Word.ws English Dictionary

yea

/jeɪ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

obsolete/jiː/

yea adverb: yes, indeed. Also the alternative spelling of yeah.

Adverb

yea (not comparable)

  1. (dated) Yes, indeed.
    • Yea, and the prophet of the heav'nly lyre, / Great Solomon sings in the English quire […]1597–1598, Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum
    • Let no man say that the Devil is not a cruel tyrant. He may give his folk some scrapings of unhallowed pleasure, but he will exact tithes, yea, of anise and cummin, in return, and there is aye the reckoning to pay at the hinder end.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide
    Synonyms:
    aye, yep, yes, yup, yeah, yigh
  2. (Midwestern-US, dated) Thus, so (now often accompanied by a hand gesture by way of measurement).
    • This kid... What'd he look like? / Well, he was about yea high. You know, tiny like. I didn't get a good look at him, though. He was back in the kitchen.2016, Stranger Things, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Hopper, Earl (David Harbour, David Dwyer)

Conjunction

yea

  1. (archaic, dated) Or even, or more like, nay. Introduces a stronger and more appropriate expression than the preceding one.
    • [N]ow ſuch a liue vngodly, vvithout a care of doing the wil of the Lord (though they profeſſe him in their mouths, yea though they beleeue and acknowledge all the Articles of the Creed, yea haue knowledge of the Scripturs) yet if they liue vngodly, they deny God, and therefore ſhal be denied, […]
    • (with modern spelling) [N]ow such a life ungodly, without a care of doing the will of the Lord (though they profess him in their mouths, yea though they believe and acknowledge all the Articles of the Creed, yea have knowledge of the Scriptures) yet if they live ungodly, they deny God, and...1604, Jeremy Corderoy, A Short Dialogve, wherein is Proved, that No Man can be Saved without Good VVorkes, 2nd edition, Oxford: Printed by Ioseph Barnes, and are to be sold in Paules Church-yard at...

Interjection

  1. (Southern US, US, Western, dated, African-American Vernacular) Yeah, right, yes.

Noun

yea (plural yeas)

  1. (dated) An affirmative vote, usually but not always spoken
    • Recently senators could fax in their yeas or nays to the committee chairman.2009 January 6, “Still Broken After All These Years”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2018
    Synonyms:
    aye
    Antonyms:
    nay

Proper noun capitalized: Yea

Yea

  1. A town in the Shire of Murrindindi, central eastern Victoria, Australia.

Also used as

yea is also the alternative spelling of yeah.

yea is also the misspelling of yay.

Examples of yea in a sentence

  • Yea but you see how hard air forces are to come by in common sizes right?
  • Recently senators could fax in their yeas or nays to the committee chairman.
  • "Yea!" Odred screamed, "Take my tarse into thy mouth, and my great balls, too.

All 12 example sentences with yea

Synonyms of yea

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of yea

Forms of yea

pluralyeas

Origin of yea

From Middle English ye, ȝea, ya, ȝa, from Old English ġēa, iā (“yea, yes”), from Proto-West Germanic *jā. The modern pronunciation shows an irregular development of Early Modern English /ɛː/ to /eɪ/ in the standard language, probably from association with the antonym nay.

From yeah.

See yay.

Words formed from yea

Words that rhyme with yea

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about yea

What does yea mean?
Yea means yes, indeed.
What part of speech is yea?
Yea can be an adverb, a conjunction, an interjection or a noun.
How do you pronounce yea?
Yea is pronounced /jeɪ/.

Words near yea in the dictionary

  1. ye'll
  2. ye're
  3. ye've
  4. ye-es
  5. ye-olde
  6. yea
  7. yea-said
  8. yea-say
  9. yea-sayer
  10. yea-sayers
  11. yea-saying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yea (page history and authors); Yea (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: en-us-yea.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Berrely-yea.wav.

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