So, my brother is watching on tv a vote a in the American Congress. He says that the members are asked to vote with yea/nay (I have heard that from the Chamber of Commons in the UK as …

Is "yay or nay" an acceptable alternative to "yea or nay"? I have seen it several times in recent weeks, enough to make me wonder whether it is an emerging usage or just a common typo.

Jan 31, 2012 · The phrase that's spoken when someone is hand-wringing about a thorny problem. Speaker One: Uh-oh -- we have to reformat ALL THE DOCUMENTS! Speaker Two: Aye Yai …

I have heard expressions like "It was yay big" or "It was yay by yay." a couple of times now, always accompanied by a gesture indicating the size of something. Does anybody know where …

Dec 13, 2010 · Which one is it really: hear hear or here here? Where does the saying really come from?

Social has over 500M hits in NGrams, as opposed to only 7M for the more recent societal. So the main difference is OP probably always wants to use the former, because that's the standard …

Wikipedia has a decent article on past tenses that explains a lot of this. To summarise: "They didn't start yet" is the negative form of the simple past, "They started." In the positive form it …

Aug 30, 2023 · There are a lot of interesting issues here that all sort of are independent but related. First: 'Oy vey' (pronounced /oj ve/) is an expression of exasperation. It is a shortening …

Some people consider hey to be an inappropriate greeting ("Hay is for horses"), but among those who do not, I wouldn't say that hey yourself has any inherently negative connotation. Its …

Jan 3, 2013 · I am curious as to why "nay" replaces the simple unequivocal "no" in the context of voting. My research in Merriam-Webster tells me that "nay" means "no" (not the other way …