Mmm-Bye

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A few weeks ago on the show, we had a call from Chad in Nebraska, and he was the guy who had family members who said, m’bye, at the end of a phone call. M’bye. And he wondered if anybody else did that. And that prompted a really funny discussion on our Facebook group.

Carol said, I never realized I said m’bye until I had a parrot. If I’m on the phone and he thinks it’s been long enough, he starts telling me, mm, bye. And Pamela writes, I also did not realize that I used the mm, bye until my kids pointed it out. Now they do it. And Kirsten said, I worked at a bakery in Michigan where all the sales clerks regularly took orders over the phone. One girl had just moved to the U.S. from Japan, and most of us had no idea we said mm, bye until she asked us why we all did it and if it meant something specific. That’s cool.

And Jane wrote, I think we have too much of love you at the end of phone calls. We had an employee pop that out at the end of a conversation with a sales rep. As she hung up the phone, she realized what she had done. I still chuckle over the horrified look that came over her face.

Yeah, I’ve seen that happen where the CFO of a company said it to the outside accountant who was giving her a hard time. Okay, love you. Love you. Love you, mean it.

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