Word.ws English Dictionary

aiya

aiya interjection: ah; oh; exclamation of surprise, blame, dismay, shock, or fear.

Interjection

  1. (Australian, China, Chinese, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Taiwan) ah; oh; exclamation of surprise, blame, dismay, shock, or fear.
    • “I don’t need to hear any idle gossip.”
      “Aiyah, it’s not idle gossip! These are important details I’ve learned just from being around them, and from what Mr. Wong found out—”2015, Kevin Kwan, chapter 3, in China Rich Girlfriend, Doubleday, →ISBN
    • Others think I'm too loud and crazy, like our downstairs neighbor, who shouts "Aiya!" at me and slams his window.2022, Kelly Yang, New From Here, page 23
    Synonyms:
    haiya

Synonyms of aiya

Forms of aiya

alternative formai yah
alternative formaiyah
alternative formaya

Origin of aiya

From Chinese 哎呀 (āiyā).

Questions about aiya

What does aiya mean?
Aiya means ah; oh; exclamation of surprise, blame, dismay, shock, or fear.
What part of speech is aiya?
Aiya is an interjection.

Words near aiya in the dictionary

  1. Aiwoo
  2. AIWS
  3. Aix
  4. Aix-en-Provence
  5. Aix-les-Bains
  6. aiya
  7. aiyah
  8. Aiyana
  9. Aiyanar
  10. aiyee
  11. aiyo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aiya (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: “aiya.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aiya. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.