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	Laters

Laters. That's the word 'later' with an 's' at the end. It's a shortened form of 'see you later', really. Ciao. TTFN - ta ta for now!

It's unusual though, to add an 's' to a word like that, isn't it? It's not the first time it's happened, but it usually happens with reference to names of people or names of relatives - pet names. You know, instead of saying 'mum', you might say 'mums' or 'mummsie'. Instead of saying 'pop', you might say 'pops', 'gramps' for 'grandpa'. And proper names too, I mean, Will becomes Wills - a member of the royal family is sometimes referred to as Wills, for instance, or Babs for Barbara. So there are some uses where you add an 's' to make something nice and friendly, but it's unusual to see it before a kind of general phrase like 'see you later' or 'later', and thus - laters.

Notice by the way, that that phrase 'see you later' has changed its meaning in English in recent times. If somebody says 'see you later', it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to see you later today. In my day, that's certainly what it would have meant - 'see you later' means 'I'll see you before the day is out'. But somebody left on an aeroplane the other day and I heard them say to the people they'd left behind, 'see you later!' But the person would certainly not be seeing them later, not for months, perhaps.

So if you say 'laters', it's a kind of modern colloquialism in a way. It has a cool, slang sort of sense around it. If you say 'laters' instead of 'goodbye', then you probably wouldn't say 'hello' - you'd probably say 'hey' or 'hi'!

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