Adie

Adie

Swiss German

Said in north-eastern Switzerland

Goodbye

Adie mitenand — to several people

Schaffhausen

See it on the map

Where it comes from

Adie is French adieu, carried into Swiss German with its sound barely changed. The French word is made of à and Dieu: whoever left was commended to God, as in Italian addio and Spanish adiós. According to Wikipedia, adieu was still the most common farewell in German until 1914, when anti-French propaganda drove it out in favour of Auf Wiedersehen. In German-speaking Switzerland it stayed very much alive.

The Idiotikon, the great dictionary of Swiss German, records it in its very first volume, in 1881, in many forms, adie, adi, ade, adijè, from Aargau to Nidwalden by way of Appenzell, Basel, Bern and Zurich. In Basel city, it notes, people also said it on arriving. It keeps a few charming uses: ade mache, for toddlers waving goodbye, adie gā, for a child going out for a walk, and, in Lucerne, “saying adieu to the world” for someone entering a monastery.

The game places it in Schaffhausen, in the north-east of the country. Nothing in the sources consulted makes it a word of that region alone: Wikipedia calls it very widespread across German-speaking Switzerland. It is mostly used with people you address formally; among friends, people say tschau or tschüss.

In use

To leave a shop, a meeting or a classroom politely:

• “Adie mitenand, bis am Mäntig!” – Goodbye everyone, see you on Monday!
• “Adie, und en schöne Sunntig!” – Goodbye, and have a nice Sunday!

Sources: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, volume I (1881), col. 90, “adie”; German Wikipedia, “Adieu”.