YEA & NAY??

Hi everyone,

I got stuned yesterday night!! didn't know this!! Nobody ever told me!! Gosh

It was on my TV screen. During the news the newscaster was speaking about the Fiscal Cliff in the US.
I saw something in the background. It was the board that displays the votes at one of the chambers (the Congress I guess). it was written "something-I-cannot-remember" & "NAY" and figures.
Obviously it meant Yes and No but very strange spellings.

I first thought it was something created by IT persons to save room on the board but no...
I looked up in a dictionary today and I found out NAY was a bit oldish but still the appropriate word for negative votes and a few expressions.

The first word looked like YAY but I may not remember the spelling well as there's nothing for YAY in my dictionary... I'm going to investigate!

~~ edit Breaking News: the word was YEA
and I also found out the usual expression in politics is "the yeas and the nays" (les oui et les non)

I also realized there are lots of words meaning Yes (I know most of them):
- jah
- yea
- yeah
- yep
- yes
- yes-vote
- yup

I also discovered there were many old words at letter "Y" such as Yule meaning "Noël". Interesting isn't it?

gerardM a écrit:


~~ and I also found out the usual expression in politics is "the yeas and the nays" (les oui et les non)

I

I didn't know yea was an archaic form of yes, used mainly in oral voting, and that he opposite form was nay

I have also found 2 other old words starting with y

ye - polite form of thou.


yore - years ago.

Thanks Muriel!

To me Brits are nice and borrow many foreign words (according to the invasions: French, German, Swede, etc.) that they don't want to get rid of.
These homonyms usually take slightly different meanings but sometimes they are forgotten though kept in old expressions.