Ciao!

Language: Italian

• What it means: Hello and/or goodbye (informally)

• Word origin: While “Ciao” today is a casual salutation, it has surprising roots—it comes from a phrase in the Venetian dialect: “s-ciào vostro”, literally meaning ‘I’m your slave’… a humbler (or perhaps more extreme?) version of ‘At your service.’ Over time, it became shortened to “s-ciào” and then “ciao”, and its meaning evolved into a friendly informal ‘hi’ or ‘bye’. Once the word had conquered Italy, it spread widely around the globe.

• Sample sentence: “Ciao, bella!” (Hi, beautiful!)

• Does it work in English? Yes. In fact, the word is used even more commonly in other languages, though often only as ‘goodbye’ and not ‘hello’, and the spelling may change even though the sound doesn’t. For instance: ‘Tschau’ (German), ‘Chao’ (Spanish), ‘Chau’ or ‘Xau’ (Portuguese), ‘Čao’ (Czech), and ‘Csáó’ (Hungarian). Why is ‘Ciao’ so popular around the world? Because it’s short (…unlike Auf wiedersehen!), easy to pronounce (…unlike Zài jiàn!), and Italy is a warm, trend-setting country (…unlike, say, Iceland).