 "Well met" appears to have been added to the phrase in the 16th century to intensify its friendliness, and derives from the concept of "good to meet you", and also from the meaning of "meet" as something literally the right size for a given situation.The expression appeared in Jonathan Swift's "My Lady's Lamentation" (1728).The phrase appears in a section entitled "Sad"—in the Aeolus episode—in James Joyce's novel, "Ulysses" (1918), at the end of a description of the behaviour of newspaper men