeds UK.

[John O'Flaherty]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 00:17:57 +0100, "Richard Chambers"

Post by Richard Chambers
The last time "hail fellow well met" was discussed on AUE was in 1999, in a
very short thread which petered out almost before it began. Skitt (the same
one as now?) quoted a dictionary as follows-
---------------------
THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE BY E. COBHAM BREWER
FROM THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 1894
Hail-fellow-well-met (A). One on easy, familiar terms. (See Jockey .)
---------------------
To me, this is an incorrect definition. Plain wrong. A hail-fellow-well-met
character is someone who turns up at a party driving an open-top sports car,
comes into the room, slaps an acquaintance on the back in an over-intimate
way, and says "Hi, Harry, I haven't seen you for at least a couple of years!
How're you doing? You look brown, just back from your holidays? Where ya
been?" Just as Harry are about to launch into a description of his holiday
in Majorca, our character spots Mike at the other end of the room. "Oh,
there's Mike. Must go and talk to him!" And that's the last Harry will see
of him at that party. Mike doesn't see much more of him than Harry did,
because he then spots Frank. And so it goes on.
Hail-fellow-well-met (adjective) is therefore a quality of extroversion
combined with a tendency to make many shallow friendships, and a certain
amount of popularity-seeking. Also, the personality trait includes a dash of
insincerity.
The term seems to me, instinctively, to be 100% BrE. I don't know quite why
my instinct tells me that the term is exclusive to Britain, and not used in
USA, but it does. So I have two questions:-
1. What special charateristics does the adjective "hail-fellow-well-met"
have, that might cause my instinct to hypothesise that this is exclusively
British?
2. Is my instinct correct in this intuition?

AHD gives a definition:
Heartily friendly and congenial.
It doesn't make any comment about it being a British term. I've read
it in US material, though I don't think I've ever heard it at all.
The AHD definition agrees with that of the Prase and Fable dictionary,
and doesn't give any hint of a connotation of insincerity.
Nevertheless, my feeling of the term includes the insincerity, and I
wonder if it isn't something about my personality that reads [overly]
into 'heartily friendly' and 'familiar'.

--
john

[Denny Wheeler]

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 21:50:57 -0500, John O'Flaherty

Post by John O'Flaherty
Heartily friendly and congenial.
It doesn't make any comment about it being a British term. I've read
it in US material, though I don't think I've ever heard it at all.
The AHD definition agrees with that of the Prase and Fable dictionary,
and doesn't give any hint of a connotation of insincerity.
Nevertheless, my feeling of the term includes the insincerity, and I
wonder if it isn't something about my personality that reads [overly]
into 'heartily friendly' and 'familiar'.

I also don't recall encountering the phrase in speech, though I've
certainly read it in both US and British sources. My connotation of
the term is somewhat midway between yours and Richard Chambers'.
Fulsome, perhaps too friendly-seeming.

--
-denny-

Some people are offence kleptomaniacs -- whenever they see
an offence that isn't nailed down, they take it ;-)
--David C. Pugh, in alt.callahans

[Brian Wickham]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 00:17:57 +0100, "Richard Chambers"

Post by Richard Chambers
The last time "hail fellow well met" was discussed on AUE was in 1999, in a
very short thread which petered out almost before it began. Skitt (the same
one as now?) quoted a dictionary as follows-
---------------------
THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE BY E. COBHAM BREWER
FROM THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 1894
Hail-fellow-well-met (A). One on easy, familiar terms. (See Jockey .)
---------------------
To me, this is an incorrect definition. Plain wrong. A hail-fellow-well-met
character is someone who turns up at a party driving an open-top sports car,
comes into the room, slaps an acquaintance on the back in an over-intimate
way, and says "Hi, Harry, I haven't seen you for at least a couple of years!
How're you doing? You look brown, just back from your holidays? Where ya
been?" Just as Harry are about to launch into a description of his holiday
in Majorca, our character spots Mike at the other end of the room. "Oh,
there's Mike. Must go and talk to him!" And that's the last Harry will see
of him at that party. Mike doesn't see much more of him than Harry did,
because he then spots Frank. And so it goes on.
snip

Just for the record, my understanding of the phrase has always been in
agreement with Brewer's definition. I'm over 60, and learned my
English in the NYC area from a Scottish mother and a native NYer
step-father.

