Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb Yes; aye.
  • adverb Indeed; truly.
  • noun An affirmative statement or vote.
  • noun One who votes affirmatively.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Yes; ay: a word that expresses affirmation or assent: the opposite of nay: as, Will you go? Yea.
  • Indeed; verily; truly; it is so, or is it so? used to introduce a subject.
  • Used to intimate that something is to be added by way of intensiveness or amplification: Not this alone; not only so but also; what is more. Compare the similar use of nay.
  • In the authorized version of the Bible, so; thus; true; real; consistent.
  • Yea is now used only in the sacred, solemn, or formal style. Yea, being mainly a word of assent, was formerly used chiefly in answer to questions framed affirmatively; yes, a stronger term, was chiefly used in answer to questions containing a negative or otherwise implying a doubt. But the distinction does not appear to have been rigidly maintained; and the assertions of the following quotations about yea and yes, like those about nay and no (see no), must be taken with some allowance.
  • noun An affirmation.
  • noun An affirmative vote; hence, one who votes in the affirmative: as, to call the yeas and nays.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An affirmative vote; one who votes in the affirmative.
  • adverb Yes; ay; a word expressing assent, or an affirmative, or an affirmative answer to a question, now superseded by yes. See Yes.
  • adverb More than this; not only so, but; -- used to mark the addition of a more specific or more emphatic clause. Cf. Nay, adv., 2.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb dated yes
  • adverb Thus, so (now often accompanied by a hand gesture)
  • interjection Western yeah, right, yes
  • interjection Common misspelling of yeah.
  • noun An affirmative vote, usually but not always spoken

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an affirmative
  • adverb not only so, but

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English gēa; see i- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • Slang - a certain amount; some.

    "He had yea paperwork on his desk, and sitting there, rolling a pencil back and forth and thinking about that old geezer out someplace in his pickup truck, that old geezer with white hair buzzed flat in a crewcut and a mechanical arm on account of he'd lost the real one at a place called Pusan in an undeclared war which happened when most of the current crop of Vietnam vets were still shitting yellow in their didies ... well, none of that was moving the paper on his desk, and it wasn't finding Gamache, either."

    - 'The Dark Half', Stephen King.

    December 31, 2007

  • This must be the yea of yea-high. Yeah?

    November 20, 2018