767-1: Feedback, notes and comments

Toodle-oo Ron Hann asked me if I'd ever encountered another term for goodbye that also ends in oo — the distinctive and delightful Australian hooroo. I hadn't but I'm glad that I now know it. It's from hooray, first recorded in the specifically Australian sense of goodbye in 1870. Over time it changed into hooroo, which is the form you will find in the Macquarie Dictionary, but it can lose its initial h to make ooroo.

Another of similar shape is napoo, which is used to mean goodbye in a famous First World War music-hall number that several readers mentioned, whose refrain is "Bonsoir, old thing, cheer-i-o, chin, chin, / Nah-poo, toodle-oo, Goodbye-ee." In reality, napoo meant that something was over, finished or done for; it's another of those mangled French expressions I mentioned last time, in this case from il n'y en a plus, there's no more.

Dennis Kiernan asked about ta-ta, a British colloquial term for goodbye, best known globally in the abbreviation TTFN ("ta-ta for now") that was popularised by the 1940s radio programme ITMA. This defeats the etymologists; all we know is that it first appears early in the nineteenth century and is a variant of the much older da-da, which was used mainly to children.

Correction The French phrase à tout à l'heure has a grave accent on both a's.

Toilet paper? New subscriber B J Smith works for the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. He responded to my standard request to know how he had heard of World Wide Words: "Somewhere in this building you have a devoted reader who prints out the e-magazine, staples the three or four pages together, and takes it with him to a stall in the men's room to read as he goes about his business. That's where I found it, in a magazine holder next to the toilet. I suppose you could call that a personal endorsement, in a way."

Christmas break As usual, I'm taking a little time off. There will be no issue of World Wide Words on 24 and 31 December. The next will be on 7 January 2012. Seasonal greetings to everyone. See you in the new year.