tye
tye noun: a chain or rope, one end of which passes through the mast, and is made fast to the center of a yard; the other end is attached to a tackle, by means of which the yard is hoisted or lowered. Also the obsolete form of tie.
Noun (1)
tye (plural tyes)
- A chain or rope, one end of which passes through the mast, and is made fast to the center of a yard; the other end is attached to a tackle, by means of which the yard is hoisted or lowered.
Noun (2)
tye (plural tyes)
- A trough for washing ores.
- But if each Ore is of equal gravit , and I apprehend some poor Tin Ore, which they call dry for Metal, may be less ponderous than Copper Ore) if the tye will not separate them, they should be first cleansed[…]1778, William Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis
Noun (3)
tye (plural tyes)
- A patch of common land, often a village green.
Proper noun capitalized: Tye
Tye (countable and uncountable, plural Tyes)
- A surname.
- A city in Taylor County, Texas, United States, named after John P. Tye.
- A ghost town in King County, Washington, United States, presumably named after the Tye River, named after W. H. Tye. Renamed from Wellington in 1910 after an avalanche disaster.
- A hamlet on Hayling Island, Havant borough, Hampshire, England (OS grid ref SU7302).
Also used as
tye is also the obsolete form of tie.
Forms of tye
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | tyes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | tyes |
| present participle | tyeing |
| past participle | tyed |
| past | tyed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Tyes |
Origin of tye
A variant of tie.
Inherited from Middle English teye (“chest, coffer”), from a combination of Old English tēah and Old French teie (both "chest").
From Old English tīh (“plot of land”), from Proto-West Germanic *tīh. Cognate with Old Frisian ty (“thingstead”), Middle Low German tî, tigge, whence northern German Thie (“old thingstead, village square”).
Questions about tye
- What does tye mean?
- Tye means a chain or rope, one end of which passes through the mast, and is made fast to the center of a yard; the other end is attached to a tackle, by means of which the yard is hoisted or lowered.
- What part of speech is tye?
- Tye can be a noun or a proper noun.
- What is the plural of tye?
- The plural of tye is tyes.
Words near tye in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tye (page history and authors); Tye (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: “tye.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tye. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.