 Hence, modern use of the term tends to be deliberately archaic, with overtones of over-familiarity in the person so described (almost always male), or as a deliberate, tongue in cheek term of endearment; in the latter case it heightens the effect of the greeting of an unexpected friend (as in "the only friendly person here"), or to communicate the idea of a friend in an otherwise unfriendly environment.Kuiper uses the fact that this idiom is a phrase that is a part of the English lexicon (technically, a "phrasal lexical item"), and that there are different ways that the expression can be presented—for instance, as the common "hail-fellow-well-met," which appears as a modifier before the noun it modifies, "versus" the more original greeting form of "Hail fellow.Well met"; these variants are given as an example to explain how changes between the two (deformation), performed for the sake of artistry in writing (i.e., artistic deformation), can move alternative interpretations to the foreground (i.e., can create "syntactic ambiguity"); that is, ambiguity can be foregrounded by artistic deformation, including, Kuiper notes, toward the end of creating humorous interpretations.