"See You Later"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Patti J. Kurtz wrote:
>
>Anyone know about when this expression was used as a casual form of
>"good-bye"? I'm writing a historical novel and am not certain it's
>something my characters would say.

Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>OED incredibly offers no exx. of "See you later!"  in either a literal
>or formulaic sense,  but has formulaic "See you soon!" from 1891 and
>"See you again!" from 1906.  In 1950s N.Y.C., these were common, as
>were the even more informal "See ya!" and "See ya 'round!"  In my own
>mind, at least, "See ya later!" always seemed to be literal, referring
>to a particular time that day.  That it was also used as a mere formula
>didn't occur to me until I left N.Y.C. in the mid-'70s. I actually
>remember being slightly taken aback by it. When I said it to my mother
>over the Ameche (inside slangster humor here), she too answered, "Later?
>You're in Tennessee."
>
>The point of all this is that you could place "See ya later!" any time
>after 1890 without derailing history, though the reality might bemore
>complicated and somebody could still carp at you.
>
>Meanwhile, we should all send Jesse some sorely needed cites.

Earlier I had written:

>Newspaperarchive dates it back to 1879:
>
>Marion Daily Star (Ohio), March 25, 1879, p. 3/2 "Call again -- very
>busy -- see you later -- got to go right over the river!" said the
>restaurant man as he got away out of sight.
>
>Looks fairly common in the 1880s-90s.

In an email, Jonathan notes that the 1879 usage sounds "literal", not
"formulaic".  I would say that even if the phrase was "literal", in that
the speaker was expressing an intention to see the interlocutor at some
later point, it could still have been "formulaic" (an idiomatic shortening
of "I will see you later").

Here are a few more early cites, suggesting that "see you later" came to
be recognized as an idiomatic American sendoff in the 1880s:

-----
1881 _Bucks Co. Gazette_ (Pa.) 10 Feb. 1/3 "Tain't six -- that's a fact,"
said one of the young fellows. "Come along, boys; Miss Dustin's right. See
you later." With this and a laugh they walked away.
-----
1882 _Freeborn Co. Standard_ (Minn.) 7 Sep. 2/6 The bore (with a wink:) "I
understand, old fellow. See you later." Departs without the remotest
suspicion that he was the bore.
-----
1883 _Indiana Democrat_ (Pa.) 12 Jul. 4/6 Kate Field thus describes the
American dude... Place a cigarette in its mouth: teach it a brief
vocabulary of verbs and adjectives, commencing with 'immensely clever,'
and 'see you later, you know,' and in my humble opinion you obtain a fair
conception of the brains and capacity of the American dude.
-----
1887 _Olean Democrat_ (N.Y.) 10 Nov. 2/2 I have discovered that there are
three kinds of English spoken in Europe, namely: British English (best),
American English (picturesque), Continental English (more or less broken):
at Waterloo [Belgium] I think I have found the nearest to American English
of any I have heard. It is spoken by the girls who sell trinkets, relics,
etc., on the field... A little party had gathered by this time, all
bareheaded and rosy cheeked, and when I started away there was a chorus of
"Ta, ta!" "Come again," "See you later" and other Americanisms, which, I
learned afterward, the girls had picked up in various flirtations with
spry young men from Uncle Sam's dominions.
-----


--Ben Zimmer