Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • interjection Used to express a greeting.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • A contraction of how do you (do)?—a colloquial greeting, now almost peculiar to the southern and western United States, the fuller form howdy do? being used elsewhere: also used as a noun for a greeting with this phrase.
  • noun See howdie.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Prov. Eng. A midwife.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • interjection An informal greeting.
  • noun Scotland A wife, a midwife.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an expression of greeting

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From how do ye, how do you do.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortened form of "how d'ye do" (i.e. how do you do) or less commonly "How do you fare?"

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Examples

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