Word.ws English Dictionary

oyez

Syllables: o·yez/oʊˈjeɪ//ˈəʊˌjeɪ/

oyez interjection: hear ye. Attend. (Called by public criers or in court usually three times to secure silence or attentiveness).

Interjection

  1. Hear ye. Attend. (Called by public criers or in court usually three times to secure silence or attentiveness).
    • “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The Banquet is now ready!” called the two Beef Eaters, and in no time at all Palmer Cox’s resourceful Brownies had found a seat for every guest.1924, Anne Carroll Moore, chapter IX, in Nicholas, A Manhattan Christmas Story, page 111

Noun

oyez (plural oyezes)

  1. A cry of oyez.

Verb

oyez (no third-person singular simple present, no present participle, no simple past or past participle)

  1. (no-past, no-present-participle, participle, past, rare, transitive) To proclaim with a cry of oyez.
    • I truſte you make no queſtion about thoſe dull pated pennifathers, that in ſuch dudgen ſcorne reiected him, drunck deep of the ſowre cup of repentance for it, when the high flight of his lines in common brute was ooyeſſed.1599, [Thomas] Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, […], London: […] [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and C[uthbert] B[urby] […], →OCLC, page 3

Forms of oyez

Interjection
alternative formoyes
Noun
pluraloyezes

Origin of oyez

From Middle English oyes, from Old French oyez, the imperative plural of oir (“to hear; to listen”), from Latin audīre. Commonly folk-etymologized as (and pronounced homophonously to) O + yes in the early modern period.

Words that rhyme with oyez

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about oyez

What does oyez mean?
Oyez means hear ye. Attend. (Called by public criers or in court usually three times to secure silence or attentiveness).
What part of speech is oyez?
Oyez can be an interjection, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce oyez?
Oyez is pronounced /ˈəʊˌjeɪ/ (UK).

Words near oyez in the dictionary

  1. oyer and terminers
  2. oyers and terminers
  3. oyes
  4. oyeses
  5. oyesses
  6. oyez
  7. oyezes
  8. Oyhenart
  9. oyinbo
  10. oyinbos
  11. Oykel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oyez (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.

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

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