Goodbye is a term that derives from the expression “to God”. The concept is used as a greeting, when one person says goodbye to another. For example: “Goodbye, Mom, I’ll be back at dinner”, “Are you leaving, Carlos? Goodbye! Good luck to you ”, “ Give me a second that I forgot to say goodbye to Marta ”.
In greeting, goodbye is part of a communication act. If a subject says “goodbye” to another, he is terminating an encounter or a talk. The expression can be used when communication takes place face to face, or if the people in question maintain contact through some technological means (telephone, computer or computer, etc.).
Suppose a young man is partaking of a dinner with friends. After sitting for a while, the boy stands up and points out: “Well, goodbye: I’m leaving because tomorrow I have to wake up early. ” As you can see, “goodbye” works as a greeting and as a kind of announcement made by the individual to notify them that they are leaving the meeting.
Greetings are presented in a wide variety of terms and expressions, and serve both to start a communication and to end it; There are even those who use two people when they meet on the street simply to demonstrate to each other that they have noticed the presence of the other. Already within the limits of the same country it is possible to notice many ways of greeting and saying goodbye, and this is even more so when observing the regionalisms of all the Spanish-speaking countries.
As with other words and expressions, it is not easy to delimit the use of goodbye, or to specify the parts of the world in which it appears most frequently: for example, we could say that in Argentina it is said «bye» and that in Spain, « goodbye ”, but this could not be further from reality, since in both countries there are many other ways to say goodbye. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER.ORG for abbreviations related to Goodbye.
The same occurs when we try to define the degree of formality of the term: to say that goodbye is only used in formal situations is not correct, since in some parts of the world it appears in the daily life of people from all walks of life. This does not mean that there are no less serious expressions to use as a farewell, such as see you later, see you or even good (used, for example, on the island of Gran Canaria). In the written language, on the other hand, it is also possible to resort to a greeting, greetings or a hug, among many other forms.
Goodbye can also be used to mention that a certain damage is inevitable or that something has been finished: “If the boss finds out that we broke the machine, goodbye: he leaves us all on the street”, “Pray because your father does not find out what you have done, if not… goodbye to your monthly payment “, ” Goodbye to the World Cup dream: the selected team lost 5 to 0 and was left without any chance of qualifying for the next World Cup “.
It is important to note that the use of this term in a worrying situation, in which the issuer anticipates a series of problems, may also possess a certain bittersweet or comic nuance, in an attempt to soften the severity of oncoming events. This does not mean that it also appears in contexts of true tension, in which there is no room for humor.
The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) also mentions that goodbye can be used as an interjection to state a disappointment, disillusionment or surprise. While the first two cases can be seen in the examples above, let’s see a sentence in which goodbye denotes surprise: “Goodbye, what a late afternoon awaits us today!” .
