Bye-bye! how things have changed

Summary

Languages develop, customs change, and the way we perceive and interpret things drift. This last farewelling chapter deals with that commonest of phrases, ‘bye-bye’, and how it has changed status in just a few decades.

Nowadays, ‘bye-bye’ is a throw-away phrase, used many times every day by English speakers and others alike. It has become as ubiquitous and natural (and neutral) as ‘OK’.

But not so in 1959. According to the sociologist Sandor Feldman, a woman saying ‘bye-bye’ to a man indicated a much greater closeness than a straight ‘goodbye’. It had even seductive overtones: the woman wanted to make clear that she wished to meet again, and the phrase was suggestive of more things to come.

Feldman must have viewed the simple ‘bye-bye’ with great suspicion. As a lovely, loving, perhaps lustful farewell, he gets the last quote in this book:

Women, particularly young ones, use the ‘bye-bye’ when parting from men with whom they do not but wish to have a close relationship. They think, by using the phrase, that men may accept the familiarity graciously. Sometimes, however, the person to whom the ‘bye-bye’ is addressed finds the phrase irritating because he is uncertain whether he should allow himself to be trapped by the ‘bye-bye’ or whether he should maintain his authority and stick to the ‘good-bye’, thus indicating to the woman that she is in no position to say ‘bye-bye’ which means more closeness.