hail-fellow-well-met

adjective

Sociable, friendly.

“N.d., Sir George Young, translator, Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1991 Dover Publications edition, →ISBN, page 22, Now am I hail-fellow-well-met with all; Now every man gives me good-morrow;....”

Meanings

adjectivehail-fellow-well-met (not comparable)
  1. not comparableSociable, friendly.

    N.d., Sir George Young, translator, Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1991 Dover Publications edition, →ISBN, page 22, Now am I hail-fellow-well-met with all; Now every man gives me good-morrow;....

    2 more examples

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

    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

    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."

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

plural hail-fellow-well-mets · plural hail-fellows-well-met

  1. alternativeAlternative spelling of hail fellow well met: a sociable, friendly person.

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

    2003, James Patterson, Peter De Jonge, chapter 17, in Beach House, Warner Books, →ISBN

Synonyms & antonyms

adjectiveheartily friendly and congenial

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Cite this entry
APA

hail-fellow-well-met. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hail-fellow-well-met

MLA

“hail-fellow-well-met.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hail-fellow-well-met. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hail-fellow-well-met,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hail-fellow-well-met.

Source: hail-fellow-well-met on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.