Word.ws English Dictionary

vie

/vaɪ/

vie verb: to fight for superiority; to contend; to compete eagerly so as to gain something.

Verb

vie (third-person singular simple present vies, present participle vying or (rare) vieing, simple past and past participle vied)

  1. (intransitive) To fight for superiority; to contend; to compete eagerly so as to gain something.
    • Near-synonym: oppose
    • Her suitors were all vying for her attention.
  2. (archaic, transitive) To rival (something), etc.
    • But, if there be, or ever were, one such, / It's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff / To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine / An Antony, were nature's piece 'gainst fancy, / Condemning shadows quite.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  3. (transitive) To do or produce in emulation, competition, or rivalry; to put in competition; to bandy.
    • She hung about my neck; and kiss on kiss / She vied so fast.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Nor was he set over us to vie wisdom with his Parliament, but to be guided by them.1649, J[ohn] Milton, ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], →OCLC
  4. To stake; to wager.
    • Out, thou camelion harlot! now thine eyes Vie tears with the hyæna1605 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Ben: Ionson His Volpone or The Foxe, [London]: […] [George Eld] for Thomas Thorppe, published 1607, →OCLC, (please specify the Internet Archive page)
    • Nature wants stuff
      To vie strange forms with fancyc. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  5. To stake a sum of money upon a hand of cards, as in the old game of gleek. See revie.

Noun (1)

vie (plural vies)

  1. (obsolete) A contest.

Proper noun capitalized: Vie

Vie

  1. A district of Oradea, Bihor County, Romania.
  2. A river in Vendée department, Pays de la Loire, France.
  3. A river in Normandy, France, flowing through Orne department and Calvados department.

Noun (2) capitalized: VIE

VIE (plural VIEs)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of variable interest entity.
  2. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of vacuum insulated evaporator.

vie meaning in Arabic and Persian

vie in Arabic

to rival; to struggle for superiority; to compete
تَبَارَى tabārā, تَنَافَسَ tanāfasa

vie in Persian

to rival; to struggle for superiority; to compete
رقابت کردن reqâbat kardan

Examples of vie in a sentence

  • The plural is "oyesses", but "oyes" vied with "oyez" through about the first half of the nineteenth century.
  • C'est la vie, as they say in France.
  • The tribal chiefs vied to outfeast one another.

All 19 example sentences with vie

Synonyms of vie

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of vie

Forms of vie

Verb
third-person singular presentvies
present participlevying
past participlevied
pastvied
present participle (rare)vieing
Noun
pluralvies
pluralVIEs

Past tense of vie: vied

Origin of vie

Apheretic form of envy, from Middle English envien, from Old French envier, from Latin invītō.

Words formed from vie

Phrases with vie

Words that rhyme with vie

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about vie

What does vie mean?
Vie means to fight for superiority; to contend; to compete eagerly so as to gain something.
What is vie in Arabic?
Vie in Arabic is تَبَارَى (tabārā), تَنَافَسَ (tanāfasa). See Vie meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is vie?
Vie can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce vie?
Vie is pronounced /vaɪ/.
What is the past tense of vie?
The past tense of vie is vied.

Words near vie in the dictionary

  1. Vidyarthi
  2. Vidyasagar
  3. Vidzeme
  4. vidéo vérité
  5. vidê
  6. vie
  7. vie ferrate
  8. Vieau
  9. Vieaus
  10. vied
  11. Viedma

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vie (page history and authors); Vie (page history and authors); VIE (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)-I learned some phrases-vie.wav, En-us-vie.oga.

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