Word.ws English Dictionary

hail-fellow

hail-fellow adjective: synonym of hail-fellow-well-met.

Adjective

hail-fellow (not comparable)

  1. Synonym of hail-fellow-well-met.
    • And there were ministers of many creeds,—pastors of great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,—from the priests of the Church on the Hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow with the men of a score of boats.1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

Noun

hail-fellow (plural hail-fellows)

  1. (dated) A close acquaintance.
    • that being forbidden to be bold thou shouldst grow impudent, or being suffered to be familiar thou shouldst wax hail-fellow?.1580, John Lyly, Euphues and His England
    • Losing money every time he sold a beast, wasting stamps galore on letters to endless auctioneers, frequently remaining in town half a week at a stretch, and being hail-fellow to all the spongers to be found on the trail of such as he, quickly left him on the verge of bankruptcy. Some of his...1901, Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career, Chapter 4

Synonyms of hail-fellow

Forms of hail-fellow

pluralhail-fellows

Words formed from hail-fellow

Questions about hail-fellow

What does hail-fellow mean?
Hail-fellow means synonym of hail-fellow-well-met.
What part of speech is hail-fellow?
Hail-fellow can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near hail-fellow in the dictionary

  1. hail storm
  2. hail storms
  3. hail sugar
  4. hail sugars
  5. hail'd
  6. hail-fellow
  7. hail-fellow-well-met
  8. hail-fellow-well-mets
  9. hail-fellows
  10. hail-fellows-well-met
  11. hail-shot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hail-fellow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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