Yea

How to spell yea

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce yea

What does yea mean?

1. nounAn affirmative vote or the person casting it, as opposed to a nay.
2. adverbYes; an old-fashioned or formal expression of affirmation or assent.

Yea in a sentence

• noun

  The motion passed with forty yea votes and twelve against.

• adverb

  The committee recorded a firm yea from every member present.

• noun

  The clerk recorded each yea as the senators answered the roll.

• adverb

  The old charter answered every question with a plain yea or nay.

Where does yea come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Yea is one of the oldest words in English, descending directly from Old English gea, meaning 'yes' or 'so it is', and it has close cousins across the Germanic family such as Old Frisian ge and Old High German ja, the ancestor of modern German 'ja'. In early English it served as the plain affirmative, often paired against its opposite 'nay', a contrast that survives today in the formal counting of votes as 'yeas and nays'. Over the centuries 'yes' (itself originally a more emphatic form) crowded yea out of everyday speech, leaving it stranded in solemn, legal, and biblical contexts where it still carries a weighty, old-fashioned ring. The spelling trap is that yea is pronounced to rhyme with 'say', yet looks as if it should sound like 'yee'; it is also constantly confused with the casual 'yeah' and the celebratory 'yay', all of which share the same root idea of assent. Remembering that yea is the formal voting word, with no 'h' and no second vowel, helps keep it distinct from its breezier relatives.

How the word is built

• yea (a single native root word, no prefix or suffix)