Word.ws English Dictionary

dey

UK/deɪ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Singapore[ˈde(ː)]

dey noun: a servant who has charge of the dairy; a dairymaid. Also the pronunciation spelling of their.

Noun (1)

dey (plural deys)

  1. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) A servant who has charge of the dairy; a dairymaid.

Noun (2)

dey (plural deys)

  1. (historical) The ruler of the Regency of Algiers (now Algeria) under the Ottoman Empire.
    • […] the reigning Dey of Algiers (half of whose twenty-eight predecessors are said to have met violent ends) lost his temper with the French consul, struck him in the face with a fly-whisk, and called him ‘a wicked, faithless, idol-worshipping rascal’.1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 29

Interjection

  1. (Manglish, Singlish) An informal Tamil-language term of address used when trying to get someone's attention.
    • Dey! Did you press the lift button? What? You have pressed the button for the tenth time?2007, Elangovan, P, Singapore, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 46
    • Dei, you think what, President’s Star Charity ah?2012 February 7 [2007], Laremy Lee, Radio Silence, →ISBN

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Dey

Dey

  1. The tenth solar month of the Persian calendar.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Dey

Dey

  1. A surname.

Also used as

dey is also the pronunciation spelling of their.

dey is also the pronunciation spelling of there.

dey is also the pronunciation spelling of they.

dey meaning in Tamil and Kannada

dey in Tamil

டேய்

dey in Kannada

ಡೇಯ್

Examples of dey in a sentence

  • Wha' dey said to yo? Yo looks nervous.
  • 'Dey ain't mine,' Stacey snapped, flicking her head towards the yutes in the bedroom.
  • Any NYSC member wey dey interested need to send in entry ontop social media: Instagram and Twitter.

All 31 example sentences with dey

Forms of dey

Noun
pluraldeys
alternative formdai
alternative formdei
alternative formdeye
Interjection
alternative formdeh

Plural of dey: deys

Origin of dey

From Middle English deye, deie, daie, from Old English dǣġe (“maker of bread; baker; dairy-maid”), from Proto-West Germanic *daigijā, from Proto-Germanic *daigijǭ (“kneader of bread, maid”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to knead, form, build”). Cognate with Swedish deja, Icelandic deigja (“dairy-maid”); compare dairy, dough, lady.

From French dey, from Algerian Arabic داي from Ottoman Turkish دایی (modern Turkish dayı).

From Tamil டேய் (“hey!”).

Phrases with dey

Words that rhyme with dey

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dey

What does dey mean?
Dey means a servant who has charge of the dairy; a dairymaid.
What is dey in Tamil?
Dey in Tamil is டேய். See Dey meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is dey?
Dey can be a noun, an interjection or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dey?
Dey is pronounced /deɪ/ (UK).
What is the plural of dey?
The plural of dey is deys.

Words near dey in the dictionary

  1. dextroversion
  2. dextroversions
  3. dexverapamil
  4. dexy
  5. dexys
  6. dey
  7. dey play
  8. Deyang
  9. Deyes
  10. Deylam
  11. Deylamite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dey (page history and authors); Dey (page history and authors); dey (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dey (Kannada, 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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Cite this entry: “dey.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dey. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.