Word.ws English Dictionary

aye

/eɪ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

proscribed/aɪ/

aye adverb: ever, always. Also the alternative spelling of ay.

Adverb

aye (not comparable)

  1. (archaic) Ever, always.
    • […]Do that good miſcheefe, which may make this Iſland / Thine owne for euer, and I thy Caliban, / For aye thy foot-licker.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
    • The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, / And southward aye we fled.1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Interjection (1)

  1. Yes; yea; a word expressing assent, or an affirmative answer to a question.
    • Tro[ylus]. Haue I not tarried? Pan[darus]. I the grinding; but you muſt tarry the boulting. Troy. Haue I not tarried? Paude.^([sic]) I the boulting; but you muſt tarry the leauening. Troy. Still haue I tarried. Pan. I, to the leauening, but heares yet in the word hereafter, the kneading, […]c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. […] (First Quarto), London: […] G[eorge] Eld for R[ichard] Bonian and H[enry] Walley, […], published 1609...
    • david: […] Will he surely give him his daughter? The daughter of his house in Gilgal? soldier: Aye, surely he will.1925 spring, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, scene VII, in David: A Play, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, published 1926, →OCLC, page 46
  2. A word used to acknowledge a command from a superior, usually preceded by a verbatim repeat-back.

Verb

aye (third-person singular simple present ayes, present participle ayeing or (now nonstandard) aying, simple past and past participle ayed)

  1. To respond with an "aye".
    • The men ayed their agreement.1981, Penelope Neri, Passion's Rapture, page 160

Noun

aye (plural ayes)

  1. An affirmative vote; one who votes in the affirmative.
    • to call for the ayes and nays
    • The ayes have it.
    Synonyms:
    yes
    Antonyms:
    nay

Interjection (2)

  1. Used in aye aye.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: AYE

AYE

  1. (Singapore, abbreviation) Abbreviation of Ayer Rajah Expressway.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Aye

Aye (plural Ayes)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

aye is also the alternative spelling of ay.

aye is also the alternative spelling of eh.

aye meaning in Kannada, Gujarati, Nepali and Persian

aye in Kannada

ಅಯ್, ಆಯೆ

aye in Gujarati

અય

aye in Nepali

आयै

aye in Persian

yes
بله

Examples of aye in a sentence

  • We won the cup, we won the cup, ee aye addio, we won the cup!
  • Helmsman: "Rudder amidships aye! Rudder now amidships."
  • Aye, matey, it's a darty job, but me throat got plenty parched.

All 38 example sentences with aye

Synonyms of aye

Antonyms

Forms of aye

Adverb
alternative formay
alternative formoy
Verb
third-person singular presentayes
present participleayeing
past participleayed
pastayed
present participle (nonstandard)aying
Noun
pluralayes
Proper noun
pluralAyes

Origin of aye

From Middle English ay, ai, aȝȝ, from Old Norse ei, ey, from Proto-Germanic *aiwa, *aiwō (“ever, always”), from *aiwaz (“age; law”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eyu- (“long time”). Doublet of aeviternity and aevum. See also Old English āwo, āwa, ā, ō, Middle Dutch ie, German je; also Old English ǣ(w) (“law”), West Frisian ieu (“century”), Dutch eeuw (“century”); also Irish aois (“age, period”), Breton oad (“age, period”), Latin aevum (“eternity”), Ancient Greek αἰών (aiṓn).

"Appears suddenly about 1575, and is exceedingly common about 1600." Probably from use of aye (“ever, always”) as expression of agreement or affirmation, or from Middle English a ye (“oh yes”), or synthesis of both. Compare Faroese ája (“certainly, ah yes”). More at oh, yea. Online Etymology Dictionary also with these posits a possible descent from I (as if clipped from e.g. "I assent").

Borrowed from Burmese အေး (e: /⁠eì⁠/).

Words formed from aye

Phrases with aye

Words that rhyme with aye

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about aye

What does aye mean?
Aye means ever, always.
What is aye in Kannada?
Aye in Kannada is ಅಯ್, ಆಯೆ. See Aye meaning in Kannada.
What part of speech is aye?
Aye can be an adverb, an interjection, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce aye?
Aye is pronounced /eɪ/.

Words near aye in the dictionary

  1. Aydelottes
  2. Aydelotts
  3. Ayden
  4. Aydin
  5. Aydın
  6. aye
  7. aye aye
  8. aye aye shepherd's pie
  9. aye aye, sir
  10. aye man
  11. aye, aye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aye (page history and authors); AYE (page history and authors); Aye (page history and authors); aye (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); aye (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); aye (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-aye.wav.

Cite this entry: “aye.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aye. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.