so long

American  

interjection

Informal.

1. goodbye.

   I said so long and left.

---

so long British  

1. informal farewell; goodbye

---

adverb

1. slang for the time being; meanwhile

so long Idioms  

1. Good-bye, as in So long, we'll see you next week. The allusion here is puzzling; long presumably means “a long time” and perhaps the sense is “until we meet again after a long time,” but the usage has no such implication. [Colloquial; first half of 1800s]

---

Etymology

Origin of so long

An Americanism dating back to 1840–50

Example Sentences

Only after having kept her story “under wraps for decades” did she feel comfortable opening up about what she had kept within for so long.

From The Wall Street Journal

Hard to believe it was ending after so long.

From Literature

He’d been around so long he could sniff out a lame cadet excuse from a mile away.

From Literature

I was thinking 'what are they doing, why is it taking so long?'

From BBC

He was influenced by a Stanford economic historian named Paul David, who showed why it took so long for electricity to yield gains in productivity in the early 20th century.

From Barron's

Related Words

• goodbye
• send-off
• sendoff