matey

matey adjective: sociable or friendly. Also the diminutive of mate.

Adjective

matey (comparative matier, superlative matiest)

(UK) Sociable or friendly.
- You've been very matey with that new bird.
- She asked in what sort of accident I had broken my back, and when I told her that I had been shot down she became much more matey.1948, Dennis Wheatley, The Haunting of Toby Jugg, published 2007, page 148

matey (plural mateys)

(slang) A fellow sailor; often used affectedly, especially when portraying a pirate.
- Ahoy mateys, scrub the deck!
- “Well, we are and we en′t, eh, mateys? The Waterman′s Rest en′t exactly the kind of place to spend shore leave; it en′t a patch on Wapping or Rotherhithe. […] ”c. 1906, Herbert Strang (pseudonym), In Clive′s Command, 2006, Echo Library, page 35
(slang) A dockyard worker.
- He got the dockyard 'mateys' to install a primitive form of steam heating which he had seen in Navy ships […]1979, Alfred Draper, Operation Fish: The Race to Save Europe's Wealth, 1939-1945, page 48
- Mediterranean peoples are thought to be excitable, but the Maltese stood up to the blitz with great aplomb, especially the dghaisa men who plowed back and forth across the harbours regardless of the raids, the mateys who made the devastated dockyard work, and all who served in units of the armed...2011, Gordon W. Stead, A Leaf upon the Sea, page 63

Matey (plural Mateys)

matey is also the diminutive of mate.

matey is also the alternative form of maty.

His opening salvo, “If you didn′t care what happened to me, and I didn′t care for you,” gives way to a more matey mood at the end: “You know that I care what happens to you.2002, Alan Di Perna, Guitar World, Guitar World Presents: Pink Floyd, page 29:
Adolphus Egerton Ryerson was his full name, but he insisted on being called Egerton Ryerson, under the mistaken conviction that this was much more matey than Adolphus.2005, Donald H. Akenson, An Irish History of Civilization, volume 2, page 293:

From mate + -y.

Variant spelling of Matej.

What does matey mean?: Matey means sociable or friendly.
How do you use matey in a sentence?: His opening salvo, “If you didn′t care what happened to me, and I didn′t care for you,” gives way to a more matey mood at the end: “You know that I care what happens to you.
What part of speech is matey?: Matey can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: matey (page history and authors); Matey (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-matey.ogg.

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