Word.ws English Dictionary

waving goodbye

waving goodbye is the present participle and gerund of wave goodbye.

Meaning of wave goodbye

Verb

wave goodbye (third-person singular simple present waves goodbye, present participle waving goodbye, simple past and past participle waved goodbye)

  1. (idiomatic) To say goodbye by means of a handwave.
  2. (figuratively) Synonym of say goodbye (“cease to have, or have to do, something”).
    • "At the moment, you know the maximum you pay [to go between London and Scotland] is £87 on a Sunday afternoon. And it's refundable. Now, if your plans change, you can wave goodbye to your money."2024 February 7, Mel Holley, “Network News: LNER ditches Off-Peak for 70min semi-flexible fare”, in RAIL, number 1002, page 7
    Synonyms:
    say goodbye

Questions about waving goodbye

What is waving goodbye the present participle and gerund of?
Waving goodbye is the present participle and gerund of wave goodbye.

Words near waving goodbye in the dictionary

  1. wavinesses
  2. waving
  3. waving aside
  4. waving away
  5. waving down
  6. waving goodbye
  7. waving in
  8. waving off
  9. waving the bloody shirt
  10. waving the white flag
  11. waving through

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waving goodbye (page history and authors); wave goodbye (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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Cite this entry: “waving goodbye.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/waving_goodbye. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.