Comment by thaumasiotes

> Ironically, the root of "salutation" in latin is "salutare," to wish good health.

This is an incomplete description. There is a Latin verb salvere, meaning "to be in good health".

The Latin word "hello" is salve, the direct imperative form of salvere. It is a command, not strictly a wish, to be well. It's essentially the exact equivalent of the English expression "farewell". (Except that it means "hello" rather than "goodbye".) And like "farewell", it is understood in the derived meaning, "hello", not in the literal meaning.

You could understand salvtare as meaning "to health someone" (it is technically derived from salvs "health", and not from salvere "to be healthy"), but you could also understand it as meaning "to say 'salve(te)'". It's relevant here that valere also means "to be healthy", and its imperative form vale means "goodbye", but salvtare is never going to refer to saying vale.

Lewis and Short doesn't distinguish the senses "wish health" and "greet"; salvtare does have a more direct health-related sense, but it is "to keep something safe" rather than "to wish something safety".

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

That entry also notes that the sense "keep safe" of salvtare derives from sense I.A. of salvs, '"being safe and sound, health, welfare, safety" in general', while the sense "wish health, greet, salute" derives from sense I.B., '"a wish for one's welfare, a greeting, salutation" in particular'.

(Tangentially, I was charmed by the second citation for salvs I.B.: Non ego svm salvtis dignvs? "Am I not worthy of a hello?")