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OneKitly

yay

interjectionadverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • //jeɪ//
  • /[jeː]/
  • /[jeɪ̯]/

An expression of happiness.

interjection

  1. 1

    An expression of happiness.

    Yay! I have finally finished my work!

  2. 2

    Variant of yeaMisspelling of yea.

Etymology

Alteration of yea (“yes; even, truly, verily”). More at yea.

adverb

  1. 1

    Variant of yeaAlternative spelling of yea.

    The tree was yay big.

    See, in the 1800s, the island was yay big, but by the 1990s, it was yay big.

noun

  1. 1

    slangCocaine (powder or crack).

    In Billy Corben's engrossing new documentary, Cocaine Cowboys (Magnolia Pictures), self-described "assassin" Jorge "Rivi" Ayala (among others) give up the goods on Miami's explosive early '80s yay trade.

    I'm in charge of a whole city block, and I always wear gloves when I touch the yay, cuz traces of cocaine show up on my u. a., when I touch it with my bare hands.

    I don't do yay, but if you want to, fine

Etymology

Clipping of yayo, from Spanish llello.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).