A casual, friendly greeting meaning 'hello,' especially associated with the American South and West.
Contracted from 'how do ye' or 'how do you do,' it's an informal abbreviation that became fixed as a word in American frontier and cowboy culture.
Howdy is essentially a contraction that got stuck—'how do you do' got smooshed into one word and became so tied to cowboy culture that most people forget it's just ancient slang for asking someone's condition.
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