I have never heard "Hail-fellow-well-met" used to describe what I
would consider a fulsome character, or more colloquially a
"glad-hander".

Brian Wickham

[Richard Maurer]

<< [Richard Chambers]
[...]
Hail-fellow-well-met (adjective) is therefore a quality of extroversion
combined with a tendency to make many shallow friendships, and a certain
amount of popularity-seeking. Also, the personality trait includes a dash of
insincerity.

The term seems to me, instinctively, to be 100% BrE. I don't know quite why
my instinct tells me that the term is exclusive to Britain, and not used in
USA, but it does. So I have two questions:-
1. What special charateristics does the adjective "hail-fellow-well-met"
have, that might cause my instinct to hypothesise that this is exclusively
British?
2. Is my instinct correct in this intuition?
[end quote] >>



The phrase is familiar, mainly from books, and possibly from
speakers on television discussions. I don't remember it ever being used
in conversation. I take a picture much like yours of a fellow
breezing in and being demonstrative and full voiced.
I don't think the insincerity is a necessity, although it is probably
common because there are a lot of social copycats around.
It sounds like a phrase used comfortably by a previous generation.

-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Donna Richoux]

Post by Richard Maurer
<< [Richard Chambers]
[...]
Hail-fellow-well-met (adjective) is therefore a quality of extroversion
combined with a tendency to make many shallow friendships, and a certain
amount of popularity-seeking. Also, the personality trait includes a dash of
insincerity.
The term seems to me, instinctively, to be 100% BrE. I don't know quite why
my instinct tells me that the term is exclusive to Britain, and not used in
USA, but it does. So I have two questions:-
1. What special charateristics does the adjective "hail-fellow-well-met"
have, that might cause my instinct to hypothesise that this is exclusively
British?
2. Is my instinct correct in this intuition?

It's not common, but I don't associate it with being British.

Post by Richard Maurer
[end quote] >>
The phrase is familiar, mainly from books, and possibly from
speakers on television discussions. I don't remember it ever being used
in conversation. I take a picture much like yours of a fellow
breezing in and being demonstrative and full voiced.
I don't think the insincerity is a necessity, although it is probably
common because there are a lot of social copycats around.
It sounds like a phrase used comfortably by a previous generation.

I got curious as to the origin of the phrase -- was it perhaps used in
some well-known poem? Apparently not. Bartlett's Quotations of 1919
points to Jonathan Swift's "My Lady's Lamentations." This turns out to
be a long piece of doggerel from 1728 with the phrase buried rather
meaninglessly in the middle:

http://www.gosford.co.uk/swift.html#lament

... Hail fellow, well met,
All dirty and wet:
Find out, if you can,
Who's master, who's man;
Who makes the best figure,
The Dean or the digger;
And which is the best
At cracking a jest.

Somehow I don't think this was enough to keep the phrase alive in the
popular imagination. The context conveys no meaning of acting in a
friendly manner, falsely or otherwise.

The phrase doesn't turn up in the ballads at Digital Traditions, either.
Could it have survived strictly orally, as a memory of the old greeting?

Maybe in books... Searchebooks.com shows quite a few hits, mostly
Victorian (but that could be the bias of Searchebooks' contents). Mark
Twain and Washington Irving both used it, so that's American evidence.
and Irving (1783-1859) is the oldest author I recognize.

The Adventures of Captain Bonneville by Washington Irving
...they became "hail fellow well met" with Captain Bonneville's
men;

Extract From Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain
...he comes across, and be hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect

So finally I remember that it might be in the _Oxford Dictionary of
English Proverbs_. Look at these gems:

1519 Horman. He made so moche of his servaunt that
he waxed hayle felowe with hym.

1581 Guazzo. The maister ... being as you say haile
fellow well met with his servaunt.

They have more from the 1500s and 1600s, and one from 1888.

It was such a standard expression by 1519 that the writer could just
refer to it, without spelling it all out!

It might be so old that it actually goes back to the time when it would
literally have been the standard greeting. As if it were today's, "And
she was all like, 'Hi, howya doin?'"

[dcw]

Post by Donna Richoux
1519 Horman. He made so moche of his servaunt that
he waxed hayle felowe with hym.
1581 Guazzo. The maister ... being as you say haile
fellow well met with his servaunt.
It was such a standard expression by 1519 that the writer could just
refer to it, without spelling it all out!

Perhaps. Or the "well met" could be a later addition.

David

[Richard Maurer]

<< [Donna Richoux]
So finally I remember that it might be in the _Oxford Dictionary of
English Proverbs_. Look at these gems:

1519 Horman. He made so moche of his servaunt that
he waxed hayle felowe with hym.

1581 Guazzo. The maister ... being as you say haile
fellow well met with his servaunt.

They have more from the 1500s and 1600s, and one from 1888.

It was such a standard expression by 1519 that the writer could just
refer to it, without spelling it all out!
[end quote] >>




Do we know if "hail fellow well met" refers to the actions of one, or two?
If James and John were speaking lines would it be
[James] Hail fellow. Well met.
or
[James] Hail fellow.
[John] Well met.


The old quotes seem to use "with".

-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[John Dean]

Post by Richard Chambers
The last time "hail fellow well met" was discussed on AUE was in
1999, in a very short thread which petered out almost before it
began. Skitt (the same one as now?) quoted a dictionary as follows-
---------------------
THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE BY E. COBHAM BREWER
FROM THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 1894
Hail-fellow-well-met (A). One on easy, familiar terms. (See Jockey .)
---------------------
To me, this is an incorrect definition. Plain wrong. A
hail-fellow-well-met character is someone who turns up at a party
driving an open-top sports car, comes into the room, slaps an
acquaintance on the back in an over-intimate way, and says "Hi,
Harry, I haven't seen you for at least a couple of years! How're you
doing? You look brown, just back from your holidays? Where ya been?"
Just as Harry are about to launch into a description of his holiday
in Majorca, our character spots Mike at the other end of the room.
"Oh, there's Mike. Must go and talk to him!" And that's the last
Harry will see of him at that party. Mike doesn't see much more of
him than Harry did, because he then spots Frank. And so it goes on.
Hail-fellow-well-met (adjective) is therefore a quality of
extroversion combined with a tendency to make many shallow
friendships, and a certain amount of popularity-seeking. Also, the
personality trait includes a dash of insincerity.
The term seems to me, instinctively, to be 100% BrE. I don't know
quite why my instinct tells me that the term is exclusive to Britain,
and not used in USA, but it does. So I have two questions:-
1. What special charateristics does the adjective
"hail-fellow-well-met" have, that might cause my instinct to
hypothesise that this is exclusively British?
2. Is my instinct correct in this intuition?

You are free to disagree with anyone else's definition, but OED makes it
plain that Brewer is following a long tradition.
It is traced back to a standard greeting 'Hail, fellow' which became an
adjective - 1580 Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 371 Where diddest thou learne
that+being suffered to be familiar thou shouldest waxe haile fellowe? 1688
Ld. Delamere Wks. (1694) 26 Let not your Servants be over-familiar or haile
fellow with you.

... and was expanded to the full 'Hail fellow well met' - 1581 G. Pettie
Guazzo's Civ. Conv. iii. (1586) 171 The maister +being as you say haile
fellow well met with his servant. 1586 J. Hooker Girald. Irel. in Holinshed
II. 105/2 He+placed himselfe+hard at the earle of Ormond his elbow, as
though he were haile fellow well met. 1642 Rogers Naaman 463 Gentlemen will
be haile fellow well met with Jesters.

Interesting to note the references to servants and menials - far from the
'extrovert' idea you propose, there is a sense of unbending in a formal
relationship to something rather more companionable.

Your instinct is correct in that the phrase is traced back to pre-American
times and to British sources.
Characteristics? I suppose the 'hail' is commonly understood as a somewhat
archaic British greeting - we all recollect Shakespeare is stuffed full of
'Hail,my Lord', 'All hail, Macbeth', 'Hail, royal sir', 'Hail noble Marcius'
and the like. And the phrase no-one has used to greet me for some time -
'Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses
Proclaim you are no less!'
'fellow' strikes, I think, the same resonance from the 'fellow of infinite
jest' to 'What says the fellow there? call the clotpoll back'
'well met' does similar yeoman service for the Bard. And I bet most here
could complete 'Ill met by moonlight ...'

