"Well Met" - What! It's combat?

[Steve Ashton]

The phrase is still used in Fencing today. Or at least it was in my day.

bon riposte.

[Kiltedjohn]

How far back does the "swordsmanship" meaning go? There seem to be quite a few references to the phrase, as meaning "good to meet you", going back a number of centuries.
See for example
http://english.stackexchange.com/que...pposed-to-mean

[KD Burke]

I think we should keep in mind that people in "Ye Olden Days" were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have the same knowledge base. Irony and sarcasm are not recent inventions. Therefore, just as modern phrases may have multiple meanings, depending upon context, so did old phrases.

[tripleblessed]

It has been noted that the "good to meet you" meaning of this phrase is known predominantly in the southern US. It might,therefore, be relevant to remind ourselves that musical anthropologists recovered lost songs and repaired lyrics, clearly mangled in the Isles, by spending time in the Appalachian Mountains. Around the beginning of the last century they found pockets of folk still speaking virtually unchanged Elizabethan English, and handing down songs carefully preserved verbatim. This usage may be a remnant of earlier parallel meanings, as suggested above. While some in the UK have said that if "you lot" were so intent on pretending to be Scots or British, we shouldn't have left.This completely ignores the fact that most had no desire to leave. Many, many, were forcibly shipped, and billed for their passage. Many were put on ships with deliberately insufficient food, and many starved on the way. Children were shipped to mine and factory owners as free labor. Prisoners of war were sold as slaves. Some left, yes, of their own volition. Because the system had completely disenfranchised the lower classes to the point there was nothing for them where they were no matter what they did. Common land that fed and housed people for centuries was simply taken by "gentry" with no recourse for those on the bottom. Dispossessed people often cling to any scraps and shreds of "home" they can, and try to forget the pain.

Or it might be something else altogether.

[Dani Mac]

The phrase is still used in Fencing today. Or at least it was in my day.

bon riposte.

The fencers in my family use it as "Thanks for a good bout."

[neloon]

As tripleblessed implies, "well met" is just a usage that has become obsolete in the UK although, even in Shakespeare's day, it would not have been used with somebody one had not previously met. Its sense would have been "I'm glad I bumped into you because..." (Or the reverse - "Ill met by moonlight, Titania" from "Midsummer Night's Dream"!)
The "Fall" is another US usage strange to our ears but was normal in the UK 400 years ago. Likewise the very archaic (except in Scots) "gotten" and so on.
Alan

[CDNSushi]

Huh. And here I thought that Blizzard invented it specifically for the NPC dwarves to say in World of Warcraft... Lol.

[James Hood]

In this opinion, Tarheel should go on using, "Well met," as a greeting...

...because this forum's newbies section could get a bit tedious if every poster used precisely the same greeting.

Let local linguistics and slang prevail, it oft provides "literal-lite" cud for us to e-chew in the forums.

[Tarheel]

In this opinion, Tarheel should go on using, "Well met," as a greeting...
Let local linguistics and slang prevail, it oft provides "literal-lite" cud for us to e-chew in the forums.

Thank you for that. I quit having hurt feelings over simple things after Basic training (US Army 1970's). This "fatted cow" has been led to slaughter before and survived. Ha-Ha on the cud to e-chew on (great analogy).

[Tarheel]

Someone unfamiliar with kilting is browsing for information. The posts of any subject (sporrans as an example) are many and varied. The person decides to join, as we have become "the source to rely on for all things kilted". They are greeted by a world wide host of personalities, opinions and experiences.
I am one of those greetings. Imagine the new person's surprise (or confusion) that a member (not knowing my gender, age or background) from Oxford, Mississippi begins with, "Well met."

I've had a week to think through this issue. Greeting new members with well met will be as easy as having long hair (kept in a ponytail as I have for 40 plus years) among a room full of "crew cuts". It is a quirk, not meant to offend others, but as natural as my ready and hardy laughter. I can only remain, sincerely, Bobby Ingram, and true to my myself.