long time no see
- 1Said on meeting someone again, to mean that the speaker has not seen them for a long time.
Long time no see! I barely recognized you with the beard.
She hugged her old roommate at the airport and laughed, "Well, long time no see."
Note
The grammar hints at the history: there is no subject and no have, the shape of pidgin rather than standard English. Its origin is uncertain, but it may copy a Chinese greeting such as hǎojiǔ bùjiàn word for word, like no can do. It turns up in 1800s pidgin speech from Ceylon to the Chinatown of Mott Street; today it is a warm, casual hello.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with long time no see, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.
Origin
Of unknown origin. It is possibly a calque of Cantonese hou² noi⁶ mou⁵ gin³ or Chinese hěnjiǔméijiàn or hǎojiǔbùjiàn, comparable to no can do or chop-chop, and if so most likely from a US Chinatown or from the British Far East, such as Hong Kong. Alternatively it may be of Native American origin, or a native pidgin coinage, particularly in film portrayals of Native Americans such as the speech given to Tonto in the 1930s.