Etymology From Middle English adieu also adew, adewe, adue, from Old French adieu (“to God”), a shortening of a Dieu vous comant (“I commend you to God”), from Medieval Latin ad Deum (“to God”). Doublet of adios.
1
Said to wish a final farewell; goodbye.
BEATRICE. What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! No glory lives behind the back of such.1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
The sails of fat-bellied ships go upward and flap signalling that time has come to bid adieu to the voyagers.2022, “Untold story of Odias who conquered Land of Gold way before Cholas”, in OrrisaPost:
Etymology From Middle English adieu also adew, adewe, adue, from Old French adieu (“to God”), a shortening of a Dieu vous comant (“I commend you to God”), from Medieval Latin ad Deum (“to God”). Doublet of adios.
1
A farewell, a goodbye; especially a fond farewell, or a lasting or permanent farewell.
We bid our final adieus to our family, then boarded the ship, bound for America.
As Noyes bade me adieu and rode off northward in his car I began to walk slowly toward the house.1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 6, in The Whisperer in Darkness:
2 more examples
Yes, the tide will surely turn, and meanwhile may one who is proud to call himself a partisan, invite whomever may feel disposed to bid the "T14s" adieux, to pause before giving them valediction and accord to them the respect that is assuredly their due.1952 January, Henry Maxwell, “Farewell to the "T14s"”, in Railway Magazine, page 57:
At the of his so remote, so near, 1884 summer Van, before leaving Ardis, was to make a visit of adieu to Ada's larvarium.1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle: