We have, for example, phrases like, “When I was greeting …” in which greeting is essentially shorthand for “saying ‘Hello’ to someone” derived from a related verb (to greet).
However, to my knowledge, English does not have a term for “saying ‘Goodbye’ to someone” despite all the related verbs (farewell, goodbye, etc.).
Are there any words which come close to fulfilling such a role? If not, is it due to an absence of such phrases in English's primary language influences (Germanic and Anglo-Francophone), or was it a phrase that existed in those contributing languages but failed to persist in Modern English?
Best Answer
Leavetaking (or leave-taking) is “The process of saying goodbye”. Wiktionary gives the following example:
According to google ngrams, recent usage of leave-taking has been about four times as frequent as that of leavetaking, with usage of the latter being five to ten times as high as that of farewelling.