Greeting

Greeting is an act of communication in which human beings (as well as other animals) intentionally make their presence known to each other, to show attention to, and to suggest a type of relationship or social status between individuals or groups of people coming in contact with each other. While greeting customs are highly culture- and situation-specific and may change within a culture depending on social status and relationship, they exist in all known human cultures. Greetings can be expressed both audibly and physically, and often involve a combination of the two. This topic excludes military and ceremonial salutes but includes rituals other than gestures.

Famous quotes containing the word greeting:

“Half-opening her lips to the frost’s morning sigh, how strangely the rose has smiled on a swift-fleeting day of September!
How audacious it is to advance in stately manner before the blue-tit fluttering in the shrubs that have long lost their leaves, like a queen with the spring’s greeting on her lips;
to bloom with steadfast hope that, parted from the cold flower-bed, she may be the last to cling, intoxicated, to a young hostess’s breast.”
—Afanasi Fet (1820–1892)

“But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 1:29.

“A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.... Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)