abye
abye is the alternative form of aby.
Meaning of aby
Verb
aby (simple past and past participle abought, no other forms attested in Modern English)
- To pay the penalty for (something); to atone for, to make amends.
- Foole-hardy Knight, full soone thou shalt aby / This fond reproach, thy body will I hang, [Hee takes down / his pole.] / And loe vpon that string thy teeth shall hang: Prepare thy selfe, for dead soone shalt thou bee1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act III, signature G, recto
- Synonyms:
- make up
- To pay (something) as a penalty, to atone for; to suffer (something).
- Who dyes the vtmoſt dolor doth abye, / But who that liues, is lefte to waile his loſſe: / So life is loſſe, and death felicity.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 38, page 455
- Synonyms:
- sustain
- To endure or tolerate (something); to experience.
- The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek of them since I could stotter on two feet.1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Wood by Silvermills”, in Catriona, London; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC, page 131
- To pay for (something); to buy.
- To pay the penalty; to atone.
- Synonyms:
- expiate, propitiate
- To endure; to remain.
- So long as breath, and hable puiſſaunce / Did natiue corage vnto him ſupply, / His pace he freſhly forward did aduaunce, / And carried her beyond all ieopardy, / But nought that wanteth reſt, can long aby.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 3, pages 494–495
Questions about abye
- What is abye the alternative form of?
- Abye is the alternative form of aby.
Words near abye in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: abye (page history and authors); aby (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “abye.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abye. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
