A man walking out of his front door.
If you’re at a party in America or England and leave without telling anyone goodbye, it’s known as the “Irish goodbye” or the “Irish exit.” Perfectly executed, you leave the party without having to tell everyone, so you don't have to make an excuse for your departure or give a thousand hugs and handshakes.
Those who’ve perfected the Irish goodbye know that it’s best to drop a hint with someone 20 minutes beforehand that you plan on leaving, so when your absence is discovered, you have someone to vouch for you. Some folks who are extra sneaky will say they’re headed to the bathroom or out to their car to grab something and never return.
Why is sneaking out of a party called the Irish goodbye?
There are many reasons why slipping out the back of a party is attributed to the Irish. The neologisms database at Rice University says that it’s because the Irish are stereotyped as heavy drinkers. Rice defines the Irish goodbye as when someone leaves “noticeably intoxicated and desires to leave without having to converse with anyone they know and reveal their state of intoxication.”
Others say it’s a symptom of another Irish stereotype: Irish people are so long-winded that people often sneak out of parties to avoid being stuck saying goodbyes all night.
Is the Irish goodbye rude?
Some folks believe the Irish goodbye is rude because it can make other partygoers, including the host, feel unimportant, and that a good friend wouldn’t make others wonder where they went. The folks at Readle believe that the exit is a sign of the Irish “belief in independence and self-sufficiency.”
Wil Fulton, a writer at Thrillist, says that it’s a sign of an evolved person. “The Irish exit is not rude. It's a sign of emotional intelligence—of candor, of self-assuredness. It means you know where you stand with everyone else, that you have some semblance of awareness,” He continues, “It's the rare burst of succinctness and selfless subtlety so uncommon in modern human interaction. You are choosing not to hold everyone back, by abandoning your own self-serving goodbyes. That's a good thing.”
There may be a decent debate over whether the Irish goodbye is rude, but one thing is for sure: it wasn’t started by the Irish. According to a 2022 article in Quartz, The Oxford Dictionary notes that, as far back as 1751, the English originally referred to leaving a party without telling anyone as “the French leave.” “French Leave is a phrase we had often in use, When one slily elop’d; nor left coin or excuse,” it says.
Of course, the French shot back, referring to leaving a party without telling anyone as the English departure. “'I’ll follow you,' he told me, 'But we can’t leave in the English way. Let’s say goodbye to Madame Verdurin,'" the professor said in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
A couple on their way out.via Matteo Bassille/Pexels
It seems that everyone in Europe is accusing someone from another country of leaving parties without telling anyone. The Polish call it “leaving the English way.” The Portuguese call it departing in “The French style.” The Germans refer to it as the “Polish exit,” and the Russians say it’s to “leave in the English way.”
Ultimately, for centuries, people have been blaming those who sneak out of events as behaving like foreigners they don’t like, or recently fought a war against. So, whether you think the Irish goodbye is rude or self-evolved, we can be certain that it isn't just an Irish thing.