Greeting
act of communication to acknowledge another person
Greeting is an act of communication in which human beings intentionally make their presence known to each other, to show attention to, and to suggest a type of relationship (usually cordial) or social status (formal or informal) between individuals or groups of people coming in contact with each other.
Greetings are sometimes used just prior to a conversation or to greet in passing, such as on a sidewalk or trail.
Greetings exist in all known human cultures.
Greeting customs are highly culture- and situation-specific.
Greetings may change within a culture depending on social status, relationship, and etiquette.
They can be expressed both audibly and physically, often involving a combination of the two.
Greetings expressed in written communications, such as letters and emails, are known as salutations.
Some languages and cultures have words and gestures that may be used for both greetings and farewells.
Some epochs and cultures have had very elaborate greeting rituals, e.g. greeting a sovereign.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Greeting” as act of communication to acknowledge another person. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as act of communication to acknowledge another person. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q45594. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Greeting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.