how-do-you-do

Questions about how-do-you-do

What does how-do-you-do mean?

how-do-you-do means "an awkward situation". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in how-do-you-do?

how-do-you-do has 3 syllables and divides as how--do-you--do under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for how-do-you-do?

Close synonyms include how-d'ye-do, hello, hullo, hi, howdy. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is how-do-you-do a common word?

how-do-you-do is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.