Howdy

Howdy is an informal greeting, commonly thought to have originated as a shortened form of the greeting "How do ye?" It was first recorded as part of Southern U.S. dialect in 1840. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/howdy?r=14]

There have, however, been questions raised about the validity of this explanation. Fact|date=August 2008 One alternative suggestion for the source of howdies is that it is not a shortening of a common phrase for ease's sake, but a mockery of the Native American people's inability to properly enunciate "How do you do?" in early encounters between Europeans and the Native Americans. Fact|date=August 2008 Though generally scholars tend to frown on such bigoted roots of the word, no conclusive agreement has been reached within all circles of the field of linguistics. Fact|date=August 2008

It is typically associated with a Southern American accent, especially from Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. It is the official greeting of Texas A&M University in College Station.

Howdy can also refer to:

People

*Howdy Groskloss, a major league baseball player
*Howard 'Howdy' Quicksell, a banjo player

Music

*"Howdy!", an album by Teenage Fanclub
*"Sieg Howdy!", an album by Jello Biafra and The Melvins
*Boy Howdy, an American country music band
*Howdy, An Australian solo Hip Hop artist
*Howdy!, An American|San Francisco Americana-Roots-Jam music band

Misc.

*Howdy, a character in Hamtaro
*"Bang! Howdy", an online strategy game
*Howdy Doody, a children's television program
* [http://www-alis.tokyo.jst.go.jp/HOWDY/ HOWDY] is an integrated database system for accessing and analyzing human genomic information. See the entry for the [http://biodatabase.org/index.php/HOWDY HOWDY database] in MetaBase.