Word.ws English Dictionary

vye

vye is the obsolete form of vie.

Meaning of vie

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
  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]...
  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)
  5. To stake a sum of money upon a hand of cards, as in the old game of gleek. See revie.

See all 9 meanings of vie

Forms of vye

third-person singular presentvyes
present participlevying
past participlevyed
pastvyed

Questions about vye

What is vye the obsolete form of?
Vye is the obsolete form of vie.

Words near vye in the dictionary

  1. vyaz
  2. Vyborg
  3. Vyborgian
  4. Vyborgians
  5. Vychegda
  6. vye
  7. vyed
  8. vyes
  9. vygie
  10. vygies
  11. Vygotskian

Source and license

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