ay

intj

1. Ah! alas! Expressing anger, alarm, frustration, pain, etc.

   “And ſuch as yet, coulde neuer weapon wꝛeſt, / But on the lappe are woont to dandled be, / Ne yet foꝛgotten had the mothers bꝛeſt, / How greekes them ſlew, alas here ſhall ye ſe, / To make repoꝛte therof, ay woe is me, / My ſong is miſchiefe, murder miſerye.”

2. (Northern-England, Scotland)Expressing earnestness, surprise, wonder, etc.

   “Ay my word! I am glad to see you.”

   “Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.”

   “Ay! bonny little buttercup, what are ta dewin’ heear, / Hoddin’ up thi tiny heead, this raw, cowd time o’ t’year?”

   ““Ay, I’m glad he’s going to be mairrit,” he said a few minutes later as he sat in the manse kitchen.”

   “AY BY GUM. They’ve summat to put up wi’ hez t’ tram conductors, especially wheer t’ swells lives.”

3. Used in ay, ay.
4. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of aye (“yes”).

   “"Good morrow to thee, jolly fellow," quoth Robin; "thou seemest happy this merry morn." "Ay, that am I," quoth the jolly Butcher; "and why should I not be so?[…]"”

   “I swear also that I will honour and will cherish thee, Kallikrates, who hast been swept by the wave of time back into my arms, ay, till the very end, come it soon or late.”

5. New Zealand spelling of eh (question tag).

   “For example, New Zealanders tended to say "ay" at the end of sentences, but in the Asian community people used different tags to check whether people were still listening.”

6. All right (inter); hooray (inter); cool (inter).

noun

1. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of aye (“yes”).

   “counting the ays and the noes in a vote”

2. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of a: the name of the Latin script letter A/a.

   “It said, in a whispering, buzzing voice, "Gee-you-ess-ess-ay-dash-em-ee-ar-ar-wye-dash-em-eye-en-gee-oh-dash-pee-eye-pee-dash-pee-ee-ar-ar-wye-dash-pee-eye-en-gee-oh."”

   “ETA [is spoken] as "ee-tee-ay" instead of "I SPELL Echo Tango Alfa".”

3. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of academic year.

adv

1. (Northern-England, Scotland, archaic, not-comparable, poetic)Always; ever; continually; for an indefinite time.

   “O he that hath ay lived free, …”