I have noticed recently that most of my friends, when proclaiming joy, spell the word they use Yay! I have always spelled it Yea! and was starting to feel a little ignorant. I had never even heard of the other spelling before seeing it on my friends' facebook pages. I decided to investigate.
According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, Cambridge Dictionaries Online, and several others, yay is not a word. yea, on the other hand, is a word.
I found a few references that acknowledged the word yay, including dictionary.com , but it refers to the word as an alteration of yea. Wiktionary.org says that yea is an alternative spelling to yay, and also mentions that yay can refer to size, as in "He was yay high".
I guess it can be a matter of preference, but it seems that the more traditional dictionaries don't even acknowledge the word. So Yea! I'm not ignorant. Phew.
BTW, when I spellchecked this document, blogspot highlighted every yay as an error...
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2 comments:
I've always felt like yeah, yea, and yay were all sort of slang and as such were sort of personal preference. That said, I've always thought yea and yeah were basically the same and pronounced with a soft 'e' whereas yay was pronounced with a long 'a'. So yeah is a short yes, where yay can be an affirmative, but is more often just a happy yell. I sometimes use yea (with the soft 'e') as a happy yell, but more often would use yay.
FWIW, my spellchecker doesn't like yay either. But again, I've never really cared on stuff like that since I see it as slang. And I've noticed you say "yea!" on Facebook and always thought it a little weird, too. But since I accept it all as slang, I never would have said it was "wrong", either. *shrug*
And so you know, I'm not arguing with you. Just pointing out how I see it and it might be a locale kind of thing. I've seen more people say "yay" than "yea", but I've seen a good bit of "yeah", too. Way more "yeah" than "yea." I think it's fair to go with whatever you like best, personally. But I do like it as a blog topic.
Maybe it's a southern thing?!?! I'm just like Donnie on this one (gasp--did I say "just like Donnie"?!?!).
Spellcheckers also don't like "y'all", but I'm not giving that one up, either.... LOL!
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