hail-fellow-well-met

See also: hail fellow well met

English

Adjective

hail-fellow-well-met (not comparable)

1. Sociable, friendly.
   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “I Hear of the ‘Red Fox’”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 108:

     And at first he sings small, and is hail-fellow-well-met with Sheamus—that's James of the Glens, my chieftain's agent.

   • N.d., Sir George Young, translator, Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1991 Dover Publicatiosn edition, →ISBN, page 22,

     Now am I hail-fellow-well-met with all;

     Now every man gives me good-morrow;....

   • N.d., Janice Holt Giles, "The Minor Miracle", in, 1975, Wellspring, 2002 University Press of Kentucky edition, →ISBN, page 60,

     "You may be hail-fellow-well-met all you please, but you are the servant of God in our midst, and I, for one, intend to remember it."

Noun

hail-fellow-well-met (plural hail-fellow-well-mets or hail-fellows-well-met)

1. Alternative spelling of hail fellow well met: a sociable, friendly person.
   • 2003, James Patterson, Peter De Jonge, chapter 17, in Beach House, Warner Books, →ISBN:

     My father was reserved and modest, the opposite of a hail-fellow-well-met.