Regreets.
It’s listed in MW101 as obsolete, which is worse even than archaic (which means a word’s used only sporadically); that it’s declared as obsolete means there hasn’t been an observance of the word since 1755.
But regreets (n) has a certain ring to it, a wild and crazy cry of freedom. Let regreets ring.
It means, as you might guess, greetings. Regreets as in, greetings in return. As in,
“How’re you doing Marley?”
“Fine m’self, regreets to you.”
Or something like that. It has an off-canter air that seems to break through the banality of orginary greetings.
Fortunately, MW10 doesn’t relegate regreet (v) to obsoletism, rendering it archaic instead. Which creates the curious situation where you’re allowed to regreet someone without raising too many eyebrows, but not to offer regreets.
Regreets. Spread the word. Let’s bring this puppy back from the brink and into common use.
Notes:
[Word-of-the-Month] While there are plenty of words I’d like to write up in this fashion (e.g., veridical, aleatory, condign, myrmidon, etc.), regreets has my attention right now, and the likelihood of my following up with more of the same is highly unlikely; hence, W-o-t-M and not, say, Word-of-the-Day, or Word-of-the-Week.
1 Sadly, both regreet and regreets are ignored by American Heritage (AmH3) and by most any other language reference works I could get my hands on. And all an internet search turns up, more or less, is misspellings of regrets.