But neither of those assumptions is true . In fact , byestarted out as an abbreviation — andgoodwasn’t originallygoodat all .
As far back as the fourteenth C , English talker were say “ God be with you ” when they parted ways . It took a little while for them to set down on a suitable shortening of the phrase , but they got there by the mid-16th century . In 1575 , per theOxford English Dictionary , godbwyeappeared in print for the first prison term , in a letter of the alphabet from English assimilator Gabriel Harvey .
“ And then to repay your gallonde of godbwyes , I regive you a pottle of howedyes , ” hewrote . In today ’s English , Harvey ’s poetic persuasion loosely translates to this one : “ And then to reciprocate your gal of goodbyes , I give you back a half - gal of hi . ” ( Howdy , by the way , has its root inhow do you do ? )
But the evolution ofGod be with youtogodbwyeand then togoodbyewasn’t linear — the great unwashed ostensibly spelled the expression however they desire to . Examples includeGod be wy you , God buoye , in effect bwi’t’ye , good b ’ w ’ y , and so on . Shakespearealone compose it at least three dissimilar ways in three different plays .
As for howGodbecamegood , it ’s generallybelievedthat masses were influenced by all those othergoodphrases : Good dayandgoodnighthad already been around since the thirteenth century . WhileGod be with youremains a relatively common utterance in spiritual circle , goodbye — which started snip up in the early 1700s — eventually supplant it as a secular farewell . In other languages ’ versions ofgoodbye , however , the spiritual connectedness is still crystal - well-defined . Both the Frenchadieuand the Spanishadiosliterally translate to “ to God . ”
