An enthusiastic greeting. This term has been around since at least the mid-eighteenth century, and perhaps much longer. “Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round, May sigh to think he still has found the warmest welcome at an inn,” wrote William Shenstone (Written at an Inn at Henley, ca. 1763). A very similar cliché, a warm reception, often has just the opposite meaning—that is, a greeting full of hostility.