Synonyms

so long

American

interjection

Informal.

goodbye.

I said so long and left.

so long British

informal farewell; goodbye

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

adverb

slang for the time being; meanwhile

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

so long Idioms

Good-bye, as in So long, we'll see you next week. The allusion here is puzzling; long presumably means “a long time” and perhaps the sense is “until we meet again after a long time,” but the usage has no such implication. [Colloquial; first half of 1800s]

Etymology

Origin of so long

An Americanism dating back to 1840–50

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Hard to believe it was ending after so long.

From Literature

He’d been around so long he could sniff out a lame cadet excuse from a mile away.

From Literature

I was thinking 'what are they doing, why is it taking so long?'

From BBC

He was influenced by a Stanford economic historian named Paul David, who showed why it took so long for electricity to yield gains in productivity in the early 20th century.

From Barron's

“I was going every week to the concerts,” she says, “but it took me so long to see somebody that looked like me.”

From Los Angeles Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023