So I suppose a stuffing of Elizabethan terms and constructions gives an
appropriate air of antiquity.
Though perhaps interesting that. AFAIK, 'fellow' still has some day-to-day
currency in the States but is pretty much confined to Higher Education here.
Unless you count 'fella' or 'feller', which can still be heard in the
demotic.
Hence the Irish lumberjack joke - 'There were these tree fellers ...'
--
John Dean
Oxford
De-frag to reply

[Peter H.M. Brooks]

Post by Richard Chambers
The last time "hail fellow well met" was discussed on AUE was in 1999, in a
very short thread which petered out almost before it began. Skitt (the same
one as now?) quoted a dictionary as follows-
---------------------
THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE BY E. COBHAM BREWER
FROM THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 1894
Hail-fellow-well-met (A). One on easy, familiar terms. (See Jockey .)
---------------------
Hail-fellow-well-met (adjective) is therefore a quality of extroversion
combined with a tendency to make many shallow friendships, and a certain
amount of popularity-seeking. Also, the personality trait includes a dash of
insincerity.
The term seems to me, instinctively, to be 100% BrE. I don't know quite why
my instinct tells me that the term is exclusive to Britain, and not used in
USA, but it does. So I have two questions:-
1. What special charateristics does the adjective "hail-fellow-well-met"
have, that might cause my instinct to hypothesise that this is exclusively
British?
2. Is my instinct correct in this intuition?
hail-fellow, a. (adv.), n.
[The familiar greeting or accost ‘Hail, fellow!’ (now obs. or arch.), used as a descriptive expression, in various grammatical constructions.
1589 Nashe Ded. to Greene's Menaphon (Arb.) 16 Their best lovers would bee much discontented, with the collation of contraries, if I should write over al their heads, Haile fellow well met.]
A. adj. On such terms, or using such freedom with another, as to accost him with ‘hail, fellow!’; on a most intimate footing; over familiar or unduly intimate.
1580 Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 371 Where diddest thou learne that+being suffered to be familiar thou shouldest waxe haile fellowe? 1688 Ld. Delamere Wks. (1694) 26 Let not your Servants be over-familiar or haile fellow with you. 1824 Scott Redgauntlet ch. xv, All's hail-fellow, here. 1886 T. Hardy Mayor Casterbr. II. ii. 20 He crossed the room to her+with something of a hail-fellow bearing.
1886
1580 1688 1824
b. So the fuller phrase hail fellow well met.
1581 G. Pettie Guazzo's Civ. Conv. iii. (1586) 171 The maister +being as you say haile fellow well met with his servant. 1586 J. Hooker Girald. Irel. in Holinshed II. 105/2 He+placed himselfe+hard at the earle of Ormond his elbow, as though he were haile fellow well met. 1642 Rogers Naaman 463 Gentlemen will be haile fellow well met with Jesters. 1888 Rider Haggard Col. Quaritch I. i. 4 He was popular+though not in any hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. 1888 Graphic Summer No. 12/3 His hail-good-fellow-well-met shake of the hand.
1586 1888
1581 1642 1888
B. adv. On most intimate terms.
1670 Eachard Cont. Clergy 74 The multitude did not go hail fellow well met with Him. 1771 Smollett Humph. Cl. I. 26 Apr. Let. i, You see the highest quality and the lowest trades-folk jostling each other, without ceremony, hail-fellow well met. 1847 L. Hunt Men, Women, & B. (1876) 91 Palavering rascals, who come, hail-fellow-well-met.
1670 1771 1847
†C. n. Obs.
1. An intimate or familiar associate.
1650 R. Stapylton Strada's Low C. Warres ii. 36 It brings men, now hail-fellows with God.
1650
2. The state or footing of intimate friends.
1684 J. Goodman Winter-Evening Confer. 46 The Master and Servant are at Hail Fellow. a1687 Cotton Poet. Wks. (1765) 107 This Youth hail Fellow with me made.
a1687
1684

--
They worked for one of the fastest-growing banks in the country,.. that
had a long-distance sprinter - a wizard who had gone from grunt to
senior executive vice-president in less than five years - New Yorker 1985